There are two kinds of people, Dale Foster had once been advised at a book signing: those who divide everything into two kinds, and those who don't. This wisdom had been attributed to Mark Twain. Dale had gritted his teeth and nodded. It was unlikely the earnest young fan had the wit to parse Clemens' pseudonym.
Dale slouched in his desk chair, a dichotomy of a different sort at issue. A framed cover flat from his last novel stood beside the laptop holding most of a new adventure. Neither artifact inspired him. His shirtless hero displayed rock-hard abs, manly pecs, and bulging biceps. (Harald should have been portrayed as far less fit ... evidently reading a book is not a requirement for illustrating its cover.) His flaxen hair flowed in an unseen breeze. His blue eyes glinted. His smile was both friendly and devil-may-care. Dale did not need a picture to know he was short, stocky, and balding, nor that he radiated attitude. Surly with a fringe on the top.
A trip to the fridge yielded a cold beer but no ideas. When he returned, the text that preceded the blinking cursor still read:
Harald hung in massive iron chains from the dank, rough-hewn stone wall. The heavy manacles gouged into the bloody flesh of his arms. He fought the reflex to shiver, having learned all too well the rage with which the sadistic troll at the guard post reacted to the softest clanking sound from the dungeons. Instead, the man from Earth focused all his energy on escape. He had a plan.
The problem was, Harald was selfishly keeping his plan to himself. The stout-hearted hero had now been shackled to that wall for two weeks. Two weeks of Dale's evenings and weekends, that was: only scant hours for Harald. This crummy apartment did nothing for his imagination. Harald, Harald, Harald ... do something.
Dale's day job, of which he was thoroughly tired, was in accounting. That made him, if not a man of science, a man of no nonsense. He expected the world to follow rules. All worlds. Even the world made up in his head. Two plus two would always equal four. Enron and Arthur Andersen showed what happened when one tried to pretend otherwise.
That fan's two types enjoyed either fantasy or SF, indifferent to the omission of the other ninety-whatever percent of the populace. Dale did not get it: Why did some people read fantasy? Far stranger: How was it he could, or chose to, write it? Fiction, he had no problem with--but it had to make sense. That insistence was what made Harald so unique as a fantasy hero. Yes, Harald had wandered through an unseen portal into a magical world, but he remained a man. No mythic strength, cover art notwithstanding. No wizardry, even in a world suddenly full of wizards. Only a brain and the guts to use it.
Two kinds of people: those who deal in reality--no matter how surreal it might become, and those who don't. Harald was one of the former.
For whatever reason, Dale could write and sell this stuff. If he could keep it up, he could escape the soul-sucking day job. Unlike Harald, Dale really had a plan.
Harald needed to start pulling his own weight.
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