Kerry Allen

“HD radio is a fad, like the internet. Or pockets.” — From a regular radio’s POV in a Radio Shack commercial heard in the car this morning.

It’s impossible to find music on the radio in the morning. Everybody’s flapping their gums about stuff nobody in my car cares about, but it’s really not worth lugging CDs around for a 5-minute car trip, so we usually just flip channels and listen to commercials.

It’s STANDARDIZED TESTING MONTH (don’t get me started on FCAT), so everybody is driving their kids to school to make sure they show up (because the school makes money off those tests, and if you do anything to feck up their profits, they will do everything in their power to ruin your life—but I come dangerously close to getting started…), and as a result, traffic is backed up, and the trip takes more like 15 minutes. Angelic daughter finds Fall Out Boy on the radio. We are awed and amazed. After that, Sara Bareilles. Double awe and amazement. Not only music, but music we like.

Angelic Daughter, having inherited her mother’s cynicism, says, “Don’t get too excited. They’ll play Rihanna next to screw it up.”

And they did.

(WTF, incidentally, is with the ressurection of that “momasay, momasah, momatmusa” crap? That’s a thousand times more annoying than um-bah-rella, um-bah-rella, um-bah-RELLA. It was embarrassing in the 80s. Let it die. Please, for the love of humanity, let it die.)

So, to cleanse my Rihanna-tainted spirit, I came home and bought books: Happy Hour of the Damned, Magic Burns, and Devil May Cry (could wait for the paperback without spoilers there because I told anyone who would listen the very first time Kat showed up, she was going to have some relationship to Ash that would make dating her icky—I was off in that I would have hooked her up with Nicky Nick, though). Courtesy of a giftcard, the lot cost me two bucks.

Lots of good stuff coming up later I dropped into my wish list, such as back-to-back Kresley Cole releases and CodeSpell by Kelly McCullough (Webmage, Cybermancy). May is so very far away…

My ambition to diminish the TBR pile, as you can see, is a dismal failure, but ambition and I have never exactly meshed well, so I am neither surprised nor dismayed by this development. In fact, books make me happy, so deprivation is kind of self-defeating. I should be buying more.

Oh, and I should probably read one at some point…

TO: Veorge Gostanza, President, Candelay Publishing
FROM: Ivanna Stifle
SUBJECT: Fewer Books, Better Quality!

Dear Mr. Gostanza,

You obviously publish every book submitted to your company, resulting in a market glutted with books I don’t like, which makes them garbage. Readers (I speak for all of them) would appreciate it if you would be more discriminating and publish only the books they want to read.

Best regards,
Ivanna Stifle

The crack pipe slipped from Veorge’s fingers, shattering on the keyboard. He was too entranced by the ant-like letters rearranging themselves on the computer monitor to notice the mess. “That is the most brilliant idea my drug-addled mind has ever struggled to process. Don’t publish what readers don’t want to read! Thank god for consumer email!”

TO: Ivanna Stifle
FROM: Veorge Gostanza, President, Candelay Publishing
SUBJECT: Re: Fewer Books, Better Quality!

Dear Ms. Stifle,

Thank you for your thoughtful email. After careful considera

Veorge paused to wipe the blood from his fingertips, puzzled by the shards of glass sprinkled over his keyboard. His devotion to the customer was such that he forged ahead in spite of his personal peril.

tion, I agree that Candelay’s catalog needs to be cut drastically. Our mission at Candelay has always been to satisfy our readers, and policies will be implemented immediately to ensure we do so more effectively.

Very truly yours,
Veorge Gostanza, President
Candelay Publishing

Veorge, mind electrified with a combination of Mountain Dew and methamphetamines, spent the remainder of the night studying the sales numbers from the preceeding twelve months. Angsty vampire novels with guys wearing nothing but leather pants and baby oil on their eight-packs on the covers and heroines who used the word “fuck” sold an average of 80,000 copies each, while epic Victorian novels sans supernatural / suspense / graphic sex / foul language and rich with costume / setting / social mores of the period sold a scant 15,000 each.

“The numbers don’t lie,” he told his acquisition editors in the conference room the following morning. “Don’t waste my dime on any more historical crap. Get me more emo bloodsuckers!”

ONE MONTH LATER

TO: Missy Mizz, Acquisition Editor, Candelay Publishing
FROM: Ivanna Stifle
SUBJECT: Query: Departed with the Zephyr

Dear Ms. Mizz,

Now that Candelay has renewed its commitment to publishing only the highest-quality fiction, I know you will be interested in my epic Victorian romance about a blacksmith and the scullery maid who loves him but dies of syphilis in an uplifting ending that will make your heart burn for years to come.

Best regards,
Ivanna Stifle

TO: Ivanna Stifle
FROM: Missy Mizz, Acquisition Editor, Candelay Publishing
SUBJECT: Re: Query: Departed with the Zephyr

Dear Ms. Stifle: 

Please take a moment to review Candelay’s updated submission guidelines as detailed on our web site. In response to consumer complaint, Candelay is henceforth publishing only books that are in keeping with those that have proven to be our strongest sellers.

Unless your syphilitic heroine rises from the grave, your story does not meet our needs at this time.

Best regards,
Missy Mizz, Acquisitions Editor
Candelay Publishing

“But… but… that’s not what I wanted at all!” Ivanna wailed. “It’s supposed to be those stupid other people with no taste who get screwed out of what they want, not meeeeee!”

Useless Personal Trivia Meme to Prove I’m Alive

1. I got my first gray hair when I was 10.

2. Angelic Daughter and I have the same birthday.

3. If Leslie Nielsen has been in a movie, I’ve seen it. Many times.

4. I own Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo AND Deuce Bigalow, European Gigolo on DVD NOT because they have Oded Fehr in them but because I am strangely attracted to Rob Schneider.

5a. The last time I made an entry in my “here’s what I wrote today” journal was February 19, 2007.

5b. Coincidentally, the first entry in my “here’s what I wrote today” journal was February 19, 1998.

5c. Nine years to the day of recording writing progress, and this little book isn’t half full, not because I haven’t written, but because when I’m writing, the last thing I’m thinking about is jotting my word count in a journal, and when I’m not writing, what am I going to put in a “here’s what I wrote today” journal?

6. Aside from that neglected little record, I have 15 other gorgeously bound journals—all of which are empty. I suck at keeping a journal and am well aware of this, but they are so seductive in the store…

7. I check my horoscope twice a year: at the beginning, to see when I’m going to relocate, find true love, get a better job, and achieve major aspirations, and at the end, to grumble about what a load of hooey astrology is.

Blog silence courtesy of Trish and Mr. Perfect, who have gone on an anniversary trip and left me with their two monstrous children, Perfect Junior and Barbarian Princess. I took the little brats on the condition they brought their Wii and Xbox, and I’ve been playing video games all week while the prepubescent slave labor does my spring cleaning.

(Actually, we’ve all been playing video games all week and the house is in a state that would make frat boys shudder.)

My Sweat-O-Meter is parked on the sidebar for the benefit of Big Brother. My original goal was to have 150,000 words on the combination of Gabe’s book (of which there is a pre-existing draft) and the IWS by the end of Round 3 of 70 Days of Sweat on May 16, but I recently started another 70,000-word project I think I’ll focus on instead. (Who’s fickle? I call it flexible. Not to mention a hell of a lot more realistic than 150,000 words…)

Even if you don’t participate in the challenge, check out the blog. They have great motivational stuff… as if Sven alone isn’t enough reason to take a peek.