Thomas Wictor

I planned on being a novelist, but after my parents died, and my publicists turned out to be frauds who robbed me of my life’s savings, I gave up on it. Today a deranged woman on Twitter kept using the word “novelist” to insult me.

Since she’s illiterate, has no factual knowledge, and hates Jews, of course she’s a British politician.

A Tooting councillor has quit the Conservative party after claiming she endured three years of sexual discrimination.

Susan John-Richards believes she was ignored and overlooked for promotion because she is a woman.

However, the Tooting Conservatives have strongly denied her claims, stating they do not tolerate discrimination of any kind.

Other Tory insiders claim Ms John-Richards is disgruntled because she was deselected as a candidate for the next election – a claim she denies.

British Jew-haters are easily the most rabid I’ve ever encountered. Susan John-Richards favorited this tweet from a Saudi.

She also denies that Hamas murders people.

Tooting is majority non-Muslim.

Councilwoman John-Richards wasn’t elected by immigrants who brought ancient enmities with them. She’s pretty much a typical female alcoholic British Jew-hater of a certain age.

The reason that she sneers at novelists is that she thinks she’s an earth-shaking social-justice warrior (SJW), out there in the trenches of…social media. She actually referred to her “Twitter family.”

It’s official: I’ve lost any residual concern I had for stupid, primitive, destructive lifeforms that wander around on two legs, venting their penny ante rage. It’s because of Susan John-Richards that Hamas murders children. She prefers Palestinian children dead.

Well, soon all of that will be a thing of the past. The Saudi-led coalition and Israel are about to wipe out all the malefactors in the Middle East. As a result, Susan John-Richards will spend the rest of her life in a padded room, where she belongs.

While we wait for the war and the carting away of Susan John-Richards, here’s an excerpt from my NOVEL Chasing the Last Whale. It’s likely to be the only long-form fiction I’ll ever publish, since I’m now an investor and a blogger. But I really like it. I describe it as a black comedy about love and suicide in contemporary wartime America.

The protagonist Elliot Finnell had a heart attack while confronting his girlfriend Gary Pruett over her self-destructive secret. Yes, she’s a woman named Gary. She’s from North Carolina. I based her on a lanky Southerner I knew who looked just like Carly Simon.

Southerners often give their daughters men’s names. No idea why.

Elliot has survived his heart attack, and his family, friends, and Gary have left the hospital. Since he’s terrified of death, Elliot hates being alone.

Excerpt of Chasing the Last Whale

I checked the TV but found that everything disturbed me. The most frightening broadcast was the school-board channel, a parade of mental patients at microphones doing battle with a long table of droning bureaucrats. I turned off the TV and closed my eyes. A few minutes later, I heard a slithering noise beside me.

“Elliot,” a woman’s voice whispered.

I opened my eyes. Nothing. Rising on one elbow, I peered over the edge of the bed. Gary crouched there on all fours like a spider, her chin almost on the floor. She stared up at me as if from the bottom of a well.

“Why didn’t you die?” she hissed.

My heart slammed against my breastbone with the force of a sledgehammer; I snapped awake, clutching my chest. Another look confirmed there was nobody in the room. I waited for my heart to either settle down or conk out.

Soon I heard the door to my room swing open, followed by heavy footsteps. My personal physician Dr. Larkin bulked out of the darkness. With his lab coat and fluffy white hair, he looked like a polar bear, the most vicious and unpredictable of the ursine family.

“See?” he said. “Did I call it or not?”

“You called it. You certainly did. What’re you doing here?”

“Would you like me to leave?”

“Yes.”

Instead, he came closer. “I spoke to the resident who performed your PCI. He said there was no detectable damage to your heart.”

“That’s right. How’d you find out I had a heart attack?”

He thrust his fists into his pockets. “I have several patients here. I saw the paramedics bring you in, but you didn’t notice me.”

“No, I was distracted. I hope you enjoyed being proven right.”

“One of the reasons you had an infarction—apart from your weight and blood pressure—is because you’re a very angry person, and you refuse to admit it. It comes out on occasion, as it did just now with that comment, but for the most part, you simply swallow it and let it eat at you. It’s going to kill you.”

I closed my eyes. “You know, I’m really not up to being psychoanalyzed right now. I’m tired and depressed, so I’d appreciate it if you’d just go away.”

“I came up here to tell you that you’re a very lucky man,” he said as if he hadn’t heard me.

“Yes, I know. We went over that already. No permanent damage to my heart.”

“No!” he shouted.

When I first went to him, he scared me to death with that. A big, sullen man, he was just another cold-fish general practitioner until I took off my shirt.

“You’re overweight!” he’d suddenly yelled. “By thirty pounds at least!”

He took my fatness as a personal attack. But after five years, I’d almost gotten used to him. I barely flinched at his “No!” even though it was as loud as a gunshot.

“I’m not talking about that,” he grated. “Look at me.”

I obeyed.

“You’re lucky because your girlfriend gave you aspirin when your infarction began. The term ‘mild heart attack’ is a misnomer. Your heart attack was mild only in terms of the damage it caused, and that damage was limited by your girlfriend’s quick thinking. She saved your life. I hope you thanked her. That thought never occurred to you, I see.”

“No,” I said, “it didn’t.” I rubbed my face.

He crashed down into the chair next to my bed. “All right. Now you’re going to listen to me. You apparently don’t have actual coronary disease, and that’s another reason to thank whatever higher power you believe in, because heart disease is a chronic, progressive condition. Once you have it, all you can do is slow its pace. There is no cure. Angioplasty and bypass surgery only address the symptoms. The disease itself will recur and progress. Are you hearing me?”

“Yes.”

“When you’ve recovered sufficiently, you’re going to come to my office, and I’m going to show you how to keep from having another heart attack, one that will either incapacitate or kill you. Because you will have another heart attack. With your risk factors, there’s no question that you will have another heart attack unless you completely change your lifestyle. Do I make myself clear?”

“As a bell.”

“Good.” He slapped his muscular thighs and stood. “I’ll see you in about two weeks, then.”

* * *

I lay in my bed, counting my heartbeats. I could feel them in my neck and my ankles. When I lay on my side, I could hear them in my pillow. At some point a nurse brought a meal, which I skipped. An intern came in, told me how lucky I was, and assured me I’d be fine, but I didn’t care.

After I planted the knife between Gary’s shoulder blades, she saved me, and I didn’t even thank her. Larkin was right; the thought hadn’t even occurred to me.