Electric Letters Z
Description
The 1990s, and a distant technological world of dial-up, fax, file transfer, bulletin boards and pre-Microsoft wordprocessing. Add to that mix Alistair Wye. His only arts experience is as computer buff for a theatrical properties firm. For the fun of it, he one day fills out his 'joke application' for the job of assistant to best-selling author Marshall Zob (a pseudonym surely). After a round of interviews, which feature pool and snooker halls, he's astonished to get the job. His first task is to gather materials commemorating the life and work of John Andrew Glaze, Zob's recently deceased friend and mentor. The socially awkward Wye doesn't exactly take his new employment seriously. It's more a crashing about in proximity to a high-profile writer of ambition, in a non-PC appreciation of the world of celebrity authorship. Result, employer and employed are led to some surprising, at times hilarious revelations about each other.
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Person
Of Peter Cowlam's published novels, two are prize-winners: New King Palmers, which is at the intersection of old, crumbling empires and new, digital agglomerates, and Who's Afraid of the Booker Prize? His work has appeared on the Fairlight Books website, in En Bloc, The Battersea Review, The San Francisco Review of Books, The Galway Review, Easy Street, Literary Matters, Valparaiso Fiction Review, The Liberal, the Criterion, and others. Peter Cowlam is the Literary Editor at Ars Notoria (arsnotoria.com).