“Impossible.”

Blunt as usual. “Bruce, nothing is impossible for an author of your caliber.”

“I write fantasy! How you can possibly expect me to write something with only 1024 words?”

“Characters,” I amend.

“Exactly. You can’t write a good character with only 1024 words. I used that many words describe Lona il’Nasi’s hair in my last book.”

Don’t I know it, I think. “No, it’s 1024 characters.”

His eyes narrow into slits. I’d say lasers shot from them but that would be crossing genres. He’s no scifi writer, no matter what he said.

“That better mean the story has 1024 living characters in it.”

I offer the same sour lemon smile I used when one of his “short” stories didn’t make the cut in Omni because it was too damn long.

“Some of the characters could be dead,” he offers.

“Could you try? There’s some serious coin in this.”

“It’d have to be a lot of coin.”

I pass him the spreadsheet. I’d say his eyes popped out of his head, but that’s another genre too. His face split with a greedy grin.

“I’m in.”