In the attic room, I submit my chapters for the Miami-underworld-time-travel novel; within hours I get a reply from the assistants, even though we’re in the dead of night. I assume they’re writing to point out my mistakes. Too many concrete descriptive details and not enough adverbs! Too many em dashes and too few ellipses! Everything is not as it seems— vs. Everything is not as it seems … The assistants believe that em dashes are abrupt, mysterious, foreboding. Ellipses, meanwhile, are an enticing trail of bread crumbs. A hand reaching out from the shadowed night.
