Is the Time Right?

Now that the U.S. has elected its first (and I hope last) reality television President, perhaps the publishing world is now ready for my novel. Is that how it works?

My book is about a teacher whose school is the subject of a new reality show.  It doesn't go well and the damage caused is long-lasting.  That probably isn't really shocking to people. Just the same, there are dozens of similar shows on television and each of them have some sort of following.  Many of those watchers even believe that the shows are real, unscripted.

With Donald Trump in office, has the time come for my book to be relevant?  Characters in the book behave cruelly to each other, just like the President has done. The school has to deal with the policies that have been pursued by the current Secretary of Education, when she was a private, wealthy donor, though she isn't mentioned. On a weekly basis, people tune in to follow the drama, as if real people aren't on the screen. People retweet the President's rants and insults, like it's a game.

There is only one way to find out, start sending it out to agents and publishers.

Sex

Yup!  It has come to this.  Sex is the topic for tonight. Not sweaty, moaning, body aching sex that is had with another person.  I don't even remember that kind.  Nope, I am committing the ultimate switch-and-bait as I want to discuss sex in literature/fiction.

The other day on my FB profile, I took an informal survey about 50 Shades of Grey. I have just finished The Hunger Games trilogy and I thought that maybe something a little saucy would be fun. I have heard that it's pretty kinky, so vicarious living might be a good thing. 

I was surprised at how many friends gave the book a big thumbs down. Poor writing, one complained. Story drags a bit, said another. Hype and not really sexy proclaimed another.  Overall, more shoulder shrugs than I was expecting. That got me to thinking about what we as readers expect when it comes to sex scenes in a book or short piece of fiction.

I have two sex scenes in my novel.  Neither are particularly explicit, though the first one is a little more detailed.  I pull out of both scenes before I have to say anything like "he plunged into her waiting and wet womanhood with a lifetime of pent-up passion coursing through his veins" (I don't even know how to write like that. To be honest, I don't know if people actually write like that.  Probably, just better than what I could muster). I leave the juicy tidbits up to the reader's imagination.  It's fairly obvious what is about to happen in both scenes and I just don't think the reader needs or even wants me to connect the dots. Besides, by the time I got to the second scene, I was giggling uncontrollably.  Not the case with the first one.

Is less better? Does it depend on how artfully the scene is written?  Anais Nin has some very graphic descriptions in her stories and I don't object.  Yet, she might be the only author I have read who aims to be sexually graphic (other than Ginsburg).

I've decided against 50 Shades of Grey.  I don't mind sex (are the gods listening out there), but I'm not sure that I'm interested in a book where that has been the big selling point.  I mean, I've seen porn and it's pretty stupid.  I prefer to use my brain a little more productively.

And it happened like this

In the spring, one Chris Difford was soliciting some stories about imaginary friends. I believe that his intentions were to use those stories in a show. I thought nothing of it because I had never had an imaginary friend (unless you count fantasies about...never mind). The idea stuck around in my head and I found a story creeping down to my fingers. It turned into a story about an imaginary meeting with my son's birth mother. Through many tears I composed it and sent it to Chris. I don't know if he ever got it, but I put it away for a while. The subject shook me so heavily that I sobbed every time I read it.

Late in the summer, I realized that my writing had come to a grinding halt and I needed to leap out of the rut I had dug. I pulled out this short story. I fixed some words and sent it to a couple of magazines, including RED OCHRE LiT.

One magazine rejected it quite quickly. Then, I heard back from RED OCHRE LiT, from an intern who like the piece and asked a few questions for clarification. Immediately my hopes soared. I tried to stay realistic about the story, as I know that sometimes it can take weeks if not months to hear back from publishers and publications.

Today at lunch, I checked my email. I saw that RED OCHRE LiT had sent me a message. I covered my eyes, peeked through my fingers, and opened the message. It said congratulations, we love the story and want to publish it! It went on to tell me that they will get back to me about the specifics (publication date, any small changes, etc.). None of that matters at the moment. All I can think about is that some strangers, whose business is to publish literature, like my writing.