The Goddess Shines on America

"Can you create two series of novels at the same time?"

Alice laughed dumbly and said, "Mr. Domingo, is it too unprofessional for you to ask this question? We are not serializing articles in newspapers. We write some today and some tomorrow. Is there any urgent time limit for this?" ?"

It seems that there are still geniuses in this world, and Domingo couldn't help but want to sigh with emotion. A young girl, not only has achieved such remarkable achievements in the business field, but also can easily write novels on the list, but she still doesn't know much about the normal state of the industry. It's true that geniuses always have a distinctive personality and a distinct style.

"The problem is Alice," he explained. "As you said yourself, the total number of words in this novel is about half a million words. If other authors want to write a work with four hundred pages in sixteen , at least it will take a year. You are not a full-time writer, I believe it will take a long time just to write these 500,000 words."

Seeing Alice nodding her head modestly, Domingo let go of his words and said, "We haven't read your new book yet, and we can't come up with more detailed suggestions. But at this moment, both of us should at least A consensus has been reached. Seven years of eleven-year-old boy's life in the magical campus, the seven works just run through the growth of a generation of teenagers. If you can't publish a book at an average rate of one year, the effect will be Is it going to be greatly discounted?"

It turned out that this factor was taken into consideration, and Alice Psychology really agreed with it 12 points. You know, looking at the various series of novels in the global literary world, the thickness of the first book basically freezes the average word count of the sequel. Now, my "original" "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" has a score of 500,000 words in one book, and the subsequent six books must be of uniform thickness?

In the field of published literature, 500,000 words is undoubtedly a novel, and it takes almost a year for any writer to polish a novel. It takes seven years for the seven parts, which is actually very fast. If the editors of Bantam have no plans to extend the creative cycle at the moment, even elementary school students can't be fooled.

Well, since such a series of works with a total word count of 3.5 million has already taken seven years to produce, what kind of series of novels should be added?

Everyone here knows very well that Alice is not a full-time writer.

"Alice, you must think about it." Fearing that the girl could not control her brain, Brown persuaded again and again: "Let's take a look at your work first, and then I promise, ah, I believe in Domingo. We will definitely do this, and we Bantam will definitely manage your set of works well. So Alice, please don't conceive another set of novels while writing this book, or we will be very troubled. "

Just like that, the editor can only press the writer for the manuscript, and who can stop him or her from conceiving a new book on his own? All of a sudden, the editors in the conference room hurriedly made similar speeches. Everyone was afraid that the girl who hadn't reached the age of 18 would be unable to control herself. After writing one set of books, she would think about another set. . If she did this and ended up with a dystocia or even a bad ending, Alice herself wouldn't care, and the whole publishing house would cry to death?

"Hey, hey, all of you are calm." Alice hurriedly raised her hand to stop the explosion-like voices around her, and said dumbfoundedly: "I just came up with an idea, and you have all been talking about it until now." Haven't read my book yet. Hurry up, what, Brown, don't you still want to make a photocopy? Hurry up."

Brown immediately went out to work. He held the manuscript in his hand and hadn't read it carefully, but he was already deeply attracted by the title of the first chapter, "The Boy Who Lived". Of course, of course, copying work is not what a senior editor like him needs to do. He walked out of the conference room and looked around, and he stared at an intern who was clearly idle.

"Yo, Ed." Brown called him. "These manuscripts," thanked Alice for paper clipping by chapter: "make sixteen copies of the first chapter and send them to the conference room at once, and then make copies of the first three." chapter."

"Okay, Mr. Brown," the intern Ed excitedly took over the manuscript: "Is that girl a great writer just now? Her name is Alice?"

"Alice Wang, if you're interested, you can just look up her works." Brown took off the manuscript and said with a smile: "But don't miss the direction, she is also an outstanding entrepreneur."

The copying work started immediately, and the meeting room was not idle. Of course, everyone did not continue to chat about the work at the moment. Alice was sitting at the top, telling everyone what happened outside the office building this morning.

"Mr. Brown's roar scared me at the time." When Brown entered the door again, she heard her say: "At that time, I wondered, could it be someone who couldn't think about it and wanted to jump off the building? Or the Japanese? Are you really going to attack here? I can..."

"Ahem," Brown, who entered the room, interrupted the girl's nagging: "You just said that the Japanese attacked here? What do you mean?"

The instant sentence was actually captured, and seeing that everyone in the room looked very interested, Alice didn't mind and said, "Acquisition, the Japanese have bought a lot of our American real estate in the past two years. How many hotels in Hawaii have fallen? Don't you think they will also take action at Rockefeller Center?"

Good guy, you really deserve to be a part-time writer and a full-time investment entrepreneur. What Alice said went far enough.

But everyone accepted it quickly, and an editor in the corner pondered: "It is indeed very possible that all of us know the value and significance of Rockefeller Center. The world's largest privately owned building complex makes Midtown Manhattan become New York after Wall Street The reason for the second city center, not to mention that it was just named a National Historic Landmark last year. The Japanese ... really have no reason not to be interested in it."

"The Japanese... Haha, let's talk about the profession, Alice, it's really strange that you can still go to Japan to write mystery novels."

"Yes, yes, we have always wanted to ask, have you lived in Japan before? We have read the English translation of "After School". It is written in a very delicate way."

"The key is that the ending is the most unexpected! It turns out that someone really wanted to kill the protagonist, but it wasn't the real culprit that the whole text always thought, but the protagonist's wife!"

"Actually, Alice has already laid the groundwork. Have you noticed that it is the limited number of appearances of the protagonist's wife?"

The photocopying continued outside, and various discussions about Alice's other work were held inside the house. However, the owner of the topic didn't intervene in everyone's conversation this time, and just rested his mind quietly until the intern came into the room with a thick stack of hot manuscripts and distributed them to everyone.

Then there was nothing else to do with her. After talking about various topics for a long time, it was finally time for the formal reading. To be reasonable, a part-time little girl who wrote three books at will easily became a best-selling author and a newcomer award winner by relying on three stories of three types at will. How could this group of editors not be able to stare impatiently at the first page of the manuscript for such a long fantasy series by a girl who can be called a ghost?

So, then there was a long silence.

Alice really had nothing to worry about. She slowly opened her satchel, took out a Russian version of "Lolita" and read it.

Of course, this classic love story was created by Vladimir Nabokov while living in the United States, and the most widely circulated version is also in English. However, after all, the author himself is a Russian man, and the earliest version is also affiliated with the Olympia Press in Paris. Therefore, without considering which language she is good at, Alice chose the Russian version as her collection without any hesitation.

After all, this novel is really "internationalized." The hero Humbert, who immigrated from France to the United States, always likes to shout French long phrases in the "text"; Lolita's title, It is actually the Spanish version of the girl's original name "Dorothy Hayes". Therefore, this novel can be read in any language. Anyway, the story itself is just a messy confession of a mentally ill death row prisoner.

Time passed by like this little by little, and Alice, who was not in a hurry to return to Los Angeles, read the novel together with Bantam's editors. She watched her "Lolita," and the others saw "The Boy Who Lived," and then couldn't wait to read "Glass That Disappeared," and then Chapter Three, and then Chapter Three. Four chapters, anyway, Alice has almost tripled the volume of "The Sorcerer's Stone", some of which they can read.

But what was more unexpected was that it was not the finished reading of all the articles that finally brought the editors back to their senses from the sea of ​​books, but a middle-aged man who pushed the door open.

"Gentlemen!" The person came in with a typical entrepreneurial temperament, wearing a well-made suit, and said as soon as he entered the door: "We have a big event today, you all come out!"

Domingo came back to his senses in surprise, put down the manuscript and looked at the man, and said in surprise, "Mr. Grayson? Oh my God, why are you here?"

"Don't talk about those useless things, come out and get ready to watch the excitement." The middle-aged man hasn't set his eyes on Alice yet, but is caught in his own mood: "There was a despicable high-altitude parabolic incident downstairs today, you all know Right? The NYPD has figured out who actually bought those Pizza Hut takeaways!"

Seeing that everyone gasped, he announced the answer even more proudly: "The Korean Samsung branch upstairs, now they are going to be famous!"