Congratulations on Selling Your Dystopian Fiction Manuscript!

It will be a hit.  Publishers will actually vie for your favor, coaxing you out with promising advances, solid royalty return plans.  The struggling market for publishing hard hitting works of fiction will be a mystery to you, prettiest girl at the literary dance.

All this for a book that you couldn’t sell earlier this year, when it was still about North Korea.

You could blame a number of factors.  Shortsighted publishers, a poor understanding of international politics, a shrinking non-fiction market.  But then, the market for fiction is perceived as ever-shrinking as well.  So how do you explain it?

You aren’t interested in trying.  You’re just interested in planning your sequel, where Space Jackson (you renamed your Korean peasant so that he’d be more palatable to North American audiences) stages an uprising against Kim Jong-Un (whose name you didn’t have to change for some reason).

Your prose is lackluster, and your original manuscript trades primarily on rendering in cold, exacting detail the struggle of daily life in North Korea.  The sequel will be a disaster, poorly written, irregularly plotted and hackneyed beyond belief where it won’t be weirdly jingoistic.  But what do you care?  You’ll have published a best-seller.  You’ll be owed a final book in the trilogy by merit of your contract, and thanks to your advance, you’ll be rich.

Congratulations on Selling Your Dystopian Fiction Manuscript!

Congratulations Vagina Elf!

Many’s the tale been told of you and your ilk!  The quaint lil’ creatures what dwell within the limits of the labia, the mischief makers within the baby maker, the non-buns inside the oven.  Mystery has always shrouded the mystical vagina, which male scientists (the ones who matter) know next to nothing about, but one thing we’ve known for many a decade is that tiny little elves, like you, live inside a vagina.  Your mood, health and financial well being all effect the ability of a woman to achieve orgasm, conceive a child and, in many states, vote, but no one knows how exactly.

Until today.  Today you’re going to emerge from your vagina (which belongs to Dorace Kearns Goodwin, celebrated presidential historian) and announce to the world that after centuries of silence, the vagina elves have collectively spoken and want to release a book.  This book will explain the rich cultural history of vagina elves, the wants and needs of these elves and the science behind how vagina elves impact vaginal health.

It’ll also reveal that vagina elves are responsible for several STIs, including syphilis, gonorrhea, Chlamydia and AIDS.

The last one will be particularly surprising, but the revelation will carry with it the knowledge that vagina elves, instrumental in causing AIDS, can also help to cure it.  You’ll spin the book as a genuine attempt to extend an olive branch to humanity and give them knowledge that will allow them to cure diseases, correct weather patterns and finally get their wives off.  In reality, it’ll be an attempt to get some much needed cash flowing your way following a disastrous series of bets with another vagina elf.

When the vagina elf council discovers your move, they’ll go after your hide, so your best shot is to make this book a best-seller and remain in the spotlight as prominently as you can.  Because the moment they can get away with it, the vagina elves will kill you for spilling their secrets and informing humans of the true cause of AIDS.

Better find a good ghost writer.  Don’t hire anyone in our office.

Congratulations Vagina Elf!