I make it a rule not to hate anybody. Except maybe this guy...

Okay, you can't believe everything you read on the internet. I know that. That's why I don't click on ads that tell me I'm the lucky One Millionth Visitor to the Site and I've just Won an iPad. I didn't try to collect the enormous prize I'd won in the UK Postcode Lottery. My kind Nigerian friend will have to find someone else to help him collect the millions of dollars he's trying to retrieve. I don't get tempted by offers of instant wealth, a better sex life, larger body organs, or losing my belly fat NOW.

I know that a tribe of crazed serial killers/rapists aren't ravaging the women of Auckland, drugging them with free perfume samples in supermarket carparks, ambushing them on the pretense of returning $5 notes they've dropped, or sneaking onto their back seats while they're paying for their petrol.

I have multiple curses heaped on me, my family are all doomed, a pidgeon will crap on my head on the way to work tomorrow, and I will never have the slightest scrap of good luck ever again, because I DIDN'T forward your stupid chain mail on to ANY friends EVER, and I never will.

Yep, when it comes to the interweb and its bag of tricksters, I thought I was pretty jaded. But that's all changed. I just found a site that made me sit up and take notice. And not in a good way. The site, which I will refrain from linking to for fear of accidentally promoting or endorsing it, promises big things. It can even make you a successful children's writer. I quote:

"The rewards for children's story writers go far beyond most people's expectations. Once your book is published you earn royalties which keep producing income for 50 years. Having some natural writing talent is an advantage, not a requirement."

Okay, fellow children's book writers, have you stopped laughing hysterically/ sobbing pitifully/ tearing out fistfuls of hair yet?

When I'd dragged my gob-smacked gaze away from that page, I clicked on their Mystery & Suspense Writing page, and found the following delightful extract, supposedly written by Fredrick Forsyth. I have no idea whether or not this is a real quote from the real Mr Forsyth, but if it is, he now has the great honour of being the only man in the world I now officially hate. Congratulations, Mr Forsyth! Please send your name, email address and $250 in unmarked bills to my Nigerian friend to receive your award.

Now, over to you, Mr Forsyth:

"Most authors, of whom I have read about or heard them interviewed, appear to have consciously dedicated themselves to a career as a professional writer. Most seem to have a sort of compulsion, a dedication, a commitment; many disclose that only through writing can they achieve any sort of fulfillment and that if they are kept away from their writing for long, they pine.

My own case is completely and mysteriously the opposite.

I decided in January I970, with little hope of any success, to try my hand at a single, one–off novel, for no better motive than I happened to be broke. Plus, I wanted a change after 12 years in journalism.

I dashed off The Day Of The Jackal in 35 days, virtually without notes, relying on my memory and keeping the plot in my head.

So far as I was concerned, that was that. If it failed, so what. If it succeeded in making me a few pounds, so much the better. At that time I felt no compulsion to write another.

That it was published at all was due in major part to the astuteness of Harold Harris at Hutchinson Publishing.
After four prior rejections I had decided in September 1970 that, at Christmas, I would put the manuscript in a drawer and return to full-time journalism. It was a witness of Harris’s further acumen that, having read it, he suggested I sign on with Hutchinson for another two novels. Which I did, and having signed I felt obligated to fulfil the contract. Without that signature I would probably have rejoiced in the success and the royalties of 'Jackal', pocketed the latter and moved on to something else.

Because of that contract, The Odessa File and The Dogs Of War came to be written.

Over 32 years have passed since I sat down to tap out 'Jackal' on a borrowed typewriter. Yet I still cannot muster a shred of that compulsive urge to write; that committed dedication to place words on paper which, I am sure, marks the true professional novelist or writer.

I like to count myself as a professional - first, long ago in the matter of flying aeroplanes in the war. (Forsyth was the youngest RAF pilot in WWII) And again as a reporter. (He was based at the Reuters Bureau in Paris and later in Berlin.)

But as a novelist I seem destined to remain a quite damnably lucky amateur. For this reason alone, and there are others, the continuing success of my novels surprises me even while I have to note the facts. For all that, I'm still delighted with my success. I know any reader dipping into my books will find some good entertainment."
- Frederick Forsyth