Singing Those Publishing Blues

The time has come to rocket-launch my writing toward a much higher hemisphere.
For a year, I’ve anguished and wallowed in the misery that accompanies the writer with three published titles and nothing sizzlin’ on the burner. The writer who scored the fabulously hip New York agent. The writer who got nothing published any longer than a newspaper column this past year.
What happened to my career? It’s not as if I Lohan’d out and snorted coke and kissed women. Or even opened a den like Tiger’s, which is crawling with concubines.
I’ve been good girl, one who sat at the computer and didn’t hold a grudge. Well, not a very big one.
Sure, my novel, “Chimes From a Cracked Southern Belle” deserves better that what it got. Nada.
Oh, it was fabulous some editors said during our past economically- challenged year. But you know, it just was not fabulous enough. I needed mucho fabulousness to publish my quirky Southern novel. Actually, from the hints trickling down from New Yawk, I think it might be best just to leave the whole Southern thing out. I’m quite afraid some Southern writings (at least mine, anyway) have gone out of favor.
Desperation draped me in bolts of self doubt. I suck. I suck. I suck.
I suck and I’m Southern. OK, but wait. I can change part of that. It is high time I take my craft and craftiness to a new level.
I am no longer Southern. “You got that?” Ms. Hot Shot Agent who can’t sell my Southern novel. “You hear me?” I’m a new breed of ethnicity.
I’m calling it Afro/Asian/Vampire American. I’m changing the name of my new novel to “Chimes from a Cracked Jamaican Vampire.”
I hear the vampire lines are selling well, and I plan to create one made in part from T-Rex DNA, just to give it another selling point. Some people love anything Jurassic, ya know?
Meanwhile, this book has collected more rejections – albeit FABULOUS rejections, than Tiger at his latest cocktail joint. Then again. Some women. Just to do the wiggly-jiggly with somebody famous!
But then again. Some publishers. Surely with this next project, a new novel that DOES not mention Southern in the title, will titillate. Mercy, doesn’t that word sound nasty and crawling with STDs?
I’ve also risen to new heights to make sure this new novel gets the love. The love is what it’s all about. And as an Afro/Asian/Vampire American I’m all for the love and my fair share.
It just takes sooooo much work. Besides writing, rewriting, eating at the keyboard, writing, eating more, editing, cursing, eating again on the A row, I’ve got two other tricks to take it to the top. That next level.
You hear me? The top.
Here’s how you can have everyone thinking you’re the scorching Katherine Heigl instead of the less attractive Amy Adams, God love the little pixie.
Let’s call it the Hoo-Doo Voo-Doo of the writing industry. Here’s what you do. You become so superstitious you believe every star that blinks, every car without a headlight, and every chance to knock on wood is for you.
About those cars. Where I live, a goodly number of people have at least one headlight busted out.
Boom! Your chance for a big wish. Just yell, “Popeye!” and kiss the palm of your hand, place it to the roof of the car and make a wish.
Mine usually go something like this. “I wish for world peace and all the starving children to eat, and I wish those editors in New York will see my fabulousness levels have risen and buy my damned book with a nice advance, audio and film ops.”
I’ve even bought the perfect gown for the Oscars, dahlin’.
From the Goodwill
Popeye!
(P.S.) I was sober when I wrote this and plan to remain Southern. Vampires be damned.
Check out Susan’s work at http://www.susanreinhardt.com/