Why I'm Not A Best Selling Novelist

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Server is still down so I can post nothing, not can I receive e-mail.

Apparently the tech support people in Calcutta or maybe it’s a kid running a Fortune 500 internet company out of his garage in Cleveland took a three-day weekend to celebrate President’s day and have not worked to get my sites back up. I didn’t know they celebrated President’s Day in Calcutta.

Anyhow, apparently my server hard drive won’t get hard. Therefore it can’t perform as it should. Sometimes, I know the feeling.

As Ginny got in the car to leave for work this morning, (she still has no definitive word about her job status but continues to labor as though the office depended on her efforts alone)….

Anyhow, as she got in the car I was wondering why my most recent book manuscript could be posted to the printer. I wondered if the devil was blocking my work, or if perhaps God is delaying publication for some timing reason of His own?

Ginny quipped, “Love, I think they’ve called a truce and are cooperating on this one”.

That’s what I get for marrying a literary critic.

Interesting thing this morning: I went to the doctor’s office for a blood test to check my cholesterol and such. A young man was just ahead of me at the lab. He wore brown work boots encrusted with mud, faded jeans, a company tee shirt indicating he was a construction worker and he sported bulging biceps and abs showing off his strength.

When the nurse put the needle in his arm, he fainted.

She and another nurse revived him and offered him a paper cup of water. He lifted it to his lips, saw the needle and fainted again spilling the water all down the front of him.

This was so curious to me.

Back in the mid 1960s I was already a member of the ten galleon club as a blood donor and it’s incomprehensible to me that anyone would be bothered by a nurse drawing blood. I usually watch the procedure or don’t notice it at all. So I was amazed at this young man’s reaction. God has made us all different about such things.

One other thing to catch up: While I’ve not been able to write online, I’ve been reading. When writers don’t write, they read. My reading this past week convinces me that I’ll never make it as a novelist.

I read this mystery that’s been on the New York Times best seller list as well as on the Waldenbooks and B.Dalton best seller lists.

Here is a quote from this novel:

“She caught her breath with a strange trepidation as she felt his crushing manhood poised on the very brink of her feminine core… He pushed his knee between her silky thighs and tasted the dark grape that tipped her breast… Slowly he thrust into her , taking his time so that he could experience every centimeter of her clinging, velvety core.”

This went on for eight pages!

I’ll never make it as a novelist.

If I were writing that scene, I’d use only five words — not one of them would be core.