This is the nonfiction story of one man's quest to publish a fiction novel:

I remember when Christmas meant presents. As a child, I'd wake up in the middle of the night waiting for the first slash of sunlight to bleed through my blinds. Then I'd be out of bed and down the stairs to observe the change that miraculously took place while I slept.

Limp socks hung on our fireplace the night before were suddenly stockings so stuffed with goodies they sagged with the weight. Dinner plates filled with cookies and carrots were now empty ceramics with a few spatterings of brown crumbs and green stems. What was simply an evergreen tree plopped indoors when I closed my eyes was now the center of a forest of boxes and bags and packages twinkling and crinkling and begging to be unwrapped.

I'd open my presents. My parents would open theirs. And all was right with the world.

Two decades later, Christmas is more about family to me than presents. A magical change still takes place, but it's not over one night for a little boy; it's over an entire year for a grown man. After joining my family with my wife's, I see that the true gift is the chance to spend time with loved ones, the chance to share in the joys and changes of the previous year and the hopes and expectations for the next one.

Christmas day now consists of bouncing from one house to another to another, seeing this side of family and that side, catching up with this relative from out of town and that one who you just don't see as often as you should. The magic is in the warm smile of greeting, the lingering hug after too long apart, the familiar song of "Merry Christmas. It's so great to see you!"

The presents are still there, only, like the stockings and plates and tree, they have been transformed. No longer the latest G.I. Power Ranger action figure with kung fu grip, the thing worth waking up for is the love that radiates off those around you, those who make you who you are.

That is what Christmas day is to me now. And this year will be extra special, because many of the relatives will be seeing my wife's baby bump for the first time. I suspect more hands will rub my wife's belly than Christmas ham will enter it.

And then, in just three short eternal months, a new relative will join the family, and the meaning of the holiday will start all over again, as my son or daughter wakes up at dawn to rush down the stairs and wonder at the stockings, the presents, the joys of being a little kid on Christmas. A little kid who will realize soon enough (but hopefully not too soon) that the true gift is not the packages under the tree, but the people who love him or her enough to put them there.

Merry Christmas to my true gifts.

As I approach the two-year anniversary of when my wife foolishly said, “I do” (figuratively, since who actually says that at a wedding?), I’ve been thinking about what we should do to celebrate, beyond dinner at our favorite restaurant (Melting Pot) and presenting her with her shiny new Nokia camera, nothing sounds more appealing than spending time frolicking with our new puppy.

 

That’s right, our all black three and a half month old Portuguese Water Dog (yes, that is the dog Obama has; no, that is not why we got him).  I don’t want to lock myself in a room and write, I don’t want to research agents and publishing houses to pitch, I want to go to a park or a lake or even just the backyard with the woman and the doggie I love. Comparing that sentiment to my honeymoon, when I typed away on a novel while the cruise ship rocked us back and forth, I’ve realized this blog, which started on January 9, all the way back in 2006, has become more of a chronicle of my maturity to adulthood than my attempts to get published.  And perhaps nothing is more evident of that than the massive gaps between posts, stagnant because I’m spending time working my full-time job, or working my recent new part-time job, or working on my house, or working to train the puppy, or the best of all, spending time with my lovely wife.  Our friends are having a baby in a few months.  Our pool is about to be opened and our new grill is begging to start charring.  I’m about to sit on a panel talking to college graduates about working life. When I started this blog, I was a kid.  Now, I’m…an adult. 

 

But that doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned my dreams of becoming a published author.  I’m still waiting for my wife and friend and screenwriter I admire greatly to review my most recent three novels, and while waiting I’ve written a few short stories to send to contests (something I promised myself and this audience I’d do months ago).  But I also recognize that in my absence from this blog, while doing all that growing up, our economy has changed drastically, and with it, so has the publishing industry.

 

One of my first posts was about the insanity of ever expecting to publish a book (especially a fiction novel) outside of self-publishing.  Multiply that message to the umpth degree now, where even the superstar writers of the world are seeing shrinking advances. 

 

But there is still hope.  There is still advice I can offer.  And I present it in the following five tips on how to publish a book in a wretched economy:

1. Make yourself a brand – you may not be a Stephen King or Jody Piccoutt yet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t market like you are.  Create a blog (better than this one), submit articles to online publications, contact local radio stations to see if they’d be interested in the story of who you are and what you’re trying to do (or if you’re a non-fiction writer offer yourself as a guest to discuss your specialization), become the next MySpace phenomenon (but first find the next MySpace, since that site, as well as Facebook and Twitter, are so last month) 
2. Create a package – Just your book isn’t enough anymore; develop the book, as well as online videos, photos or drawings to accompany the text, corresponding articles for outside publications, potential sequels, a graphic novel companion piece, action figures, etc.; whatever is appropriate for your work.  And make it clear that you are willing and able to take on much of the marketing; working on a website, traveling like crazy to multiple book readings and signings, hitting up conferences, phoning into radio show after radio show after radio show (and just so you know: you may have to be the one pitching the radio shows and organization the book signings as well).
3. Polish your writing – Your novel is perfect, right?  No, it could always be better.  Since publishers are barely accepting new work right now, take this time to send your work to friends for their review. Join book clubs.  Edit again and again and again.  Make sure it is beyond perfect, which doesn’t actually exist, like someone giving 110 percent.  See, I’m rambling.  This should be edited.  Don’t ramble.  Edit.  A lot. 
4. Be patient – The economy will rebound, and people will find renewed love for writing, and with J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer motivating new groups of people to read, and with Dan Brown about to excite pro- and anti-religious groups all over again, the market is ripe for growth.  Do what my dog can’t do yet and “stay, stay, good boy.”  You’ll get that treat eventually.
5. Keep writing – The most obvious, corny, important advice I can give; keep writing.  Keep honing your craft.  Keep thinking about that new idea, the one that is so different from everything else out there, the one that the publishers can’t help but pay attention to.  It’s in you, and now, with no pressure weighing you down, is the perfect time to pull it out.

 

I tell you what, let’s make a deal.  If you keep writing, I will.  Okay?  Good.  Let’s get to it. 

 

 

When I first started writing this blog, I pointed out the cold sad fact that the most amount of people write the least read type of books: fiction.

 

Well, according to a recent article in The New York Times, even less people are reading fiction these days, or at least buying fiction, and that the major publishing houses are relying more and more on the big blockbuster authors, instead of taking risks on first-timers like myself.

 

So the impossible odds have gotten even more…impossibler.  How lovely.

 

But, I’m not allowed to be disheartened.  You know why?

 

Because my birthday was yesterday, and one of the gifts my wife got me was a subscription to The Writer magazine, with the tagline "advice and inspiration for today's writer," and articles like “Five Ways to Make Your Query Stand Out" and "A Step-by-Step Approach to Creating Emotionally Rich Characters."

 

She said it’s to keep me inspired, to push me to keep writing.

 

So, I guess I better get started…

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I, as a writer, am bi-polar.  I add that caveat “as a writer” because in everyday life I’m not prone to great mood swings, I don’t take any medication; I am not clinically anything.

 

But as a writer – wait, let me expand on that – as a fiction writer, as opposed to my day job as a corporate shill, I am bi-polar.  When I’m engrossed in crafting a new story, it’s a passionate obsession.  I invent new dialogue while in the shower, I concoct plot twists while commuting, I spend all my free time ignoring my patient wife and scraping my nose against the screen of my laptop.

 

It’s exciting.  As I’m writing a new book, I think my mind is giving birth to the next Pulitzer-Prize winning masterpiece.  I think every burst of emotion is breathtaking, every revealing bit of character genius. 

 

But once I’ve finish the book, my psyche gets whiplash from the sudden shift in mood.  I’m happy, I’m inspired: BOOM, I recognize that my only accomplishment is wasting hundreds of pages on another unpolished junkfest.  I become overcome with a great sense of hopelessness, and perhaps worst of all, I lose the motivation to write.

 

I find myself thinking I’ll give up fiction writing.  I usually say that I write for fun, that it’s my hobby, but when I reach this stage of my bi-polar cycle, I can’t find any fun in it.  I view the concept of trying to build interesting characters with unique viewpoints too daunting to ever want to attempt again.  Character arcs, propulsive plots, internal conflicts; these are literary mountain peaks that I don’t have the intellectual tools necessary to climb.  I just can’t do it.

 

I have ideas for other books, but I don’t have motivation to think them through, or to actually sit down and start writing one of them.  I just can’t do it.

 

But then another mood swing will come, another pendulum shift that will send my mind soaring into the clouds of fictional invention, and I’ll be off writing again, ignoring my wife, rushing out of the shower with a wet towel wrapped around me to quickly jot down a new thought that changes the whole dynamic of my intended ending.  And it will be exciting.  And it will be fun.

 

The finished work will be junk, sure, but at least it will be fun, at least I’ll have my hobby back. 

 

When that pendulum swings. 

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Do you sense any of a George Bush "Mission Accomplished" attitude here?

I feel like every post I step up to the podium and talk tough about how "this is the time" and "now it's gonna happen," but in actuality I focus on my job and then lay around with my wife, watching television.  That Writer's Market she gave me sits uncracked, because none of my novels are passed draft one.  I haven't even taken the time to go back and try to "perfect" them -- I just keep writing new ones, and as I do that, my old ones become less and less relevant.  And none of them become worthy of sending to agents.

And then I randomly pop on this blog, spout off what would be cheesy clichés in a sports movie, and the whole process repeats.

I've been becoming more of a slacker.  I've written, what, four books since beginning this blog, in addition to getting married, getting promoted, getting promoted again, and buying a new house. I used to have Herculean Nicholas Sparks energy. I'd feel like I was wasting precious time if I just sat around doing nothing, so while my wife lounged I'd break out the laptop and start writing.

But she's ruined me, I tells ya, ruined me.  Now, I want nothing more than to spend an entire Sunday sprawled out with her, doing absolutely nothing.  Never would I have enjoyed that.  To the contrary, I would have gone totally mad raving crazy eyed bonkers.

But now I look forward to it. And my writing career has suffered.

But as I prepare to hop on a train to travel into Hoboken, NJ, to a building overlooking the water, with the New York skyline beyond, I'm thinking to myself, is that really so bad?  I had a good run, and I'm sure I'll get back into it eventually -- there's still all those ideas kicking around, and all my old works that need to be upgraded -- but for now, can't I just enjoy spending time with my wife, doing absolutely nothing?

For now… 

I'm going to spend hours tomorrow signing autographs...




Okay, not quite autographs -- just my signature.

And it won't be book jackets or autograph books or hefty chests -- it'll be documents.

Lots and lots of documents.

Tomorrow we make settlement on our house.

But hey, at least it'll be good practice for when I never do book signings.

I finally heard back from that guy with the literary magazine (see Chapter 59) and he is still going to publish the piece about me. So, since that's pretty good news for me, I figured I'd focus today's post on the woes of a different author.  I'm an equal opportunity pessimist.  I say why focus on the good when you can harp eternally on the bad?

Let's dive right in: has everyone heard of poor Sherry Jones and her (as yet unpublished) book The Jewel of Medina?

The novel is about the young (as in statutory rape young) bride of the prophet Muhammad, who some may remember from such controversies as the Danish cartoons, which depicted Muslim masses as mindlessly violence-prone, which led Muslim masses to act mindlessly violence-prone. You may also remember him as the founder of one of the largest (and of late, most misunderstood) religions in the world.

Well, the book's [former] publisher, Random House, sent the book to an assistant history professor in Texas, asking for a blurb for the book's jacket, and the professor requested her name not be associated in any way with the work.  This because she found its history and research to be sorely lacking.  As she said in an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, "[Jones] distorted the past to sell a book, and I didn't want to be part of this distortion of Islamic sacred history."

Seems reasonable, right?  She is one person, and she doesn't want to be associated with the book, so she's not going to offer a blurb. What's wrong with that?

Well, Random House then sent the book to other historians and received much of the same response.  And has since canceled publication, citing, "publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community" and "could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment."

Now, I may think that second part is a bit racist, but I can't argue with their business decision.  Random House is looking out for its best interest.  Apparently others view things differently, however, as some people are claiming the violation of 1st Amendment rights.

Wow, I couldn't disagree more.  Whose rights have been violated?  Jones is still allowed to publish the work.  She can find another publisher (and is in fact actively seeking one) or she can self-publish it, or even turn it into an e-book and stick it up on the Web.  That may not get her as much money as she may have hoped to receive, but it will get her words read by others. Which means that it will uphold her right to free speech.

But nowhere in the 1st Amendment does it say that book publishers have to publish a book that they believe will be a poor business move.  Let's face it -- historians discredited the book.  I don't know how many historians saw it, or just what they said about it, but they've clearly had a negative reaction to it.  So, Random House doesn't think it has a hit on its hands.  And to the contrary, it could cause the type of controversy they don't want (as opposed to the kind Dan Brown got, which I'm sure they'd love).

Personally (since this is my blog and you've chosen to read my egotistical take on matters I know little about), I think the whole prophet portrayal thing is silly.  The whole controversy over the Danish cartoons (and a subsequent brilliant commentary by the television show South Park) stems from the idea that you can't depict an image of said prophet, even though, as far as I am aware, that is never mentioned in the Qur'an, and in fact wealthy Muslims used to show off their status with elaborate statues of the man.  Plus, there was the whole fact that the people who depicted the prophet in those cartoons weren't followers of the religion and wouldn't be held to that rule even if such a rule existed. 

But this is different. First, it's not about the prophet himself, and second, no one as of yet has protested.  Instead, Random House is protecting its best interest -- not this woman, but its own company and reputation -- and it has every right and responsibility to do that.  Radio host Don Imus was within his rights to mock some nappy-headed hoes, but that doesn't mean his radio station, when faced with nervous sponsors threatening to leave and take their advertising dollars with them, was obligated to keep the shedded snakeskin-faced cowboy employed. 

What I think is craziest about the whole thing is not that people think Random House should publish this book even if the company doesn't want to (where was this active crowd when I was getting rejected by agents?) but how fast the story has gotten blown out of proportion.  The historian who first rejected the blurb request is now receiving, as she puts it, about three angry e-mail messages per hour of people suggesting she is aiding terrorism and recommending that she be fired.  Seriously?  So should she have just blindly approved the book and lied in her glowing blurb regarding it?  Just because it has something to do with Islam?  Otherwise she's no better than a terrorist?  Isn't she technically on the side of justice, valiently soldering on in this War on Terror by ensuring that all Islamic-based writings, which are of course inherently in support of the evil-doers threatening our free-wheeling way of life, get squashed before they can serve as steroids for those Kamikaze bastards? 

But the craziness doesn't end there.  The book's author is now facing rumors that her story is nothing more than soft-core pornography.  Huh?  How in the bloody blazes did that happen?  OH, I see the problem now: Muslim sympathizers like the history professor are coming between America and its shared love of reading and not-quite-explicate sex.  Now I get it.   

But even better than her book's de-evolution from a work of historical fiction to a script for a late-night Cinemax movie is her reaction to these reactions: "Isn't the university supposed to support the dissemination and free exchange of ideas?"  Hey, don't start blaming the university now, which didn't cause any of this and would have no control over it anyway.  That's like blaming a glass for spilling liquid after you dropped it on the floor.  It's not there fault scholars are accusing your book of possessing historical inaccuracies, and it's not their fault that you called the professor "irresponsible" for not supporting your book that scholars are accusing of possessing historical innaccuracies. 

It's as that professor said, seemingly foreshadowing her own fate: "You can't fool with sacred history and not expect there will be consequences."

Ah, the cutthroat world of book publishing.  Remind me again why I want to work in it?   

I finally got a good agent!

Of course, that's a real estate agent, not a book agent, but it's good nonetheless, right?  

Well regardless, I've got a good real estate agent.  After all the suspense and plot twists, the house buying drama has a happy ending: the seller agreed to make the repairs we requested.

We make settlement August 19, and move in August 29.  Quite a lovely number: my birthday is January 29, my mom's is March 29, my dog's was November 29 (my dad being the outcast: November 30), I grew up on 29 Orchard Lane, my friend lived on 129 Knox Road, my hockey number was 29, I got engaged on May 29, and I got married on June 29.   

So yeah, we got the house.  Thanks to a great agent.

Now if only this story could have a real happy ending and I could get a literary agent.

But what's going on with that?  Why do I keep saying I've decided I'm going to write short stories and see if I can get them published and use that as leverage to nab an agent?  Why do I keep writing book after book after book without doing anything about it, even though a Writer's Market book is sitting on my shelf, given to me on a January 29?  

Well, because I have no idea if any of these books are any good.  The last three I've written have had a readership of one: me.  I need my English teacher wife to review them, to critique them, to help me fine-tune them.  I need to spruce them up before I can actually take them to an agent.

In other words, I'm doing what all failed novelists do: I'm blaming someone else!

But hey, at least we got the house.  

In the time since my last post, I wrote a children’s novel about a boy who doesn’t like who he is, but after spending a night as a vampire (it makes sense, honest), he realizes he doesn’t have it so bad.

There’s plenty of excitement in that novel, but the real drama is unfolding behind the scenes, in my search for a house.

After losing the last house, Kristina and I hiked our shoes up over the saddle of that real estate horse and kept on riding through neighborhood after neighborhood.  And we actually found one we liked better.

So that night we sat in a small sunroom at the front of our realtor's house.  Black sky floated over the high windows.  Various sized dolls floated face up within the river of the blue carpet.  A cat shot back and forth from corner to corner, chasing a bug, its tail stuck straight up in the air, thus showing us the reason it had been nicknamed Butthole.

We sat in this room.  And we discussed an offer.  

The house had been lowered $5,000 four days before we saw it.  Our realtor, that of the one who named her cat Butthole, suggested we lowball the seller an additional $10,000.

And for some reason, we took her advice.

The next day, I had to travel to the corporate offices for work.  I had to meet with all the executives, I had to focus on work, while our offer drifted out there.

Floating.  Like the dark sky.  Like the dolls on the carpet.  Like my sanity -- floating away.

My cell phone buzzed in my pocket.  The text message from my wife was brief: seller is in florida.  His realtor was made aware of the deadline.

Oh great, I thought.  He's on vacation.  He doesn't want to be bothered.  He's not going to accept the offer.

One hour went by.  Three.  My phone buzzed again, but I was in a meeting.  Kristina was calling, but I was in a meeting.

Sure, I'm concentrating on the work.  Yes, Mr. CEO, that makes perfect sense.  Did they accept our offer?!?!?!?

When the meeting ended I rushed out, breaking through the doorway like a scuba diver breaching the surface of the water.  I checked my voicemail.

They didn't accept the offer.  Of course they didn't, we lowballed them big time.

No, they didn't accept the offer.  They countered.  Just $2,000 higher.

Wait, what?  Seriously?

And just like that, we had a house.

Well, not so fast.  Contingent on the home inspection we had the house.

Ah, the home inspection.  That's where the real drama began.   

I'm a pessimistic person by nature.  I always assume the Eagles (my hometown football team) are going to lose, and that way, I never get my hopes up, and subsequently never get my hopes dashed.

And unfortunately, the Eagles pretty much always lose.

And I knew, I just knew that someone was getting an offer on the house in before us.  The realtor waited so long, and the price was so good.

But the house had been on the market for 52 days. What were the odds that someone would put in a bid the exact same day as us?

Pretty good, apparently.  Just like I always expect the Eagles to lose, and they always prove me right, I expected to not get this house, and unfortunately, I was right.

During all that chaos -- the multiple attempts to fax, the multiple attempts to e-mail, the meetings, the redos, the everything -- someone else put in an offer on the house, and that offer was accepted.

Oh sweet rejection.  It hurts when it's a book you're trying to publish, and it hurts when it's a house you're trying to buy.  And it doesn't hurt any less when you expect the negative thing to occur.

But not all hope is lost.  I've still got that article floating out there.  Will it be written, will it be published?

Who knows?  The wait continues…

What have I been doing since my last post?

Waiting.

A guy from a literary publication contacted me, saying he read an article about me in Rosebud (see chapter 20 for details) and wanted to report the article in his own magazine.

How cool is that?  After running around the apartment, arms flailing, blood pumping, I sat at my computer to see what he needed. 

I filled out a bio like he asked me to, answered some questions like he asked me to, and then…

Waited.

It's been two weeks since I e-mailed him the answers and I haven't heard back.  Is my story going to be in the next publication?  Who knows.  All I can do is wait.

And last Saturday, the day before my first wedding anniversary, my wife and I went looking for houses.  We found one, we liked it, we went to see it again.

We decided to put an offer on it. 

So we print out all the documents and spend the evening signing them.  One after another after another.  Boom boom boom.

I get to work extra early so I can fax everything over to the realtor in time for her to get the offer in by 10.  I stick the papers into the machine, I type the number.

Nothing.

I try again.

Nothing.

I pitifully ask for help.

The fax machine is not my friend.

But fortunately we have another, so I try that sucker.  And wouldn't you know it, that one doesn't work either.  It's an epidemic.

But that's okay, because we can scan the documents and turn them into PDFs and e-mail them over.

If only the person who has access to the fancy printer would get in to work already.

Minutes tick by.  I keep trying to fax.  It keeps not working.  More minutes go by.

And hour goes by.

And finally she's here, and zip, we go straight to the machine.  It reads the documents hungrily.  We've got ourselves a PDF.

Oh wait, it's too large to e-mail.

We rescan.  Three smaller piles worth.  Three new files.

Oh, these'll go through the invisible e-mail wires, but veeeeeeeery slowly.  So I wait, and I wait, and I see the little "sending" icon on my computer, and I wait.

And I know that every minute that goes by an offer could be coming in from someone else.

But finally the realtor has all the documents!  But she has a meeting to go to.

"I'll send this right after lunch."

Uh, my stomach is killing me.  That other offer could be coming in right now.  The house could be disappearing from our grasp.

But "right after lunch" comes around, and I think the offer is in, and I know we aren't going to get an answer back right away (and if we did it'd probably be an answer we didn't want) but I'm still anxious anyway.

Waiting.

And then the phone rings at 5:00. Boy howdy am I nervous.

But for no reason, because there's no answer yet, because she hasn't even put in the offer yet.  There's a line on one of the forms that got cut off, so I have to rewrite my initials and send it through again.

So I do that.  But no, we BOTH need to initial.  So I forge Kristina's three letters and send it through again.

Okay, that's it, she's good to go.  The offer is in.

And now?

We wait.

And I know in that time another offer has come in.  I just know it.  How could it not have?

But even so…

…we wait. 

I could have an article printed about me in a literary magazine, and I could be the proud owner of a lovely new home in Levittown, Pennsylvania.

I could.  After the wait.   

To reverse my point from last week, is more in-depth description always better?  To fill you in, we worked on a little writing exercise where you had to describe a hot day without using the word hot.  The idea is that it creates more of an atmosphere for the reader.

But is that always a good thing?  For instance, is it more useful for the reader if we write, “he stared in bewilderment” or even simply “he stared bewildered,” then it is to write, “his eyes blinked again and again and again, his jaw hanging down, cocked slightly to the left?”  Does the third one complicate matters more than they need to be?  Does it make something longer than is necessary?  

Sometimes is it better to write “she was shocked” than it is to write “she reeled back in her chair, palms stuck to the sides of her face, eyes as wide and shiny as a quarter?”

Those aren’t the best of examples, but you get my point.  It is better to straight out tell the reader, or is it always preferable to show them? What do you think?  

My dearest darlingest wife is a reading specialist in a high school, and she told me about an interesting exercise I thought I’d share with all of you.

What words can you think of to describe a hot day?

Sweaty
Sultry
Sauna
Simmering
Searing
Humid
Heat
Burn
Blaze
Fire

What other ones can you think of?  Plenty, right?

Now, can you describe a hot day without using any of those words?

Perhaps you’ll describe a group of kids playing in the street as a fire hydrant sprays them with water.  Or a dog lying outside, panting tongue dragging across the high grass.  What about a boy leaning in to lick an ice cream cone and finding that his treat has melted almost instantly?

Would you create the idea of an image shimmering over black concrete, or have the very blackness of that tar seeming to bubble off and evaporate?  

What would you do?  You would paint a picture, you would invent a scene, you would create that all important tone: atmosphere.     

You could write, “the day was hot.”  Or you could create a whole world for your reader.

Why don’t you do that now?  In as many words as you want, craft a scene of a hot day, without using any synonyms for the word hot.  Post it as a comment. Leave your name if you’d like.  And your age.  And anything else you want to tell us about yourself.  Create your ideal hot world, and let’s see how inventive you can be.  

I can’t wait to discover what you can do.  I bet it’ll be hot.  

A group of people were talking at work the other day about real estate.  It went something like this:

Consultant: Yeah, we have a condo in Manhattan, it's one bedroom, 400 square feet, and it's worth $500,000.

VP: But it's not like that everywhere in the country.  My dad's place in Atlanta has a river running through the house, and the property is acres upon acres, and they have horse stables and who knows what else, and it just cost them $1 million.

Me: $1 million.  Wow.  Was that before or after Water for Elephants?

VP: Oh, after.  Very much after.  

The VP of my office is Clara Pitts, formally Clara Gruen, step-daughter of Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants.

Water for Elephants is Sara's third published work, but the first to get any real attention.  And boy did it get attention.  It's still high on the bestseller list and was just voted Stephen King's sixth favorite book of the year.  Almost immediately after publishing, big name movie stars and big time movie companies were interested in optioning the story.  The New York Times asked Sara to write a column in their prestigious newspaper.  And then, she got a massive - I don't want to divulge the details - but massive deal where she'd get paid an extremely large sum of money for her next three books.

And BOOM, just like that, she's a famous author.  From near obscurity to super-stardom, with her picture even appearing in the pop culture bible Entertainment Weekly.

A similar course was just charted by another female writer, this a stripper turned screenwriter with the stage name Diablo Cody. She wrote the movie Juno, which is a critic's darling and well, that's really it.  It's a comedy about a pregnant girl, and a similar themed movie - Knocked Up - earned more money in its first day of release than Juno has earned in three weeks.  But does that matter?  Apparently not.  Because she's the newest columnist for the aforementioned Entertainment Weekly, and she just got millions of dollars for the rights to her next script.  Why did I italicize the word rights?  Because she doesn't have a next script.  Just like with Sara Guren, it's money based on good faith.  "Whenever you write something, we want it, and we're willing to pay you in advance for it."

Now that's a lot of pressure.  The damn thing better deliver.  But that's the life of a successful author.  And it can happen that fast.

From animal lover or stripper to superstar writer. From middle-class to millionaire.  It can happen that fast.  

I want a house with a river through it.  I want to write for Entertainment Weekly.  I guess I better hurry up and write my play about food for pregnant hippopotamuses.

But on a separate note, can we give props to the female writers our there?  None of this 80 cents on the dollar compared to men with the same job nonsense for them!  You go girl!  Huh, what's that?  I'm a guy, so I can't say 'you go girl'?"  Well that's just sexist and hurtful.   

*Addition* - Since this entry, Juno has gone on to gross $51.7 million and counting.  Maybe this blog is a nice form of advertising.  Huh?  Huh?  No?  Fine.