Sacrilege! And Asides

On Facebook, a friend asked me if I was prepared to degrade myself this much for a writing career. I was expecting a lame, exploitative novel at the other end of the link he posted, but…wow. Not that.

All I could think was, What the hell? What’s going on in the world of publishing? Has to be a hoax, I thought. Hardly. You can find this joke of a novel on Amazon.com.

I’m not a Jane Austen purist, but this is going too far, waaay too far…

Our dear Elizabeth Bennett trading witticisms with zombies? Sacrilege!
Our dear Elizabeth Bennett trading witticisms with zombies? Sacrilege!

Isn’t that nuts? And, no, I’m not willing to degrade myself that far.

On an aside, yesterday I had a wacky economic-downturn moment. Driving from here to there to there on a ridiculously complicated quest for black printer ink, I saw four going-out-of-business liquidation sales–and the hundreds of people taking advantage of those sales. It was absurd, all those people feverishly spending money they probably didn’t have just because Circuit City and Levitz Furniture (amongst others) have succumbed.  

On the other hand, millions of people across the U.S. buying up inventories at rock-bottom prices…Isn’t that what Bush kept wanting? Citizens spending money?

On a related aside: Read an amusing article in the New York Times about how the bad economy makes for a great excuse. And I’ll quote:

A number of novelists said they have used the prefabricated recession alibi without guilt pangs. Perhaps that’s because they make up stories for a living. (Hehe, too true.)

…Clea Simon, a mystery writer in Cambridge, Mass., said she skipped a conference where she was supposed to speak, using the economy as an excuse to mask her real reason: shyness.

…With the downturn, she said, “I had the perfect excuse to stay home.” (I’ve been using it as an  excuse too, actually.)

5 comments on “Sacrilege! And Asides

  • Poor Miss Austen, she must be turning in her grave! And I’m sure it’s selling well… (sigh) I read the Jane Austen book club last year and didn’t like it, but this one is way beyond exploitation…

    Reply
  • true confession. I do play one of those shoot-at-zombies games. Every now and then. It’s arcade style. there’s no strategy. It’s similar to Pacman. You just keep going. Eventually, you don’t go anymore. You start over.

    But zombies don’t mix with anything else as far as I’m concerned, least of all the indelible Ms Austen.

    as for a writer who blames economy when indeed it’s shyness, wow. I’d rather take the stage and look at you, even if I could only mumble, and turn red, hoping to eek out some little anecdote that you would somehow connect with and want to buy more of my books.

    Stories will survive, though. The economy can tip and reel and stabilize and stories will go on and on.
    We just gotta keep writing.

    Reply
  • Oh, you’re a zombie warrior! Fascinating factoid about you, that’s for sure! I wonder if the zombie’d P&P features Lizzie in mortal combat with them? Yee-ikes.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>