David Thayer

For many in the publishing business their worst fears were realized when a slush pile developed artificial intelligence, took human form, and escaped the minimum security mailroom beneath the Time-Warner building in New York. “I sent it to Starbucks” said one executive. “It…spoke to me.”

The danger now is that the slushpile has the current street addresses of many publishers as well as keys to several mailrooms. “It may be wearing the uniform of a service provider,” said Holzbrinck chief of security Lord Archer. “We’ve notified the New York police.”

Here is a current description of the slush pile: it has taken on the identity of an unpublished writer named Herbert Gore Sassoon whose last known address is Pomegranate Shores Florida. Mr. Sassoon submitted his novel in 1969 and is considered the oldest living resident of the SP. When reached for comment Mr. Sassoon admitted “it doesn’t look good and if it doesn’t look good, we don’t look good.” Police speculate that the slush pile is five feet nine with thinning white hair, loafers without socks enjoys That Seventies Show and is not afraid to cry. It may believe that Richard M. Nixon is president of the United States and police officials are concerned for the safety of the SP. “There’s a ton of postage in there somewhere,” Inspector George Mason warned.

Once the slush pile is apprehended, someone is going to have to read the submissions warned Time Warner Chairman Dick Parsons adding, “it ain’t me, babe.” Curiously the slush pile enjoys Sonny & Cher. A spokesman for Hachette Livre in France cautioned that if the slush pile makes its way to Paris, tours of the Louvre will be suspended. Geraldo French Riviera reporting.

Ah, the Baby Boomers. Aging gracefully but aging nonetheless. Our own Boomer expert Matthew Bonebreaker reports from the trading floor of the Piltdown Exchange. “I’m holding a ball joint for an artificial hip…the latest technology in hip replacement for the Boomer generation. The joint…can I say joint? I can, okay, the joint is the size of a baseball made of space age materials similar to the Jetsons dinette set. It enables the patient if not the impatient to lead an active life after hip replacement surgery. New breakthroughs in knees and shoulders ankles and wrists complement the hip although to date not much thought has been given to color coordinating the replacement parts although bar codes will be attached to facilitate mind control…”

Thanks Michael, and don’t Bogart that hip, my friend. Professor Moriarity, who lives near Stanford, thinks this trend has large implications for the publishing industry. “Boomers will experience long periods of forced inactivity as they recover from these procedures. After exhausting other options such as Gilligan’s Island they will turn to books…”

Spoiler Alert: Gilligan’s Island never ends; it recycles through the same episodes in a perpetual loop. Since they’re stranded on an island with the skyline of LA visible through the haze it does beg the question why don’t they just leave? It’s heavy, man. The lost episode features Jean-Paul Sartre as a dinghy operator.

Editor’s Note:  Nothing is more difficult for readers than adapting to change. That’s why the staff at the D&L voted against the Cultural Contrarian Column seven weeks running; no one cares about culture so why would they care about a contrarian view? To make room for CCC Eddie’s Wall Street Journal Watch is being dropped since Eddie can’t afford a subscription and we’re not made of money here. I did not sell Eddie’s bicycle on E-Bay. If the Earl signs with the Yankees I will impose the no moonlighting rule and he will no longer be welcome in the cafeteria where he raids the refrigerator leaving behind empty white boxes that imply he went to a fancy restaurant when we all know he cornered the market on white boxes before the bottom dropped out. Eddie saw that one coming.

“Given a pair of quality sunglasses and sufficient muscle mass any creature can walk upright.” Detective Armand DiPino.

The Working Dead  is being rewritten from page one. I know that sounds crazy, but it works. I did that with Ways to Die in the Congo. You have to brace yourself for the changes; same story, different presentation. This one is written from DiPino’s point of view in close third person. Since there are only a few pov changes throughout it seems like a candidate for first person, but I can’t get comfortable in first person. I’ll post an excerpt under Working Fiction sometime this week.

In the review stack are debuts from Cornelia Read and Bob Dugoni. Bob got a nice review for The Jury Master in today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer. By the way Cornelia Read will be touring with Lee Child this spring; if the earl isn’t wearing pinstripes he’ll be there on the trail with the kind of vivid reportage you’ve come to expect.

Note: Druidical & Literary Sports Editor Mandi Rice-Davies has reserved parking after only three days on the job. None of us believe she’s descended from royalty but she does carry a copy of Hamlet in a doeskin purse; how can she afford an Aston-Martin DB4? She knows nothing about baseball and she spolied Roger Ramjet’s twentieth anniversary lunch by refusing the vindaloo; now she’s runnng the sports desk. Is it any wonder the staff is bitter? Signed but not read Heather DeMedici.

The Earl’s contract with the Yankees baseball club may be in trouble. According to sources inside the Florida Governor’s Mansion, the earl is demanding the team provide a golf cart for trips between the bullpen and the pitcher’s mound. “Everyone in Florida has a golf cart,” noted senatorial candidate Katherine Harris. “It goes with the territory.” Ms. Harris was decked by a cut fastball thrown by the earl late last week. “Chin music,” said a Yankee official. “She was crowding the plate.” While a certain amount of wildness is expected this time of year the political overtones and commercial undertones create a sensitive situation for commissioner Selig and other Woody Allen characters close to the situation. “His cutter…hit the radar gun at thirty miles per hour,” reported a scout for the Dodgers. “She had all week to get out of the way.” By an odd coincidence thrity miles per hour is the unofficial speed limit on most Florida highways. Mandi Rice-Davies reporting.

After a close encounter with those outstretched fingers in a book store recently it occured to me that authors need a new payscale. The inverse ratio between quality of prose and size of paycheck is based on the perspective that the audience craves inferior work. I didn’t get that; I had fallen into the trap of believing that you got paid for quality. Now that I’m turned around and facing front here are some suggestions to reform an entire industry.

Salary Cap: This won’t be popular among branded authors, but come on. You’re not even writing your own novels anymore. Call it the Dan Brown Rule: cap that income at two million a year.

Sign and Trade: Publishers can sign a branded author and then trade the rights for fifty unknowns. The gross sales from the unknown fifty will be divided by 24, the exact number of months in a two year period during which the unknown writers will have to make coffee for everyone else. If any of the fifty break out, the old deal will gave way to the New Deal.

Sticky Icky Maudlin Degenerate: this will appear on the cover of the book with a silver seal as a quality control designation. SIMD books will claim to devote a portion of their profits to charity although it isn’t clear how that might work. This goes double if the five people you met in rehab are all dead.

Popular voting for major literary awards: throw the National Book Awards open to the public. Informal polling in Wellington Leg reveals the likely winners: Carmen Elektra, James Frey and Macauley Caulkin. These people are accustomed to the spotlight and will provide hours of entertainment attracting a cable network deal and generating millions of dollars. Publishers will reinvest those millions in developing the careers of unknowns, ever mindful of the salary cap and the sign and trade potential imbedded in the deal. Show us the money, baby, the coffee pot is on.

Dateline: Uncle Bob’s Ribshack: The New York Yankees have named the Earl as their opening day starter. “He passed the other guys in the rotation,” Manager Joe Torre said. “The guy can flat bring it.”

The Earl was a non-roster invitee when spring training began. His six inning stint against Houston locked up a spot at the top of the Yankee staff. “He reminds me a lot of Vladimir Nabokov,” said one Astros scout. “With all those different arm angles it’s tough for lefties to pick up his release point.”

The Earl fanned the side in the B game against Atlanta by pitching the entire inning from second base. “He doesn’t even have an agent,” noted GM Brian Cashman. “We got him cheap.” Some expressed concern that the earl has never pitched above A level; he won twenty games for the Wellington Leg Gastropods in the Steinbeck League last summer. “That’s a coed league,” noted Cashman. “A Mrs. Frothingmunster went yard off the earl when we scouted him.”

Some of his teammates are reading Voltaire’s Miasma. Derek Jeter was quick to point that infield signs are now in French. “He’s a ground ball pitcher, so I have to be on my toes.” “I can’t touch the guy,” said Jason Giambi. “He was bringing gas.”

The earl was struck by a line drive in the bullpen where he was reading Denise Mina’s Garnethill trilogy. Fortunately he was wearing the full regalia of a Roman centurion and the ball glanced off his helmet. “Quad erat demonstratum,” noted bullpen coach Norm Mailer. “These guys have got to wear their headgear at all times.”

Wellington Leg the 25th Ultimo: The annual Literary Faire kicked off with the earl being shot from a cannon near The Forbidden City. Fans of books and Chinese takeout marveled as the earl soared across the town square; perhaps a surfeit of gunpowder was used as he briefly achieved geosynchronous orbit before touching down in Lake Trasimere. He was plucked from the chilly waters by a Russian trawler ostensibly fishing for abalone but laden with electronic gear. The crowd cheered as the earl paraded through towne on a float made entirely from discarded tuna cans.

In the jousting contest DCI Borchardt was unhorsed by the Dowager Princess. Judges ruled in the Princess’ favor despite the intercession of detectives from Detroit Michigan seeking her extradition to that community. The Princess disrupted the taping of an Oprah episode and conspired to rig the Super Bowl. Borchardt was summoned to the Tower to explain his dismal performance and his misuse of first person point of view. All in all this year’s faire promises to deliver more than the usual fluff pieces written by the Duchess and her cronies at the Wellington Leg Intelligencer.

Organizers promise the return of the popular Ian Rankin doppelganger contest. Last year’s winner, Mrs. Waltraut Frothingmunster, is a heavy favorite to repeat. D&L publisher Oliver Castinstone is filming the event for theatrical release. In lieu of Johnny Depp this year’s awards presenter will be our own Wilfredo Tagesblatt Director of Development. Mr. Tagesblatt’s reserved parking space will be the door prize.

Ext: Daytime: Baronial estate of ueberagent Lydia Careerbreaker. A rider approaches the gates; he’s wearing a Gallic helmet and feather armor; his purple cape identifies him as a tribune of the Imperial Messenger Service. Of course we know better: it’s the earl and he’s got SASE. He reins in well aware of the sign that reads no unsolicited queries. As the gates creak open the earl falls from the saddle, landing on his scabbard.

INT: Daytime: The gatekeeper approaches the massive oak desk of ueberagent Lydia Careerbreaker. She’s got Peter Olsen on line one, Scooter on line two, Richard and Judy on line three, and Lord Archer on her cell. “A man claiming to be a tribune of the imperial messenger service to see you ma’am.” Lydia aims her telephone like a gun. “Bring him to me.”

INT: Daytime: “Four million up front,” Lydia shouts into the phone. The earl is limping from the fall, and his helmet is too tight, but he knows he’s in the presence of greatness as foreign rights, licensing agreements and dramatic rights fall from her lips. He feels dizzy. Would his humble novel be popular in Latvia? Belarus? So many things to consider.

“I do not accept unsolicited queries,” she said. Was she speaking to him? The gatekeeper kicks the earl’s armored shin. He remembers rehearsing with the dowager princess. “The emperor sends his greetings and salutations to you Ms. Careerbreaker. He has always admired…”

“What is he the emperor of?”

“Rome.”

“Okay, so that’s a platform. Send me a proposal. Mark the envelope requested material. Tell him to use the postal service next time.”

With trembling hands the earl presents a buff colored envelope sealed with the wax eagle of the imperium. A double beat passes as she glances at it. Cue music.
“Okay my intern will log it in. Give me six weeks… ten weeks. Fifteen weeks…summer is coming. Now beat it.”

A Hubbub off stage: Enter the intern: “Lydia, an entire Roman legion is at the gates! They’re demanding you read the emperor’s work not in in the order received!”

Will Lydia read the emperor’s out of order query? Will the earl be able to remount his steed? Tune in next week for As the Worm Turns. Fade out.

After months of blogging without a license several new links appear on the blogroll with Sara Gran, Elizabeth Crane and Cornelia Read added to the author roster. Tribe, SoManyBooks, Metaxu Cafe, JA Konrath have joined the blogroll.  More updates will be forthcoming as soon as Depew returns from leaning on his rake.

The Purloined Pages entry by anonymous may be disqualified from the prose writing contest at the upcoming Literary Faire. Mrs. Prudentia Chalfont-Smythe chair of the contest’s Rules Committee issued this statement: “Each entry must address the theme of how the toaster or Smythe Oven has changed my life.” The anonymous entry refers to Pop Tarts but only in the most tangential of ways. “We’re certainly not interested in thinly veiled erotica or social satire.”

Indeed The Purloined Pages  is rumored to be an erotic memoir and the reference to Pop Tarts entirely incidental to the story. “As they leapt from my Smythe Oven the precocious tarts warmed the tips of my fingers…”. Food Critic Idelphonse Macaroni agrees with Chalfont-Smythe’s assessment of the work. “Decency demands that we rise as one to object to this entry with its fulsome and perplexing abuse of a revered household appliance.”

DCI Borchardt and his Flying Squad raided a house on the Trimblebaking Road this morning seizing an unkown quantity of Pop Tarts as well tart making paraphenalia. Coming on the heels of the naked Druids incident Borchardt was quick to trumpet this success: “It’s a thin line,” he said. “A slippery slope. Innocent use of a Smythe Oven is the right of every citizen, but when one ignores the rules of a writing contest with blatant references to things one would hope would remain unreferenced one must take action.”

Those arrested in the raid will be charged with heresy; after arraignment they will be available for public humiliation in the stocks on Lesser Eiderdown Place. Bring those overrirpe tomatoes says Mr. Macaroni. “They are perfect for stewing.”