Rather than comment on the cover, I’ll regale you with the beginning of the Amazon description:
Liam Collins wants to be a writer more than anything else. After unceremoniously being laid off from his job at the paper after thirty-seven-years, he thinks he finally has time to write that book. As his writer’s block continues, he spends his time gardening and brewing his own beer. One day, he notices someone has been stealing peas in his garden in the idyllic Irish countryside…
I’ve never heard of a ceremonious layng-off. Do they stand you up in front of a conference room full of your coworkers and rip your company ID and key card off it’s lanyard while reciting the corporate mission statement? Then head in a procession to the elevator in strict hierarchical order?
Your boss, the HR woman, a security guard carrying a box of stuff from your desk, you, and another security guard following closely to make sure you don’t try to make a break for it and destroy their computer system with the secret backdoor password you installed weeks ago when rumors of possible layoffs first began surfacing?
Little do they know that you activated the virus as soon as you were called to the “meeting”, and that the company had only moments as a viable corporation whose stock prices had dramatically risen when confirmation of layoffs was leaked to their insider trading partners, before crashing into malware oblivion. The little smile on your lips as you stepped onto the elevator and the doors began to close should have warned them, but they were all too worried about their own employment prospects to notice. Just as well, you suppose. Just as well.
As I understand it, the difference with “ceremonious” laying off is that you’re informed several weeks in advance, and you may get some severance pay or other perks if you play along with your employer’s claim that you’re voluntarily “leaving the company to pursue other exciting new interests.”
I like my version better.
> the company had only moments as a viable corporation
I think I worked at that one.
In a ceremonious separation like the Chuck Connor TV show Branded! they break your cavalry saber in half, so wherever you go, people can see that you were marked with shame.
“… from his job at the paper …” Would he wander about with half a line gauge?
LOL. People who haven’t seen the theme song footage to “Branded” should look it up. It really is a spectacular example of being “ceremoniously laid off.” The next time I get fired I want them to do it just like that — the drums, the CEO breaking my keyboard in half over his knee and all.
As for poor Liam, if he wrote as badly as the author here, it’s no wonder he was sacked from “the paper” (isn’t there more than one?).
I often refer to my 34 years at The Press, because there was only one press worthy of my self-importance. I am sure that Liam feels the same about “the paper”. Or I could be projecting.
If I fired a warning shot at a inarticulate feral child eating peas in my garden and brought her to the hospital with a gunshot wound, it would not end with me naming her, becoming her custodian, and taking her home.
We both would become wards of the State, she in a mental hospital, I in prison for unnecessary use of deadly force (shooting) in response to an unlawfal act (trespass without lethal threat), aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, reckless endangerment, reckless wounding. *sigh* One of Lovecraft’s rules was that, even if the tale veers off into utter fantasy, the real world parts must be realistic.
I try to judge a book cover by the book cover. Since the frequent retort is don’t judge a book by its cover, last night I read the four chapters available in the Amazon Look Inside! to judge the cover by the book.