WHAT THE HELL???
Listen, I am not one to threaten people and Lord knows I am a caring, kind person who is genuinely happy when a fellow citizen of the world reaches for their dream and gets it. I’m all about crap like that.
But this town has a grand total of about fifteen people in it and I feel sure the Universe only planned to allow one writer out of the fifteen to actually have a book published. The fact that she made the Times means that now the same Universe has to kill off one of my neighbors to balance it all out.
In the interest of protecting the old man next door, I think I’m going to have to hunt her down and run her over with my economy car.
There she was on the front page of the four page paper in her big city press photo. She was crouched down on one knee as if she was waiting on the rest of the cheerleaders to show up and form a literary pyramid.
Who does that? Everyone knows real writers wear tweed jackets with patches on the elbows and are only photographed with their arms folded and a pipe in their mouth. It’s called being professional.
And what kind of book did she write?
FICTION! Not even real fiction either. There were no heaving bosoms or shirtless, illiterate stable boys on the cover. She wrote a work of fiction for kids!
I know, I know. Kids can’t read and even if they could, they don’t have the necessary credit card to purchase a book on Amazon. How is that profitable for a publisher?
The fact that she made the Bestseller List despite the fact that her target audience can’t read and has no money tells me that A) she only pretended it was for kids when really it’s porn for adults who are too embarrassed to buy porn, or B) she slept her way to the top of the list.
I choose C: All of the above, plus she is the devil.
Listen, if all it takes to get an agent, a publisher, and a spot on That List is to write a book full of made up stuff and then sleep with thousands and thousands of book buyers, I’m there. The fact is I know how to make stuff up. I have a long line of ex-husbands to back me up on this. I am the woman who has repeatedly told potential mates that I will live with them ‘til death do us part.
I am also fine with sleeping with thousands and thousands of people in the name of publishing success so long as I can get my doctor to write my Lunesta prescription for more than thirty pills at a time or I’d get killed in co-pays.
It’s not that I’m not freaking ecstatic for this stupid, pretty, devil woman. It’s not that I’m jealous of her and her shiny, new book either. I just want her to not be successful, that’s all.
I am intelligent enough to know that there are a finite number of successes allowed per city and that number is directly related to the population count. That’s why it’s OK that there are approximately 8 million actors in Los Angeles and almost that same number of writers in New York City. But when you come from a small town like this one, there is only one ticket out and that fiction slut stole mine.
Of course I mean that in the nicest way.
I have two choices. I can either lie down and take this (her porny ways are rubbing off on me already), or I can do something about it.
So here’s my three step plan for becoming the best selling, tweed wearing, author of Wiping the Crazy off My Face for children.
Step one: Write an actual book.
Step two: Find a city with no successful writers in it and move there.
Step three: Hire a private investigator to drug W. Bruce Cameron, pose him in an unflattering way next to a naked hooker named Jello and then blackmail him into forcing his publisher to make me the female him.
That, my friends, is how you become successful. Maybe I'll write a book about that.
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My FAVORITE Stevie Ray Vaughn song ever... and that's saying a lot since I love everything he ever did. Miss him terrible.
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