Jamie CAMPBELL

I write books of love and war and tennis - although not always in the same book.

I am a pseudonym, a pen name, a nom de plume. As such, I don't exist in a real sense. I exist to the extent that He lets me exist - at least that's what He tells me.

I am tenuous at best. My very existence is threatened every day - unless I start to pay my way. The threats, the loathing - it really is no way to not quite exist.

I tell Him that I do exist, that I am published. That strangers like what I do, call me literary; lyrical too. I tell Him that I will last for ever - that my achievements are real, tangible - and don't only exist as electrons.

He says I am not real, my achievements are nugatory, transitory; piffling. I tell him that he ought to be like me: lyrical, beautiful - like a cloud. The cloud. He knows the cloud I talk of. The cloud, for what it was, looked close enough to touch; small enough to catch in a butterfly net.

He tells me to shut up. He tells me He has a day job - and it can not wait. And that the cloud is His, and not mine.

I hate Him.

I love him too.