Heap was in his room, writing, when the telephone rang. He answered it.

"Hello."

"Hello, may I speak to Irascible "Razz" Heap."

"This is he."

"I'm a reader. I read you at The Daily By-Catch."

"Do you have a name, sir?"

"Never mind my name. I want to give you a Morgan. They're a piece of shit. You can't get parts, you can't get anyone to work on them. That was probably my Morgan you saw at Wakulla Springs, broke down in the parking lot."

"No thanks. I have a car. It might or might not start. The air-conditioning doesn't work and the power windows won't go down. I don't want another car. In fact, I don't want to leave my room. I have everything I need right here."

"I bought Gulf Coast Stories, used, from Amazon.com. That guy can't write. He's a hack. It's titillation. `By the author of God's Little Acre.'"

"The book sold 300,000 copies, in paperback."

"Distribution. It was on every book rack in America. Every drugstore, every bus station. You'd sell 300,000 copies if your books were distributed. But they won't be, because they aren't violent enough. Violence is the new pornography. Did you see Natural Born Killers? The guy picks up a hitchhiker, rapes her, chokes her, and bites the corpse. He leaves teeth marks in the body."

"That was in the Bonus Features."

"The deleted scenes are part of the movie. They're in the Bonus Features. The good stuff is in the Bonus Features."

"Thank you for your input."

"Remember what Kurtz said at the end of Heart of Darkness. `The horror. The horror.'"

"Thank you."

With input like that, who needed to buy a writers guide on Writing the Best-Seller.

Heap was in touch with his audience.

They phoned him.