Saturday, May 10, is the annual Letter Carriers Food Drive. Please consider leaving a nonperishable or two out by your mailbox to be collected and delivered to shelters and food banks in your area. The holiday windfall is long gone by now. It’s especially important that these community resources be well supplied heading into summer, since the school breakfast and lunch programs that many low-income families rely upon will soon be unavailable.

Please, won’t you think of the starving American children?

It has been scientifically proven that happy employees work harder.

It is about to be scientifically proven that a bunch of male bosses who subject a bunch of female employees to eight hours of mandatory overtime on Mother’s Day weekend are not long for this world.

.

.

Very truly yours,

A devoted underling who fears for her employers’ lives

(In no small part because she has been assigned the task of disposing of the bodies)

Helen Scott Taylor’s paranormal, The Magic Knot, is the American Title IV winner, and Dorchester is putting her book out in February 2009! (Wow, did they move fast on that one!)

AND

Kris Kennedy, historical finalist, just received the coveted 2-book offer from Kensington!

Way to go, ladies!

AND bumped to add:

Lavinia Klein (no web site yet, since she anticipates a pseudonym in her future), regency historical finalist, also has the coveted 2-book offer from Avon!

!!!!!!!!!

Come on, people, I got plenty more exclamation points where these came from! Keep the good news coming!

(Yes, I persist with the futile argument of reason.) 

Author A and Author B have completed manuscripts of equal brilliance and originality. They send them off to Fabulous Editor. The manuscripts sit side by side in Fabulous Editor’s inbox. Fabulous Editor grabs Author A’s manuscript first and falls ass over teakettle in love with it.

Does Fabulous Editor subsequently dump everything else in the inbox into the trash because she has found The Next Big Thing and never needs to look at another manuscript again?

No. Fabulous Editor continues mining for gold in the slush because Fabulous Editor intends to have a career beyond next year.

I have it on good authority Fabulous Editor would be running round the office screaming “This is the best fucking day of my life!” if the next manuscript she read also made her fall ass over teakettle in love with it.

Therefore, Author A’s manuscript is in no way impeding the publication of Author B’s manuscript.

Author A’s book and Author B’s book hit the shelves at the same time and, by happy coincidence, are placed side by side.

Discerning Reader finds both covers equally compelling and takes a look at both books. The back-cover copy is equally interesting. A quick skim of the contents suggests the books are equally brilliant and original, and Discerning Reader wants both. Equally.

So Discerning Reader buys both.

Yeah, but what if Discerning Reader has only enough money in her pocket for one book? Huh? What then, smarty pants?

Discerning Reader eeny-meeny-miney-moes her choice and comes back on payday to get the other one because she can’t get it out of her mind.

Therefore, Author A’s book is in no way impeding the sale of Author B’s book.

I don’t dispute the existence of competition, but it is not between writers. The competition is between reader interest and reader disinterest as it pertains to an individual story, whether that reader is an editor, an agent, a contest judge, or a book buyer. All of the above are looking for an engaging read—or two or twenty or eighty-six. No reader has ever bemoaned the agony of having too many exciting stories to choose from.

Once a writer sends a story out into the world, it stands or falls on its own. Nobody props it up. Nobody trips it. If it’s not universally embraced as a work of genius, that is not the fault of any writer other than the one who produced it, and spending even one minute of one day spewing about how someone else has ruined your chances of success is a waste of time you could have spent writing something new, something better, something that will juxtapose asses and teakettles everywhere.

(End rant. Please deposit nonsensical outbursts in the appropriate receptacle.)

NB: Thursday, I think, got a wild notion to write something short (me, Ms. But-It’s-Only-40,000-Words-Over-Maximum-Length) for a specific market. It’s falling together pretty nicely. Don’t exactly have the ending. Didn’t have character names until I hit the wall with the ending and went back to fill in all those blanks. Finally came up with appropriate benign-sounding acronym for the evil group, prior to which it was my standard TAO (The Acronym Organization). None of which sounds like “falling together pretty nicely,” but trust me, it’s much smoother than most of my starts.

Stands at 7300 words (in 3 days—whee!) with my lack of ending and first-draft placeholders (such as “insert face sucking here”—seriously, this is my process), so hitting minimum length won’t be a problem, and I’ll have plenty of room to flesh it out before I hit maximum.

No suitable title yet. About 50 campy titles, at which I seem to excel. Unfortunately, not real fitting for my torture stories.

Don’t know how well suited it is for said market (primarily, don’t think my hero is enough of an asshole), but I suppose they’ll let me know. If they let me NO, I reckon we found our serial, since I’m of a mind the yield on a story this size is too low to expend a huge amount of effort finding it a home.

(Completely-unrelated-to-anything vampire story, by the way. Practicing stepping outside the universe upon which Kerry’s Fantasy Career was based.)

Yeah.

The way I look at it, I have three options:

1. Be a silent nonentity, which is really not great for self-promotional purposes.

2. Pretend to be whatever I think will make the best impression on the greatest number of people, which is also not great because I’m not much of an actress and will eventually fall out of character, at which time I will be vilified as a liar and a fake who perpetrated a deception against the world.

3. Be myself and make use of my internal editor. I’m better about that last part elsewhere—it rarely takes me less than half an hour to compose a comment on someone else’s blog, even if it’s only a couple of sentences, and I delete half of them without submitting when, upon reflection, what I had to say seems unnecessary or irrelevant or needlessly confrontational or excessively stupid.

(Actually, WordPress has numbered this post 285 while indicating I have only 144 posts appearing on this blog, so I obviously do a fair amount of tongue-biting here, as well. As silly and juvenile as you’ve seen me get, just imagine the delights I’ve seen fit to censor…)

I do try to be thoughtful about what I’m saying, but having witnessed how often words are taken out of context, twisted, and blown out of proportion to suit the agenda of the blower, I think it’s naive for anyone not to expect to end up on somebody’s Bitch List sooner or later. Sure, I want to be universally liked, but that isn’t going to happen, for me or anyone else. Even Oprah isn’t liked by everybody.

So I’ll continue to worry and use that worry to restrain as many ill-conceived impulses as possible but, at the same time, not let it choke the life out of me because I realize it’s impossible to please everyone.

I survived high school with this philosophy. Since the interwebs seem to operate by the same rules, I should make it out of here alive, as well…

“You need a serial.”

Harried Writer flipped through a stack of papers in search of that plot thread that kept disappearing. “Do I have to pick just one? I’m equally fond of Reese’s Puffs and that cinnamon-pecan Special K.”

Zara tied her hair back with a ratty old string she’d found on the floor. “Not cereal. SERIAL. Note the spelling. Everybody’s doing it.”

“If everybody was jumping off a bridge—”

“You’re such a mom.”

“Thanks. By the way, for Mother’s Day, if you hook me up with some djinn housecleaning action, you’ll be my favorite.”

“No I won’t. Angelic Daughter’s your favorite, and then you’re too soft on Gabe and Xain and Keran. And Rinc. And that vampire thief. And…”

“Okay, you’ll be my favorite six-year-old.”

“Hmph. I haven’t forgotten the subject, by the way.”

A nerve in Harried Writer’s eyelid twitched. “Those who do serials have a story. I don’t have anything short enough or finished enough to offer.”

“Make something up. I’ll help. It can be all about…” Zara tapped her chin while contemplating riveting subjects. After 0.03 seconds of deep contemplation, she announced the winning idea with a flourish. “Me!”

“Here’s the thing, kiddo. I write grownup stories. With violence and bad language and, uh, kissing. And stuff. Not kid stories. The Amazing Adventures of Zara and Her Bratz might give people the wrong idea.”

“Gabe’s old, and he likes Bratz.”

Harried Writer muttered something involving perv and prostitots and some degree of not surprised.

“Besides, I’m cute.”

“Uh-huh, but a lot of readers don’t want to see a kid in a romance novel, ever, no matter how cute she is. And precocious is another coffin nail. I’m trying to hide you as much as possible, actually.”

“But I’m important! I’m crucial to the story. I’m the main bone of contention. I’m the… the… impediment to happiness!” Zara’s eyes widened. “Omigosh, I’m the impediment to happiness? THE IMPEDIMENT TO HAPPINESS!” She began to cry—loudly, but not with sufficient volume to account for the shaking of the house.

Harried Writer crawled under the desk, pulling the chair in after her, and covered her head with her arms. “I didn’t do it. Not my fault. And I’m 90 percent sure she’s faking.”

The shaking stopped. “Oh, she’s with the writer.”

Male grumbling was vaguely audible through Zara’s wailing.

“Yeah, she’s made me cry a couple times too. Remember when she threatened to kill me and give my woman to a vampire? I can handle this.” There was a brief atmospheric disturbance, and then the protection of the chair was withdrawn from Harried Writer. “The cavalry’s been called off. You can come out now.”

“I’m perfectly happy right where I am, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” Ryder straddled the chair and directed his attention toward Zara. “What’s the problem, Z?”

“I’m the IMPEDIMENT TO HAPPINESS!”

He nodded. “I can see how that might be upsetting.”

Harried Writer choked on the buildup of melodrama at low altitude. “She just wants more attention.”

“Would it kill you to give her some?”

Harried Writer scowled at Ryder. He always took Zara’s side. “It might kill you.”

“We’ve been through this before. You’re not going to kill me. You’re intrigued. There’s too much about me you don’t know.”

“I know one thing you don’t know.”

“Is finding out going to make me cry?”

As currently outlined, no, but outlines could change. “Like a little girl with a dead bunny.”

“Wow. You are seriously morbid.”

Zara sniffled, momentarily distracted from her own woes. “Is it about his sugar bowl*?”

Actually, the history of the Big Bad Sugar Bowl was one of those things Harried Writer didn’t know yet, and she suspected it was one of those things she would regret introducing round about the time explaining it became necessary. “No comment.”

Ryder, familiar with Harried Writer’s sadistic tendencies but not yet the victim of same, began to look a little queasy. “I can hardly wait.”

Zara sniffled again, but it was kind of a dry sniffle. Crocodile tears were a snap, but crocodile snot was trickier to master. “Yeah, that’s great and all, but we haven’t resolved my problem.”

Harried Writer banged her head against the desk in time with the twitching of her eyelid. “How about you finish that interview where you torture the reporter with cute and precocious, and I slap it up somewhere?”

“That’ll do!”

Zara did her happy dance. On her third twirl around the room, Ryder reached out and pulled the string from her hair, offering it to Harried Writer with an I’m too adorable to torture smile.

Harried Writer tucked the thread back into Chapter Eight and remained steadfastly heartless. “I don’t care how helpful you are. I have to torture you. It wouldn’t be fair to everyone else if I let you off easy.”

“I know. All I ask is that the sugar bowl turns out to be something badass to compensate for all the flak I have to put up with because of it.”

An ill-formed idea flickered deep within a dark cavern of Harried Writer’s mind, too weak to be viable but providing a hint that might revive it at some point in the future. She scanned the bookshelves for The Complete Noob’s Guide to Freaky Old Pottery. “Oh, it’ll be badass. It’ll be so badass, djinn from here to Rigas will be jealous.”

“You don’t have a frickin’ clue, do you?”

“Shut up before I change it to a chamber pot.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* It’s not really a sugar bowl, it just looks kind of like a sugar bowl. It’s actually Ryder’s “lamp,” and there’s some terribly dark reason** his soul got stuck in such a weird container.

** Pantserspeak for “I haven’t got a frickin’ clue, but it’ll be awesome when I figure it out.”