Should you wish to find me on Facebook, here I am:

http://www.facebook.com/jesselcairns

Add if you like.

Now to something awful, and I only wish I was describing the web site by the same name.  Earlier today I was having a converation via text with mermaidinparis  and she gave me a pep talk by telling me that I was sure to get published soon because, after all, if a version of Jane Austen's boring-as-fuck polemic Pride And Prejudice combined with zombies could be dropped into the local bookstores--

"Wait a second," I said aloud, before remembering she couldn't hear me.  "Wait a goddamn second," I then gagged for my own benefit.  "Okay, this has to be a joke.  After all, she loves zombies as much as I do and this is probably her way of... oh no, oh my God..."

It is not a joke: Pride And Prejudice And Zombies really, really fucking exists.  Reading the Wikipedia entry on the alleged plot of this book (and I had to make several attempts and two alcoholic drinks to successfully navigate the blocks of text that are now seared into my brain with carbolic acid) has now caused me to be aware of several things concerning this project that I desperately wish I could un-see... but as those cute lolcat kitten know all too well, what has been seen cannot be unsaw'd.

1)  Not only does the book contain zombies, it also has ninjas.

2)  It has reached as high as the number three slot on the New York Times bestseller list, further proof that looking to this publication as an indicator on what is good at stirring your literary cauldron is most likely a bad idea... or at the very least, lends a slimy air of legitimacy to this whole fuckfest that makes me want to take several boiling-hot baths, and...

3)  Film rights for the novel have been purchased.

4)  The book is essentially a printed version of the concept pioneered by Steve Oedekerk in Kung Pow: Enter The Fist, for all of you who remember how well that worked out for everybody involved.  I believe I lost the ability to do long division.  Roughly 85% of Austen's book is retained, with the project mastermind (you can break my fingers and I won't call him a writer) inserting his own bits to flesh out the story, as it were.  So not only is this awful, he didn't even spend the time banging out the whole book himself.

You know, I thought it was a horrible literary idea when Stephenie Meyer announced she would be doing another story set in the Twilight-verse where the whole story of the first book was retold except this time from the vamp's perspective, but right now that bout of self-plagiarism looks like the Nobel Prize for Literature.  This is the sort of crack-smoking dreck I expect from the really deranged members of National Novel Writing Month, and the fact that a whole bunch of critics have creamed in their collective jeans praising it makes me uneasily wonder if I have not in fact died and awakened in my own grotesque corner of Literary Hell.  I'm thinking of a quote from Event Horizon...

"Do you see?  Do you see?  DO YOU SEE?"

Yes.  Unfortunately, I see.

As stated last year and now stated again: I hate tax season.

Not for the reasons that most of you hate it, though.  See, I'm married to an accountant so that means while everybody else is freaking out, running a shaking hand through their hair and scrabbling madly through envelopes and boxes trying to locate their W-2, my lady has it handled.  Our roles are pretty well-defined in our relationship; I'm usually the designated driver, she is the financial mastermind.  Truth be told, I think I got the clean end of the stick there...

...but I'm not typing at (squints at desktop clock) 1:15 in the AM to talk about that.  The unavoidable truth of the matter is that I loathe tax season because is plays havoc with the schedule of our lives, and I can't wait until April 17th bids us a fond fairwell so that I don't have to deal with this shit again until next year.

See, although it's terribly unfashionable and may in fact be an early warning sign of being Communist to say something like this, I'm going to go ahead and admit that (gasp!) I actually enjoy being married to the person I said "I do" with on August 31st, 2003.  The only similarities between myself and Al Bundy is that we both drive Dodges, the hand in the groin play when nobody is a witness is all good in my playbook, and we both have NFL enthusiasm.  Strangely enough, I look upon getting married as one of the best decisions I ever made, which completely flies in the modern depiction of American life, where it's something to be endured until the sweet, sweet release of death that waits for all of us.

Those people are cordially invited to scuba-dive in a tank of burning napalm for wrinkling the noses of so many people, by the way.  Are you listening, you slack-jawed lowest common denominator jackasses who are responsible for producing new episodes of According To Jim as I struggle for publication?

The thing is, during tax season Lady Jade and I don't get to see each other very much.  For example, today we talked on our cell phones, and... I didn't see her at all.  Not unless you want to count the sight of a dark, huddled lump in the darkness of our bedroom as I hoved on in, grabbed my robe and prepared a bath in an attempt to get tired so I could get to sleep, having gone to work at 11:45 AM and gotten home at just past 10:30 PM.  On the non-tax season, it's not like this.  Lady Jade has a regular schedule and for the most part, so do I.

During tax season is a different story.  I do the dreaded Extra Board, where I am a completely at the mercy of the bus company and the dispatcher, and she works long-as-fuck hours.  We both soak up as much overtime as we can, and it leaves very little in the way for quiet evenings together seeing the newest treats that Netflix has brought us as we drink blackberry merlot wine.  Oh, and my dinner usually consists of sandwiches from my lunch pail rather than actual meals, which sucks on ice because I am actually a pretty damn good cook.  Add that to my list of wonderful qualities that gets the bum's rush during this time of year.

So I have just over a month to go.  God-damn.  Forgive me in advance, my devoted peeps, if I get a little persnickety.  Because I assure you, I will with a vengeance before it's all said and done.  So if you have a subject of group you want me to flay alive here in this blog, by all means suggest one.  I need something to chew on.

Back to sports.  Oh, and don't forget to crush me.  Out.

Before I jump in with teeth bared, I must pause to say hello to a new friend and introduce all of you to seferin, who comes highly recommended from some people on my f-list.  As a person who also loves science-fiction I heartily approve of the idea of approaching the stars from an intelligent and literary point of view... which makes a wonderful transition into today's flogging.  So welcome, seferin, and pull up a bar stool for a text-only beatdown in the making.

Lately I've been having an ongoing dialogue with tsumi_x over writing, which is always a welcome diversion from the crushing disappointment of much of modern life.  The question has been raised about what it takes to get one's self published, something which I am still waiting on an answer myself.  I can tell you all that one of the needed elements is definitely not talent, as proved by 2005 Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson latest effort, Gilead.

( Now That My Knife Is Sharpened, What Can I Cut With It? )

Q:  What's the difference between V.C. Andrews and Jesse L. Cairns?

A:  One is a bestselling author.  The other is alive and possesses actual talent.

In case you didn't know, V.C. Andrews (Virginia Cleo) has been dead since 1986.  At the time of her death, she had published seven books and published and sold over 30 million copies, the most (in)famous of these being the seemingly immortal Flowers In The Attic, the film version of which featured Kristy Swanson's bra-clad chest in what is undoubtedly (in my opinion, at least) the series' finest moment.  However, she has not let death slow her down; far from it!  At the time of this blogging, Andrews has published sixty-three novels and collections of short stories, a figure to make even the most hardened literary guru green with envy.

I can understand how this literary beanstalk has been allowed to spiral so nightmarishly out of control, on one level.  Most publishers would probably prefer to deal with a dead writer, truth be told.  Most people really don't care about interviews with authors, their expenses for book tours are very small and best of all, they don't call the publisher pestering them for information about when their next book is going to recieve that long-promised "hard push" that might get them on the bestseller list.  The benefits of this arrangement are enviable.

Except for one small detail: it's fucking ghoulish.  The woman is dead, for Christ's sake.  Let her literary bones rest in peace!

Oh, and another problem: the books suck on ice.

V.C. Andrews books are fairly cookie-cutter and easy to write, making the job of the unnamed ghostwriters (and never has that phrase been so accurately used) that much the easier.  Start off with a "daddy's girl" who is used to getting her own way.  Make the mother a psycho bitch or better yet, an unredeemable slut.  Toss in a couple siblings that must be looked after or preferably fucked, if they're far enough out on the branch of that particular family tree.  Stir with a mysterious secret from the past the reader figures out in the first third of the book unless they are impossibly dense, season with a few juicy rape scenes that sometimes the heroine actually grooves on, add a pinch of handsome mysterious stranger (who is coin-flip odds of being somehow related to our heroine either by marriage or--ick--by blood) and top off with more melodramatic dialogue, purple prose and florid description than you can shake a burial urn at.

Oh, and after you've written four or so of these books about this one silly wench... write the prequel last of all!  And don't forget those laughably forbidding sounding titles (Dark Seed, Twisted Roots and Wicked Forest are staring up at me from my browser as I write this), because that ties it all together in one neat, bestselling package.

(vomits in the corner)

Critics have been doing to the V.C. Andrews name what I have just done for years and years, yet it doesn't seem to do anything except incite her legions of slack-jawed "readers" to defend their minstrel with page after page of web documents containing many correctly spelled words and about as much imagination as a 98 Degrees reunion concert.  She is, without a doubt, my number one with a bullet on the Literary Hate Parade.

However, she also holds a special place as the first bestelling writer I ever discovered (in her first book, the long-suffering Flowers In The Attic) who I felt I could someday be better than.  Reading that wretched piece of tripe actually inspired me even as it depressed me at the same time.  Up until then, the authors I read all seemed magical and clever, impossibly more human than human and keen observers of the world we lived in, untouchable on their pedestals.  V.C. Andrews was the first one to shuffle up to my doorstep in rags, and in a way, I thank her for it.  Negativity, in its own way, can be just as inpsirational.

So, what about you, my devoted peeps?  Who's the worst author that has ever blackened your reading world, and what was your reaction?  Inquiring minds want to know.

PS:  My birthday is on Friday.  Yeah, I put myself over again.  Shameless self-promotion is the best kind!

With a title like that, you know this can only mean one thing.  Yes, SoHo Press has also decided they would not touch me with a ten-foot stick but more importantly, they rejected my book as well.  Ha-ha!  Just some literary humor for you there while I take a break from pounding my head against the wall.

That makes it swing and a miss number... six, I think... for this book.  Today I'm going down to Barnes & Noble to get a copy of the 2006 edition of the Writer's Market, and while I shell out the thirty bucks, I'm going to try very hard to not remember how I went about getting an editor's name and contact info from the 1991 version.  Because if I remember that, damn, talk about one hephalumph of a depression...

Shit.  Too late.

At any rate I'm going to go spoil myself in the bathtub, makes lots of bubbles and light a single canlde while I curse the darkness before going to B&B and then back to work.  This wasn't what I wanted to post today, but it's sort of unavoidable.

I'm also starting a new round of "alpha readers" for Crossroads, so here's how it works.  If you'd like to read this unpublished novel and give your no-holds-barred take on it, send an email to zombiegoat@comcast.net and put in the subject something that won't set off the spam filter.  In return, you'll get the book.

I think I'm also going to take a brief break from writing, but don't worry; it doesn't include LJ.  Later, folks; I'm off to sulk in the best cheery British fashion I can.

Finally (he moaned) the tiredness has set in and I'm toddling off to bed at just a shade past 3:47 A.M.  Jesus.  But before I go, I thought I would leave you with this very lengthy essay contained below, the memory of which still makes me gnash my teeth to this day.  Enjoy.

Why You Should Read This:  It's a cautionary tale about young writers and how people can take advantages of their high hopes by being complete and utter swine.  Plus, I know not too many people update the old LJ on the weekends, so you probably are looking for something new to read that you can sink your teeth into.  While there are no boobies or lustful waxings concerning certain celebrities behind the cut, it'll provide for some entertainment.  If you want to see the original site in question, go here and prepare to be horrified.

Have at it.

( The Ballad Of Donkey Ass )

Okay, so it appears that thus far, the whole agent thing hasn't worked out the way I'd hoped it would.  Apparently, Lizzie McGuire is what the big market booksellers are looking for these days, and the concept of "quality literature" has been thrown out with the bathwater and that hypothetical dead baby.

This is a disappointment, but it is by no means a fork stuck in my side.  In fact, this could actually be a blessing in disguise.  How?  Well, when I first began writing with intent to publish, I submitted to big houses and big agents in the hopes of landing big money because...

1)  At the time, my sense of self-value was completely tied up in my ability to get into print and the amount of praise or knee-jerk anger I received from sallies published in various magazines;

2)  I was trying desperately to land a firey-eyed artistic beauty who would surely be able to see to the depths of my troubled soul and together we would be able to conquer the world... or at the very least, subdue each other in the bedroom upwards of half a dozen times a night;

3)  I had a difficult time holding down regular jobs and thus knew that my chances of getting a generous pension for a quarter-century of service was remote, thereby dooming me to an old age filled with choking down reheated cat food unless I struck it big while I was young;

4)  All of the above.

Yes, it's not too pretty to admit, but when it came to art, there was a part of me (a small part, but there nonetheless) that was a whore.  Or rather, viewed my natural ability as a means to an end which, when it comes to questions of subjective art equaling hard dollars, is probably one of the most back-asswards ideas ever conceived in the history of humanity with the possible exception of "trickle-down economics."

Well, times have changed, my devoted peeps.  Now I have a job I dig and will able to retire at, a wonderful lady by my side and a rip-snorting V-8 monster under my buttocks.  The only thing missing from the picture is a copy of a novel that I wrote on my bookshelf, one that I did not pay to have published or design and bind myself.  Not a whole lot to ask, is it?

To this end, I have decided to begin submitting to small and literary houses, in the hopes that one of them will say:

"Sure, we'll publish this, although we can't guarantee you anything except for twenty author copies and the fact that if we send you on tour, you'll probably have to pay part of the ride yourself and by 'publicity,' we mean you'll be sipping coffee at a Starbucks while talking to a cub reporter from some place like the East Armpit Sentinel.  For a follow-up, anything you got would be nice.  Oh, and you have to change your pen name, because nobody likes Jesses.  Whaddya say, kid?  Does it sound like a life?"

Yeah, it does.  Plus, I'd really like to cut my hair.  Although my wife really likes my long locks (I now look like Gaias Baltar from the new Battlestar Galactica, in case you're interested), I'm sort of harkening back for the days of my aerodynamic hedgehog look.

So wish me luck, folks.  One dream might be dead, but a new one has sprouted in its place.

Peace to you and yours.

NEW YORK (AP) -- "Gilead," Marilynne Robinson's poetic, modern-day testament of a dying Iowa preacher, won the National Book Critics Circle prize for fiction Friday night.

"I could not be more delighted," said an emotional Robinson, whose novel was her first since she debuted in 1980 with the acclaimed "Housekeeping." Robinson, a faculty member at the University of Iowa's influential Writers' Workshop, praised her school for offering "a wonderful intellectual and spiritual home."

Okayyyyyyyyy...

So if this is her second novel and her first was published in 1980 (with two nonfiction works in between), exactly what, pray tell, have you been doing for the last 25 years--also known is some quaint circles as a quarter of a century--that occupied so much of your time, Miss Robinson?  Because it sure wasn't writing.  When you get right down to it, this is actually kind of amazing.  I mean, in what other field can you let a quarter of a century go by between projects and not have the community you are a part of call you a self-obsessed gazer at your own belly lint who has the stick-to-it-tiveness of a warm can of Crisco?

Her first book won the PEN/Hemingway Award for best first novel and was also nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.  To me, this is absolutely goddamned amazing, or perhaps I should say AMAZING.  Some people bust their asses their entire lives and miss the show; this woman almost wins the Super Bowl on her first trip, then sits back for a quarter of a century and says, "Nah.  I'm good."

Just for kicks, here's a couple paragraphs:

I told you last night that I might be gone sometime, and you said, Where, and I said, To be with the Good Lord, and you said, Why, and I said, Because I'm old, and you said, I don't think you're old. And you put your hand in my hand and you said, You aren't very old, as if that settled it. I told you you might have a very different life from mine, and from the life you've had with me and that would be a wonderful thing, there are many ways to live a good life. And you said, Mama already told me that. And then you said, Don't laugh! because you thought I was laughing at you. You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother's. It's a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I'm always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I've suffered one of those looks. I will miss them.

It seems ridiculous to suppose the dead miss anything. If you're a grown man when you read this--it is my intention for this letter that you will read it then--I'll have been gone a long time. I'll know most of what there is to know about being dead, but I'll probably keep it to myself. That seems to be the way of things.

So I ask you, my devoted peeps: is it just me being bitter, or does that excerpt provided as part of a review to get you to salivate and want to buy the novel truly and horrendously suck?

Well, I've now updated myself to the Mozilla Firefox browser.  I'm sick and tired of using a shoddy, inferior product that is more prone to viruses than a Indonesian hooker, so I took PHP's advice and got on board.  So far, so good.  I had no problem importing bookmarks and the like, and the sheer amount of useful add-ons make this product vastly superior to Internet Explorer right off the bat.  All in all, it comes recommended.

The weekend is almost over, and soon I will have to be crawling into bed so I can go drive the bus for another five days.  Sigh.  You know, I really like my job, but. . . but damnit, I wish we had three-day weekends all the time.  Two days off just isn't enough time to recuperate.  Remember how everyone said back in the 1980's that when computers were available for everyone that productivity would go up so much that we'd all have four-day weekends?  Well, maybe you don't remember that, but I sure do.  Didn't quite work out that way, did it, kids?

Oh, and the new computer configuration itself is excellent.  Still need to find some better graphics drivers for the video card, but I may be junking it in favor of a GeForce 4 anyway, since the price is now only about sixty bucks.  Yeah, it's two years out of date, but my favorite games were made five years ago, so technically I'm still ahead of the curve.  W00t!

Let's see, what else. . . progress on Backlash is moving, although slower than I would like.  Oh well; man lives not by the art alone.  Poker night, movies and time with the spouse are necessary things.  This was the first weekend since the beginning of September when there was no football being watched in the house. . . and I'm already looking forward to next season.  I'm sick, I know.

I am as yet undecided as to what project I will be starting once Backlash is complete.  I don't want to burn myself out on the Ring of Fire books, and I think I need some time to pontificate on what the next plotline is going to be, so I'm casting my wandering eye about at several candidates.  One of them in the running is recording music, as I've got about seven somngs that have been kicking around in my head since my college days.  Theoretically I have enough horsepower now on this computer to "git-r-done," so we'll see.

Of course, I just may decide to walk away from writing for a couple months and take a vacation.  After all, I've been writing on the Ring of Fire series since November 2002 pretty mich non-stop; I took two weeks off in the beginning of September 2003 for my honeymoon and I may have had about four days between Covenant and Backlash, but other than that, I've been running on this treadmill.  But hey, these books aren't going to write themselves, right?

In other news, still no response from either the Lori Perkins Agency or the Ricia Mainhardt Agency.  I'm going to do the follow-up letter to Perkins this week, but I may just do a snarky phone call for Mainhardt.  I picked her agency as she was the first agent to represent Laurell K. Hamilton, one of my favorite writers, and I felt that if she'd discovered Hamilton, maybe she could do the same for me.  However, as I found out, this was not to be.  Let's take a brief glimpse back at the timeline considering this candidate and you'll see why:

FEBRUARY 2004:  Snail mail submission of Serendipity (the first novel) sent to agency.  First three chapters and synopsis included, as per instructions.  The traditional waiting game begins.

JUNE 2004:  No response received as of yet.  Phone call placed.  Mainhardt herself answers, whereupon she says, and I quote, "Oh, we're absolutely terrible at getting back to people concerning standard mail submissions."  Really?  "The best way to contact us is through an electronic submission."  Bear in mind, their web site has not been updated in about three years but I figure, what the fuck.  I submit to both address listed.  One e-mail is immediately bounced back as undeliverable.  The other one goes through, so the waiting game begins anew.

SEPTEMBER 2004:  No response received as of yet.  I submit to the Lori Perkins Agency, since girls who sit by the phone never get asked to the prom and I feel like dancing.

NOVEMBER 2004:  No response received as of yet.  I send a follow-up e-mail to Mainhardt, asking if perhaps she had lost my contact information and helpfully including all methods of contacting me.

FEBRUARY (close enough) 2005:  No response received. . . ah, you can guess the rest.  Simply put, it's my learned opinion that this agency fucking blows.  You would think that in one year's time you could at least get a rejection letter out of those people, but so far, no dice.  I think my wife is right; now we know why Laurell K. Hamilton found herself another agent.

So what will I do next?  Who knows, but you can read about it here.

I think this is about enough for the evening, except for my profound disappointment that there was no new episode of Desperate Housewives on tonight.  Remember when the television season would start and you'd get about eight months worth of new episodes?  The only time you got reruns was during the summer, and if you got one during the regular season, people got pissed.  Now it's commonplace.

This modern world.  Yay!

If you didn't get a chance to watch the Orange Bowl this week, let's just say you didn't miss much.  Aside from the Oklahoma University Sooners taking the biggest butt-reaming ever seen since the last Deep Inside Jenna Jameson video, you also missed Ashlee Simpson's vocal flailings in front of a nationally televised audience.

In case you missed it, here is the end of her performance which pretty much sums it up:

http://www.monhaut.com/media/simpson.avi

Okay, now that the hilarity is out of the way, allow me to get steamed for a moment.  Bear in mind that every time a record is purchased from Geffen Records (who you may remember is the label that gave us Guns 'N Roses once upon a time), part of your purchase goes to the coffers dedicated to foisting such talentless undesirables as Ms. Simpson upon the world.  I haven't bought a new release CD in about six years, but if I do, it damn sure won't be one by Geffen.

I've actually read things that have said, "Jeez, she;s only 20.  Come one, give her a break!"  Um. . . no.  No, no, no, no, no!  Goddamn it, when is this minimal-standard loving society going to wake the fuck up and realize that giving a free pass to this sort of dreck in fact helps nobody?  It's like the record company said, "Okay, Jessica was sort of a hit. . . umm, what if we took her sister who is not as attractive or talented and foisted her upon the public?  Yeah, great idea!  I'm sure those oinking proletariat will go for it!"

As of September 16th, 2004, her album Autobiography (a vomit-inducing title considering the woman who made it isn't even old enough to buy a legal drink yet) has been certified triple platinum.

And I still can't even get an agent to represent my novel.  People wonder why a frown a lot.  Trust me, there's no fucking rocket science to it.

Thought this would make me feel better, but it didn't.  Quite the opposite.  Oh well; at least it's Friday, only one more day of work left.

Fucking Ashlee Simpson.  Jesus.

Not much to say tonight. . . so here we go with a handy-dandy rip from the archives.  Dated July 12th, 2002, it deals with fear and loathing at Earthlink.  I've been seeing their new commericals lately, the one where they promise to hate spam and pop-ups just as much as you do.  Maybe they should have tried this one:  "Hello, we're Earthlink.  We promise that if you work your ass off, you too can be out of a job along with all your friends here in less than a year."  That would be truth in advertising.  After all, by March of 2003, the Sacramento call center had been closed down.

It's a tough old world on the little things.  Meanwhile, enjoy this entry.

( We're Earthlink, And We're Here For Your Daughter )

Okay, so I've sorted out my thoughts on the election. (deep breath) Ready? Here we go. . .

( One, Two, Fuck You )

I have the feeling that I'll be talking to God a lot over the next four years. Right now I'm too discombobulated by the horror of the past 24 hours to really post coherently, so while I gather myself at work, I'm going to put in something that I found while perusing, of all things, a video game site. The person who wrote this is named Sixis; I have no idea of knowing if they are male or female, but I know that this psoke for me. Maybe it will for you, as well.

( CONCESSION SPEECH OF JOHN F. KERRY by Sixis )

When I'm not driving a forty foot-long fifteen ton bus around the streets of Sacramento, I can usually be found writing. It's been my dream to have a novel published since I was fifteen years old, which means just about exactly half my life has been spent in pursuit of this goal. Since you have yet to see any books at the local Dalton's with "Jesse L. Cairns" on the spine, this dream as yet remains sadly unfulfilled.

I do, however, love doing it and therefore pages continue to pile up although as of yet, sadly, nobody will take them off my hands in exchange for money. Ah well. Eleven completed novels, several incomplete novels, half a dozen novellas, dozens of short stories and more essays than you can shake a stick at later, I'm still gutting it out.

When people find out that I write, one of the first questions they ask is, "What do you write about?" Somewhere later in the course of the conversation invariably comes, "What's the hardest thing about being a writer?" and that's the question I'm going to answer today.

THE HARDEST THING ABOUT BEING A WRITER IS. . . knowing that being good enough isn't good enough. Bottom line.

When I was fifteen, I read a book called The Devil's Cat by an author named William W. Johnstone. This novel, not to put too fine a point on it, sucked a dick. A big one. It was melodramatic, poorly written, the dialogue was both stilted and stunted, the descriptions laughably pulp and the plotline derivative to say the least. It was also the fourth book in a series featuring these same characters, a series which a quick Googling reveals has now run to an amazing eighteen novels.

Wow, that's depressing.

Why, you ask? Simple. These books suck. Is that a little bit of sour grapes? Well, maybe. It's the same sort of stomach-roiling that a talented blues guitarist gets when he hears that Britney Spears has sold millions of copies of her new album, when he can't even get an A&R guy to give a minute to his demo tape for a chance.

If the book industry ran on talent, i.e. publishing those who were good and laughing out of the building those who were not, there would probably be considerably less novels in the world but the quality would be higher. Danielle Steele would still be short-order cooking, most likely, and several people I went to school with at California State University, Chico, would be enjoying the sorts of lives they deserve to live. And, best of all, my eyes would have never been darkened by the purple prose and cardboard characters of The Devil's Cat.

However, it doesn't work that way. That's why I'm still driving a bus in order to pay my bills and scribbling in notebooks during my layovers, while William W. Johnstone goes back to the well over and over again, killing trees in the name of a series that will not die and collecting his royalty checks.

Am I good enough to be published? You're damn right. I'll easily put Crossroads against Robert James Waller's The Bridges of Madison County.

And does that matter a fart in Hurricane Ivan? No. It eats at me, sometimes. Whenever I read something absolutely atrocious, the worm of jealousy and righteous indignation turns hard. To be honest, I have nearly given up several times in pursuit of my dream. It's enormously discouraging to walk into a Border's and be confronted with racks upon racks of horrible manga shit when it's difficult to even get a personalized rejection letter.

However, I keep plugging away. To do less would be pansy. . . and will make it all that much more sweet when it finally happens.

Provided Johnstone doesn't use up all the trees first, that is. ;)