I found myself at the bookstore again tonight after a noisy dinner at Chucky E. Cheese with my family and some friends, a car ride home in which Rachael vomited up two 8 oz. bottles of whole milk, and a trip to Babies ‘R’ Us to purchase a new car seat, because the old one was a piece of shit.
As I sipped my usual latte and strolled around the best seller tables in an attempt to blow off the evening’s steam, I began to take a serious look at the titles and subjects on display. I’ve been writing for over 13 years now doing mostly journalism. A little under a year ago, after many years of nagging by friends and family members, I decided to start writing a book. I’m nearly finished, but as I’m browsing through these hit titles, I began to wonder if my book has what it takes to make an appearance on the coveted tables near the front door of the Borders.
My book is about a young, female music journalist who begins her career at a top entertainment magazine. This is a plus, because I notice most of the fiction books in the bookstore’s prime real estate area are about women. Unfortunately for me, my character is only a bit naïve, but very confident and goal-oriented. Most of the bitches that appear in the front table books are either middle-aged and desperate, or they are big-time whores with confidence in a snazzy business suit. I’ve met many women in my days, but I’ve either missed the boat entirely, run with the wrong crowd, or wasn’t paying attention, because I’ve never come across any women like the ones featured in these books. All of the middle-aged women (whatever the hell middle-aged is) I know are confident and goal-oriented, but they are far from desperate. The gals that don the stylish business suits, in my world, are confident as well, but they aren’t really all that whorish.
My book features a man as the other main character, but again, I come into conflict with the men of these best sellers. The man I’m writing about is successful and kind of a control freak. He is handsome, talented, and somewhat difficult. Unfortunately for me, again, he is not a vampire, a wizard, a redneck, or a Republican who secretly hates women and wants the world to go back to the 1950s. My fictional guy is a musician, and has deep feelings, but doesn’t get all emotional and sappy. He doesn’t have a mysterious past, and he wasn’t a Viking in a former life.
No one in my book ends up dead or murdering anyone else, and although it does have some killer sex scenes, nobody gets tied up or asphyxiated. I don’t talk about ending a war, starting a war, or look back on a civil, Vietnam, or Iraqi war. My book doesn’t cover miracle health cures, or tell people how to lose weight, but if you read it while drinking a full glass of water per chapter, it will cleanse your system.
I left the bookstore a bit discouraged, because my book doesn’t seem to fit in with these other titles. Maybe for my next book, I’ll write a story about a former aging model who happens to be heiress to a fashion industry fortune. She’s a ball-breaker at the office, but she secretly wants to be dominated and loved by a hunky, sensitive, Nordic vampire. They end up in bed together quite often, but her childhood baggage always gets in the way and can only be subdued by a trip to the overpriced shoe store with her vacuous friends who are also former models and heiresses to family fortunes. She and the Nordic vampire split up and after she fucks half of Manhattan or Beverly Hills, decides that no one revs her engine like her blood-sucking, blue-eyed stud, and they get back together. They buy a large mansion in a neighborhood with other large mansions, because she finds out that while conjuring up a spell, he accidentally invented mace and has more money than she does, so if her fortunes ever run out, he can take care of her. In the epilogue they have a gorgeous baby and within two days, she fits back into her stylish new clothes. They dump the kid off with a loving British nanny and sail away on their yacht into the sunset.
I would have to come up with a title that would be catchy enough to wear on a keychain, yet sophisticated enough so that the book wouldn’t seem like a cheesy romance novel. Of course, the word of the hour is now “desperate” so that would have to make its way into the moniker somehow. Maybe I could call the book; Lives and Loves of a Desperate Debutante, or Blood and Desperation, or how about Tales of Magic and Desperate Love.
It would be so easy to take the low, very low, road, but I’ll finish writing my book. It doesn’t have spoiled heiresses with fake problems, or wimpy, hard-bodied men. No one in my book is magic or sucks blood, but it does have a good story about a girl who gets a shot at making her dream a reality, and that’s good enough magic for me.
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