on being God...

How many people have you killed since we last spoke, Dave?

what the! oh... hello...

One? Two? Ten?

i'm not sure what you mean.

Come on, Dave, how many people have you killed since we were last here together?

umm, i don't know. was i supposed to kill somebody?

Sure you were! It's what writers do all the time. You get us interested in somebody, then you kill them off.

we do?

Don't get all coy on me. Of course you do! Tell me how many people die in the first chapter of your book, The Shadow Without?

hang on, that's different! that's setting scene. that's making the bad guy bad. that's--

How many?

a couple. i guess...

You guess?

well, it depends if you include the prologue...

How many die in the prologue?

i'm not sure. maybe twenty or thirty...

TWENTY OR THIRTY? Bloody hell, Dave, you've gone all mass murder on me!

that's ridiculous! it is a mining tragedy. the people die in a mining disaster. it's not murder.

Sure it is!

no, it isn't.

It is, and I'll prove it.

fine. prove away!

Drop the Prologue.

what?

Drop it. Or have the miners saved at the last minute. Don't collapse the tunnel on them.

the tunnel doesn't collapse on them!

Then how do they die?

it's a poisonous gas thing...

Murderer!

it's not murder, it's a tragic mining accident. bloody hell, it's based on a real life tragedy at Mt Isa where miners were poisoned in a terrible accident!

So, change history. Don't let those poor buggers die!

i can't change history! even though The Shadow Without is fiction, i want it to be based in some historical fact.

Why?

it adds to the relevance of the story. it grounds the abstract and the fanciful in a little bit of reality.

By killing people?

no, not by killing people! by using historical events, real tragedy as a base for actual fiction.

I say it again. Drop the prologue and stop killing people.

why do you do this? why do you come in here and annoy me with this kind of inane chatter?

Why do you kill people, Dave?

i don't kill people!

You writers are all the same! You have this corrupted kind of God complex. You create life just to take it away!

oh, for crying out loud! i'll drop the bloody prologue altogether! as long as it stops your whining!

Thank you, Dave, but...

but?

I am still worried about that first chapter...

what? what about the first chapter?

Those two people who die in it? Do they really have to die?