So what is the work like?
Grab one of my novels or stories and I’ll lay it out for you.
Head over to a coffee and pastry place you like. If the place is built into the ground floor of a half-ruined palazzo with unknown tenants on the upper floors, and has a terrace by the side of a canal, so much the better. The guy behind the counter is busy flirting with the waitress, but if you get his attention he'll give you some flourless chocolate cake on a china plate with a chip knocked out of the gold rim, and a cup of strong coffee.
Go out to the terrace and find a table made out of a Corinthian capital from a temple of Serapis. An old stone millwheel will be fine as a substitute. If the sun is bright, push your Borsalino forward to shade your face, or adjust your parasol. If you’re wearing gloves, take them off.
Take a look around. Context is important.
That guy glancing nervously at everyone who walks out of the door has grown his blond hair long to hide the scars of cosmetic brain surgery. Those inserted neural tools sometimes develop personalities of their own, particularly those early models. Perhaps that’s why his left eye sometimes drifts sideways, as if in a desperate attempt to see the back of his own head, even as he’s trying to focus on the way the knob turns before the door opens.
The woman in the tailored summer suit examines images of the digestive systems of alien beings, scrying the future for her clients. Aliens, after all, are mere physical realizations of our fears and desires, no matter how real their gigantic spaceships look when they crash into the Venusian crust, and are thus uniquely suitable for untangling our destinies. She waves her hand through the image, and realizes that the mist covering that stringy bluish organ actually comes from her Darjeeling. She edits her prognostication accordingly.
The canal’s water is clear, so you can see the hulk of a steam launch at the bottom. A crayfish tries to scuttle from the smokestack to a hole in the teak deck, but is picked off by a dolphin loaded with sonar jamming equipment. The dolphin swallows the crayfish, then pops out of the water and insolently soaks your shoes. Before you can react, it is gone on its errand.
Now pick up the book. You’re ready to read it now.