So I’m off to New York tomorrow to do some research for the novel I just completed and to meet my agent, Michelle Brower of Wendy Sherman Associates, and my editor, Laura Swerdloff of Broadway Books.
To be honest, I still find this whole “getting my book published” a bit surreal. Imagine something you’ve been working toward for most of your adult life, 18 years of it, anyway, and then suddenly, you’re flying to New York to meet your agent and editor.
Suddenly is obviously a relative term. After all, human beings didn’t suddenly appear on the planet (unless, of course, you live in Kansas) and corpses don’t suddenly decompose. But when you’ve been writing for 18 years and you’ve spent 15 months looking for an agent and you’ve got 82 responses saying “Thanks but no thanks” and then the 83rd tells you she loves your book in November and two months later you’re offered a contract by an imprint of Random House, then suddenly becomes appropriate.
Before I know it, my novel is suddenly going to be in bookstores. Bizarre.
So every year at the World Horror Convention, the assembled writers gather together to spew their most vile creations.
It’s called the Gross Out Contest.
You get five minutes of reading time. If after three minutes you’re not disgusting or entertaining enough, you get the thumbs down from the audience and get dragged off stage by the bouncers.
Not as bad as getting picked last for kickball, but still…
Prizes are awarded for the top four entries. Meat shower curtains. Gummy haggis. Top quality stuff. I earned the coveted gummy haggis for my third place finish.
My entry was about a zombie gigolo having sex with three different female zombies in various stages of decay. While it’s based on some of the concepts in my novel BREATHERS, the entry is a little more hardcore and the necrophilia isn’t quite as tasteful.
You can view my reading at the following site, but it does contain explicit language and zombie sex, so don’t blame me if you find it offensive. Or if you find it funny:
http://www.atomictomato.com/sgbrowne/
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to finish before my five minutes were up. But just in case you’re curious, the last line is:
“If you’ve never had maggots crawling around inside your rectal cavity and feasting on your subcutaneous fat, then you probably wouldn’t understand.”
Okay, so I could fill this space with a weekly or bi-weekly account of my personal life. Or I could fill it with amusing anecdotes about writing. Or I could rant about how technology causes everyone to disconnect from themselves or how reality television destroys more brain cells than crystal methamphetamine or why it’s okay that alcohol and nicotine are acceptable addictive substances while marijuana is a gateway drug.
But I won’t.
Instead, I’m going to try to focus on mindless entertainment. Well, hopefully not completely mindless, but as with my fiction, my intention is to amuse myself and those who read it. If not, I’m going to have a real short career.
So in this blog, I hope to entertain. To amuse. To inspire the occasional laugh. Maybe even cause an orgasm or two. Preferably in someone else. But sometimes, you just have to settle for self-gratification.
Um, Mom, if you’re reading this, I’m still a virgin.
You fly home from the World Horror Convention on a toy plane.
The plane is seventeen rows front to back and three seats across, one on the left and two on the right facing the cockpit. It’s like a subway car with wings, except without the graffiti and not as many stops.
At least that’s what you hope.
Walking down the aisle, you feel like you’re in a one-quarter scale model of a real plane. Either that or you’ve stumbled into Lilliput.
The luggage compartments are only on one side of the plane and in order to get your single carry on suitcase to fit, you need a jar of Vaseline and a therapist.
Your seat is 11C, window seat in the Emergency Exit row. The escape hatch looks big enough to accommodate someone the size of an Oompa Loompa.
The guy sitting across the aisle in 11A is the size of Martha Stewart’s ego. You don’t know how he even managed to fit on board but if the plane crashes, there’s no way he’s getting through the emergency exit door. So you hope you get out first.
