1 | The Publisher

“I am going to be completely honest and say that this piece, your manuscript I mean, it really isn’t what we’re looking for. Not for us. Have you considered suicide? Self-immolation perhaps?”

“E-ex-excuse me?” I stumbled over my words, hardly eked them out to tell the truth. Not a great look in any situation, but in front of a publisher? Well, in my defense, I couldn’t be positive that he asked me that. Under great stress - or in this case a marginal amount - the brain, mine, tends to play tricks, forces you to reckon with your immediate reality and determine if it is, in fact, real and not some solipsistic fuckery. You know. Actually happening. Not self-created. Did he really ask me that? I call it 60/40 against. Not bad odds given the industry.

“I asked if you’d considered an agent? They are quite helpful when it comes to directing you to more, well, realistic publishing houses.”

“My agent,” never had one, mind you, “my agent wasn’t quite into traditional publishing and would often recommend I self-publish. Start a blog, garner a blog following, print per order on Amazon, something like that, but listen, Mr.-”

“Blegh, self-publishing,” the publisher, a portly and somewhat damp man, summoned to the surface what looked to be a tonsil stone upon his outward antipathy toward self-publishers, latently labeling it a repugnant and classless side of his noble trade. The ejection arced out of his cankerous mouth and rolled down his recently pressed - now faintly soiled - white oxford, picked up speed as it neared the end of his firm gut, and landed on the flooring below with the empty clack of a thin stone hitting linoleum. “What a waste. Unless you have a hundred thousand or so followers or readers, then in that case I would love to chat about your work.”

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Write What You Know, Skeleton is a planned serialized work of hybrid fiction taking personal notes & experiences, blending them into a larger fictional narrative.

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