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…

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.)