"Bert Press, a subsidiary of North General Publishing House, is mainly engaged in the publishing of traditional books and popular books, and has published famous works...... Wait. ”

Ending the conversation with Carol, the new editor-in-chief of Burt Press,

Ji Zhuo searched for some of the materials of Bert Publishing that he had already learned about before.

Burt Publishing is a subsidiary of another comprehensive publishing house, which is equivalent to a parent company and a subsidiary, which is related and relatively independent.

North General Publishing House is mainly engaged in the professional publishing of natural science and technology journals, professional books, academic papers and other professional publications, and has published many famous professional books.

Its publishing method is mainly to make manuscripts with scientific research and technology experts around the world, and only a small number of traditional books and literary works exist.

It is considered to be a first-class publishing house in Europa, and it has a good influence.

And Bert Press, which is a subsidiary of North Press, is going to pull his crotch a lot.

Some time ago, there were traditional publications, and popular publishing was hot.

Although its influence is not as good as that of its parent company, it also has a large market share in the market of traditional serious works and popular works in Europa, backed by the big tree of North Press.

In recent years, I don't know if it is because of the lack of good book submissions or market reasons, Bert Press has languished a lot.

Although the information found by the search engine does not directly mention this,

However, Ji Zhuo still saw it after a closer look...... Because the most recent of the famous publications of Bert Press listed was four years ago.

After carefully rummaging through the information,

Ji Zhuo had a general understanding of the current situation of Bert Press,

How to say it, die, you can't die, after all, a skinny camel is bigger than a horse.

Just the continuous sales of the famous works published by Bert Press can keep Bert Press alive.

But in fact, it is true that the market has been shrinking over the years.

And probably because of this, the editor-in-chief of Bert Press changed five times in four years......

Well...... If you count the new Carroll, there should be more.

Sitting in front of the computer,

Looking at the information he had found, Ji Zhuo fell into deep thought.

The sluggishness of this publishing house seems to be a good thing, after all, there are fewer resources to use, and there are fewer resources to spend on it......

But I'm afraid that this publishing house is desperate...... After all, it's backed by a big publishing house.

Ji Zhuo looked at the information again,

After a pause, forget it, let's talk about it then.

Anyway, I'm a serious work,

A serious work of a newcomer, shouldn't the sales be high in the early stage, right?

After turning off the computer, Ji Zhuo got up and went out to forage for food.

……

Europa.

Burt Publishing, Office of the Editor-in-Chief.

The door was closed, and Carol sat behind her desk, looking at the manuscript of "Seven Sins" on her computer.

He really liked this work, and he also believed that signing this work would allow him to secure his current position.

Before he moved to Bert Press, several unlucky people had left his position.

None of them had his luck to come across a good book on the Seven Sins at this time.

If this author hadn't submitted his manuscript to Bert Press again, he would have taken the initiative to contact this author through his previous submission email.

He had high hopes for the book.

I don't have too much luxury for the early sales of this book, after all, it's serious.

But for the award of this book, he believes that with the quality of the book itself and the operation of Bert Press, it is really not good, and with the help of North General Press,

This book is bound to win some big awards.

A rookie author who won a series of blockbuster awards with his first serious work!

Genius writer! What a great way to get the word out.

And the award is won, and the sales volume is a matter of course.

Carroll believes that most people who buy serious works do so to buy them back to fill their bookshelves.

And not like him, who really liked the book.

Of course

All of this is premised on the quality of the book.

What about the quality of the book?

Carol only thinks it's too good, from the text to the content, to the subject matter, the sophisticated and wonderful text can't tell that this is a writer who has no name before,

Otherwise, how could he like it so much.

"Mr. Carroll, that contract has been written according to your requirements."

At this time, there was a knock on the hidden door, and an employee of the legal department walked in.

"Send it to my mailbox."

Carol answered, and the man left.

Turning back again, Carol looked at the computer screen again,

Looking at the two chapters of "Seven Sins" submitted by this author ABC from the beginning,

Although he had already read it once or twice, he still watched it with relish at this time, and couldn't help but immerse himself in the description of the text.

It seems that every time I look at it, I can have some new experiences,

In the gluttony chapter,

The protagonist is the bottom of a small war-torn country and a night stall owner.

He sells food, but ends up starving to death on the way home.

And the name of the protagonist Hal, when I read it for the second time,

After reciting it a few more times, I realized that the pronunciation of 'hal' was very close to the pronunciation of 'hunger'.

The protagonist of the gluttony chapter is called hunger, and when he has read the whole story and discovers this, Carol's whole scalp is a little numb.

There was an indescribable shock in my heart, and I couldn't help but think of the title of this book again.

"The Lord says, 'Believe in me, and do not go to hell, but go straight to heaven.'"

"Whoever believes in me will receive bread and milk, beautiful sex and money, and eternal bliss—Satan."

Looking back at the content of this introduction, there is a feeling that I can't put it into words.

Carol was immersed in this feeling,

Re-looking at the gluttony chapter.

In the gluttony chapter, the protagonist Hal barely survives by selling a local satiety food at night.

The people who came to his stall were hungry people, greedy and devouring the food that Hal had sold them.

I can't wait to swallow the bread wrapped in vegetables in my stomach in one bite,

The book describes the time when Zaihar's stall was most crowded, and the customers were either squatting on the ground or standing on the side of the road.

The sight of gobbling up bread wrapped in vegetables...... The sight was shocking.

The author describes it as like throwing a piece of food into a pond full of sardines, like a drop of honey falling in front of an ant's nest.

And after returning home from a late-night stall, Hal's life suffers an accident, and when his children are alone at home,

Never had glass, but had been covered with decayed plastic and fell out of the window.

It wasn't until Hal came home that he heard the cries for help in the night when his child's voice had changed.

At the time, his wife was working all night at another laundry.

This change tore apart the already fragile life of the Hal family.

When Hal's wife, who was overwhelmed, came back and learned the news, she went crazy...... The book says,

Howl's wife dug up a dirty piece of dirt from the ground, took it as a dish, and brought it into the kitchen.

After a while of cooking, the barely changed dirt was served on Hal's dinner plate, a cracked but unbroken plate that Hal had picked up.

Hal looked at his wife, who had told him to eat, grabbed a piece of dirt from a plate, put it in his mouth, and chewed it carefully......

And Howl,

It is to carry the child who fell from the upper floor to the ground for a day to the only clinic in the area.

The clinic's doctor, at Hal's pleading, promised him to treat his child, but for a thousand dollars.

And the author's later description suggests that it is not only Howl's wife who is crazy, but also Howl.

Hal's child must have died a long time ago, falling to his death when he fell from the upper floor.

Hal just created an unattainable goal for himself in the illusion - a thousand dollars, and completely blamed himself for not being able to save the child.

Later, when Hal came home late at night from the stall,

Passing by the clinic, Hal told the doctor that he would soon scrape together a thousand dollars for him.

The doctor at the clinic seems to be scolding him, but the description in the book is from Hal's point of view, and it is written that the doctor is reprimanding the nurse of the clinic.

The nurse said, "Doctor, customers complain that the front of the clinic stinks badly. ”

The doctor scolded, "Can't you just throw it farther away?" ”

If you look closely, you can see that the body of Howl's child or someone else was thrown at the door of the clinic.

But

It is precisely because Hal wants to earn a thousand dollars that there is a story behind it.

In order to sell more money at the night stall and save money, Hal began to withhold his own food.

He was careful in his calculations, just to get more food to sell,

Even to fill his stomach, he added some dirt to the water and drank it from time to time.

Although the stall he set up sells some food on a full stomach,

He also wanted to 'glutton' like everyone else in his stall,

But the food on his barbecue never belonged to him.

As described in the text,

The stove was scorching the vegetables and bread, and it was scorching Hal.

In the end, nature is a tragedy.

Hal starved to death on the way home,

He fell to the ground, his eyes were dizzy and hallucinating,

Treat the dirt on the ground as a delicacy, a 'gluttony',

The book describes this passage very carefully, carefully describing how Hal is gluttonous, how he gobbles up, and eats the food of his imagination and the dirt of reality without stopping.

Until the last death,

Hal took out the money he had saved in his pocket these days, and counted it.

That's only $66 in total, which is still far from the $1,000 target.

But Hal smiled when he finished counting, as if he had enough money,

In the midst of that smile, Hal died.

At the end of the chapter, only the sentence "The nurse at Eric's clinic threw the stinky thing at the door of the clinic a little farther away, and the door of the clinic could not smell the stench." ”

This is the end of this first chapter of the story.

The whole story is carried out in a depressed way, and the depressed people seem to be out of breath.

It's a depressing story, and it's not as passionate as other popular protagonists.

As a reader, it seems that he can come up with many plot progressions to get Hal out of trouble,

But when it comes to Hal's perspective, there is only deep despair.

It's like a wall that is endlessly high on all sides, and you can't see the end of despair no matter how you look up.

Carol was at another publisher when she first read this first chapter.

The night she finished watching it, Carol had a nightmare.

In the nightmare, it seems to be Hal turned into, but he is a bystander who has nothing to do but watch Hal step into the predetermined death,

The last one woke up from his dream in a cold sweat.

After reading the first chapter of this book "The Seven Sins",

Carol thought it was a great book.

This chapter is called gluttony, and it's a good name to get it.

Then after moving to Burt Press,

After seeing the second chapter of "The Seven Sins", I felt even more so.

The protagonist of the erotic chapter is a low-level prostitute in a country in American California,

An old, sick prostitute can even pronounce the name 'Senassh' twice and find that the sound is close to 'senile'.

Let Carol as a reader feel the black humor of this author, and then it is accompanied by a deep sense of depression.

Sena, the protagonist of the Lust chapter, has an illness and is already waiting for death.

Senna also has a roommate and is also a prostitute, but Sena is young, and it seems like Senna was young.

The plot unfolds in a brief conversation between Senna and Belinda, a prostitute who lives with her,

Later, Belinda had another guest, a director of a slum private welfare home who liked to brag about his exploits and future visions with low-level prostitutes, a middle-aged man with a big belly.

And the book also says that Senna was born to a prostitute, but the director of the private welfare institute who boasted of his merits obviously didn't care about Sena.

This is not deliberately mentioned in the article, but Carol, as a reader, can easily think of it.

In the plot,

In this pompous concerto of life,

Lying on the shabby sofa, the already weak Sena ushered in another guest,

Before the knock on the door, the book describes that some sunlight is shining through the window.

Maybe it's a metaphor.

Senna turned her head to look, but there was a knock on the door.

The man outside the door came in, a young man who had come because of his desires and was ashamed of his own desires, and his body was full of traces of youth.

At first, Senna thought that this young, ashamed man of his desires had come for Belinda,

Belinda's pompous screams are always easy to attract customers.

But the ashamed young man handed Senna the money.

Senna, who started at first, naturally laughed and refused, she was sick, and she wondered if she would know that she, an aging prostitute, would become her customer after she got sick.

But the young man said he didn't mind,

It turned out that this young man was the resident downstairs of Sena,

I had seen her many times when the young man was still in her teens, and Senna was still in her early thirties.

He was fascinated by her body, and this was a very simple desire,

Not even mixed with anything else, in the text, the author even writes about this desire very cleanly.

Even Carol, the reader, feels the simplicity of this desire.

In the text, this simple desire has lasted for a long time, until now,

And the twenty-six dollars that the young man handed to Senna was his first week's salary.

At last

Naturally, Senna had sex with the young man, and at the same time did not refuse the twenty dollars.

But the whole process, the author does not describe it too much,

But in the bedroom of the living room, Belinda's exaggerated cry became the background sound in the living room.

The whole process was just spent in some conversations between Senna and the young man,

The book describes that the sun outside the window drilled out of the clouds again, and the sunlight through the window was scattered on the two of them.

Senna's golden hair was against the sunset, and the beads of sweat on her forehead reflected the window of the living room next to her.

In the eyes, they reflected each other.

The description of this paragraph makes people feel holy and solemn,

Or there are primitive desires, but there is no dirtiness.

And as a reader...... When Carol read this paragraph, she followed the description of the text, and only felt that her heart was very calm.

In the text,

The young man said that he had seen Senna at different times.

Senna sank for this, when she was young,

Now, through the description in the young man's mouth, it seems to be re-presented in front of Senna's eyes.

In this chapter,

A lot of it was spent in conversations with each other.

In this calming description,

The author writes that the sun outside the window is again obscured by clouds,

The young man put on his clothes again and left, and Senna lay back on the shabby couch.

The young man said he would be back next week and wanted Senna to wait for him.

Senna agreed,

But he didn't wait for the young man to come again.

At the end of the chapter, it is written,

When the sun broke through the dark clouds again, and the sun swayed onto the shabby sofa in the house,

Senna turned to look, and then died on the dilapidated couch.