Fictional characters say: we’d rather be working for Jane Austen!
We thought this was hilarious.
Tom Holt has sold three new humorous fantasy novels to Orbit publishers.
“I don’t think any of them are going to be Paul Carpenter books,” said Holt about his hapless office worker from The Portable Door trilogy. “The next book may well be a standalone. It’ll be set in an office and involve at least one dog.”
Holt has a thing for offices. “They’re the places where the sort of people I write about tend to spend a large proportion of their time,” he explained. “They’re not altogether happy about this. They would far rather work for Jane Austen, so that they could swan about drinking tea out of porcelain cups and taking pleasant strolls on immaculately tended lawns. Sadly, Jane Austen is no longer in the writing biz, and they have to take whatever’s going. If they’d tried harder at school, maybe got a few more GCSEs, they could be being written by Robert Rankin or J K Rowling right now; they could have been, you know, characters, instead of being stuck in some grotty office servicing obsolescent plot mechanisms for rubbish wages. Serves them right, in my opinion. If they’re not careful, I’ll outsource the whole operation to Vanuatu, where characters are glad to do an honest day’s work for a couple of quid and a bit of development.”
This office worker has been known to swan about drinking tea in the afternoon… 
