Timothy and the publishing delay

As I sat in the south gazebo, hitting refresh on voxopedia’s ‘Recent changes’ page, I noticed from the corner of my eye the household cat walking pensively in circles. Perturbed by this uncharacteristic behaviour I approached him cautiously whilst holding my phone in the forlorn hope of capturing an amusing cat video with which to entertain the Internet.

“There is no point trying to take a video,” said Timothy who was still circling what appeared to be a North Korean bootlegged Surface Pro, “Twitter is closing down Vine.”

I swore in frustration. Once again, I had missed engaging with a social media outlet before it had slid into obsolescence or was cancelled. It was MySpace all over again. If felt cross enough to vent my anger on a Compuserve forum.

“Stop looking so sullen. Your ineptitude at picking social media trends has done wonders for my share portfolio,” bragged the cat, still orbiting the knock-off tablet, “Any social media outlet you aren’t thinking of using is usually a good bet.”

“I’ll use my powers for good and sign up for Gab!” I cried.

“Never mind all that – I need you to think of an ending for my book.” grumbled the cat, who now sat on his haunches in front of the specially cat-adapted keyboard.

“Your book?” I asked. Timothy’s book? I had announced Timothy’s book some weeks ago and it was originally going to be a domestic drama called the “Confusing Walrus” based on unsubtle plagiarism of a John Scalzi space-opera, which had led to some excitement among Timothy’s inexplicable following. The capricious cat had then forced me to retract that announcement because the supposedly “finished” book was now going to be a cook-book called the “Collapsing Souffle”. No sooner had I done that, than it became clear that Timothy had written nothing but an outline which read:

rite book. make flappypants dror cover

Yet, here we were – weeks later – and unless my eyes deceived me, Timothy had a long document open on his Pyon-Yang derived computer.

“Why this is great news!” I said saidingly “I can’t wait to try the recipes!”

Timothy looked at me as if I had taken leave of my senses.

“Recipes? Recipes? I don’t write ‘recipes’. Do you think at this time of national crisis, people want recipes? No, no, now is the time for action. Now is the time for me to break silence and intervene in the US election.”

“You already intervened – you were briefly Hillary Clinton’s running mate, remember?”

Timothy dismissed that comment with a wave of his paw. “This book contains a distilled account of my personal philosophy. It explains how Donald Trump also shares my mental powers that allow us to achieve greatness.”

Suspicion grew in my chest. “Let me look at that cover,” I exclaimed in an exclamatory fashion pulling the fake tablet over. “As I thought! You’ve just taken some Castalia House nonsense, scribbled out ‘Mike Cernovich’ and written ‘Tim T Talking Cat’ instead.”

“That is merely a suggestion. The main question is whether I should end the book by saying ‘that is why I am so awesome’ or, and think this over before you answer, ‘that is why I am so great’”

“The second one!” I cried, “Very topical!”

And that dear readers, is how I learnt of Timothy’s new book.