Oliver Darkshire - Once Upon A Tome

Oliver Darkshire is twenty-eight, and his life as a struggling bookseller and writer is exactly what his careers instructor warned him would happen if he didnt pay attention. He lives in Manchester with his husband and a house full of books he actively tried not to collect.

T HIS BOOK OWES ITS EXISTENCE almost entirely to the inspired hallucinations of John Ash at PEW Literary, my agent, who contacted Sotherans out of the blue, and whom I rewarded by accusing him of being a fraud. I have never been more pleased to be wrong. Theres also space, I think, to thank Alex Christofi at Transworld for seeing something in my ramblings, and then somehow turning those into a book. I barely helped either of them; in fact Id go so far as to say I was an active hindrance to their efforts.

A special thanks is required, I think, to Chris Saunders, the managing director at Sotherans, for entertaining the notion of this book and not throwing me out of the room for suggesting it. His continued support, and his notes, have been more valuable to me than I think he realizes. I owe a debt to all of my colleagues at Sotherans for tolerating my antics all these years, and I hope they look on this project with indulgence.

You are a bookseller.

Rent on your shop is due in 10 days.

Youd best start selling some books.

You have three scores: Money, Time & Patience

MONEY starts at 0

TIME starts at 10

PATIENCE starts at 10

To start your day, generate a new Bookshop Event by rolling a six-sided die. Adjust your scores as directed by the event, then roll a new event.

Keep rolling new events until your Patience or Time reaches 0. If your Patience reaches 0, you shut the bookshop early in a bad mood. If your Time reaches 0, its closing time.

(At the start of each new day, reset your Time and Patience to 10. If your Patience reached 0 the day before, your maximum Patience is reduced by 1 permanently.)

After 10 days, the Landlord arrives to collect 10 Money from you. If you dont have enough, the bookshop folds and you go out of business!

A new Event

(roll a die)

1 or 2 a customer (see table below)

3 or 4 a crisis (see table below)

5 or 6 a peculiarity (see table below)

A customer!

(roll the die)

A crisis!

(roll the die)

A peculiarity!

(roll the die)

spend 2 Money to refill your Patience to 10 by whatever vice takes your fancy

for extra realism, you can play a 30-day month, but the landlord will expect 30 Money at the end of it

I F I THOUGHT MY INTERVIEW at the shop had given me an idea of what to expect from my colleagues, I was mistaken. Until I turned up at the shop for my first day of work, the manager Andrew was the only colleague Id met. His calm, sanguine attitude was innately soothing. He remains in my mind the archetype of what it means to work in antiquarian books, inhabiting an effortless serenity in the face of chaos that I have always struggled to emulate. This sublime state of being, I feel, was perhaps cultivated by keeping potential sources of stress (such as a bumbling apprentice) at arms length. And so it transpired that I was passed on to James for training.

If Andrew was the heart that quietly, patiently kept blood pumping around the shop, then James was the spine that kept it upright. Tall and slightly crooked, he had the air of a scarecrow that had been left out in the sun for too long. From his paper-strewn desk in a dimly lit corner of the shop he watched over the books, guarding them with a suspender-clad perspicacity cultivated over many years to drive away shoplifters, neer-do-wells and birds of ill omen. I spent much of my first year under Jamess tutelage, and in many ways he encapsulated something of an older time; it might seem impertinent to describe him as a fossil, but his endless, loving repairs on the shop left an imprint on the place, and I suppose eventually it shaped him in return. Loping around like a grizzled but bookish wolf, he handled all the day-to-day mundane affairs of the shop. Thus my apprenticeship fell into his hands in the same way as anything else no one really wanted to deal with. It came to my attention several years into my role that no one in the shop apart from James knew where the rubbish went, who took it anywhere, or what happened to it. As far as anyone was concerned, it just vanished. (It transpired that James didnt want anyone to know, for reasons which will become apparent.)

Supposedly James had been apprenticed as a boat builder (not at a dockyard the distinction was oddly important to him) before he wandered into Henry Sotheran Ltd one day and never left. Either way, everything he knew (and he knew everything) was the result of being at the bookshop from mid-morning till dusk each day for decades. In hindsight I am very grateful that I had him looking out for me during those first few months, but I didnt really have time for feelings of gratitude as they placed me at a Munchkin-sized desk in front of the double doors. It was explained to me that the desk had been designed for Victorian ladies, not for the lumbering six feet of clumsiness which now sat behind it, meaning I essentially had to ride the wretched thing side-saddle for years. I have, for various reasons, spent most of my bookselling career behind desks that are far too small for me, but this very first desk I resented most of all.

A few days passed peaceably in the shop, sat at my tiny desk, before I realized I hadnt really done anything. I was used to a busy environment my previous job was doing paperwork at a legal firm. I was dreadfully bad at that, and fled the situation before they could fire me. But the change of pace was jarring. At Sotherans, much to my amazement, the phone didnt really ring at all (sometimes for hours). People sat quietly at their desks, working on something peculiar and arcane which I couldnt pretend to understand. Sometimes people wandered in, and James would swoop down from the rafters to direct them to the right shelves. Andrew, the manager, sat at the desk adjacent to me, occasionally kindly asking if I was doing all right. Yes, I was doing all right, I would confirm, too scared to mention that I wasnt sure what I was supposed to be doing. Eventually it dawned on me that if I didnt ask for something to do, my ossified remains might eventually be found cradling the tiny desk in my arms by a team of confused archaeologists. No sooner, however, had the thought entered my mind than James manifested from a shadowy enclave with a box of books. I was to be taught cataloguing.