Incredible but true

I was just chatting to someone who happened to have read one of my books. He found out I was a writer (my wife let the cat out of the bag, not me) and said, “so if I look for Roger Morris on amazon will I find your books?”

I told him I write more as RN and then he screwed up his face in concentration, as if he was a medium getting a message from the other side: “Something Axe, Russian, a dwarf?”

“How do you know that?” cried my wife in amazement, as if he really was a medium.

Then came the most amazing part. “I’ve read it!” he said.

I don’t think that’s ever happened before. My wife still can’t quite get over it. The word she used, in the nicest possible way, was ‘bizarre’. As in, “Isn’t it bizarre that Mike had read one of your books?” I knew what she meant. She’s very supportive really.

I think I can explain how it happened. Mike lives near us. When I was first published, the local bookshop, Muswell Hill Bookshop, put my book on their front tables. It has a striking cover. He is a visual person and was drawn to the cover. So it’s not such a bizarre coincidence as all that. But without that context it does seem amazing to the point of being incredible.

2 thoughts on “Incredible but true”

  1. Nothing bizarre about that at all!

    I’m sure you brush shoulders with your fans all the time without knowing, and not just in Muswell Hill.

    I’ve been doing some research into crime fiction recently for a project of mine, and every library or bookshop or website I go to seems to have RN’s wonderful books on the shelf (or the e-shelf).

    I’ll tell you what IS bizarre, though. Two years ago we were looking for a mortgage and giving all our personal and professional details to a mortgage broker. He did the usual “Oh, a screenwriter? What do you write?” thing. I told him that I write for Doctors, and he went off on a great enthusiastic description of the oddest, greatest episode that he had seen just the other day. It was mine.

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