|
|
|
|
"Yesterday's Bitches, 21-30" Bitch #21 Bitch #22 Bitch #23 Bitch #24 Bitch #25 Bitch #26 Bitch #27 Bitch #28 Bitch #29 Bitch #30 Thanks
A Whole Hell Of A Lot! Thanks a f-cking lot! Every time I reach the end of my tether in this G-d forsaken business and can't remember why we started YDP in the first place, every time I think I can justify slamming the door shut, you guys go and ruin it for me. That's right, this press has stolen our lives away, and every time I can no longer remember why I thought this was a good idea people remind me. We spent the weekend of February 21-23 at
Con-DFW in the Dallas / Fort Worth, Texas area. When
I was schlepping the YDP boxes into the hotel I was thinking the whole time, Why
am I wasting my time? Lynn and I are working
all the time. We're constantly being pulled
in seventeen different directions, and my own writing often takes a back seat to company
business. I was also thinking, If I
never have to lug these boxes to even one more convention I’ll be happy. You see, all the company does at this point in time is pay it's own debt. This is true of any growing company – at least those that are doing well. But, frankly, it's more than frustrating to work so hard and basically see no return on your money, your time, or your very real effort. So it would be very easy to say, screw this! And put the entire operation to sleep. But as I said, you bastards keep reminding me of why we started this in the first place. As I'm shoving the cart loaded with books through the hotel, you start to descend on me. Yes, you, our writers and artists, start peeling out of nowhere with offers to help. They shriek in delight when they see and hold the new anthology (More Stories That Won't Make Your Parent's Hurl) with their story in it for the first time, and suddenly I am reminded of why we wanted to do. Maybe I'm a little prejudiced, but not only are our authors and artists some of the most brilliant and talented in this business, but because of our "no ass holes" policy they are also some of the nicest. Now it's true that I have never met many of the people I've published, and that sometimes my only contact with them is brief e-mail messages, but with rare exception when I have met them they have been the best of people – such was the case of Dusty Rainbolt whose book comes out sometime in late summer, and who I met for the first time this last weekend. If I meet them and they're jerks... Well, they just don't work for me again – they go on "the list." You might ask yourself if a person is a truly gifted and talented author or artist why would I get rid of them just because they were social fungus? The answer is simple. You see, way back in the history of Yard Dog Press I had someone do a dance of idiocy. When I asked this person to stop, I was basically told that I didn't know what I was talking about, and the behavior continued. I removed this person from the project and I won't work with this person ever again, even though this person is incredibly talented. Here's why. There are hundreds, thousands of people trying to break into the field. People every bit as talented. Why should I waste my precious time and fill my limited slots with people who are primadonna's or ass holes? It seems to me that everywhere you look some creep has made good while nice people are working to get their crumb. Talent and being a decent human being, are not mutually exclusive. If you don't believe it, all you have to do is check out our writers and artists. If there is a more talented group I don't know where it’s hiding, and yet they are -with the exception of a couple who won't be working for us again (you'll know who if you ever meet them) - some of the nicest, most hard working, truly decent people I've ever known. Are they just like everyone else? No. If they were, their work would be just like everyone else’s and then I wouldn't be interested in it. Are you always going to agree with everything they say or do? No. But then if everyone agreed with everyone else the world would get pretty boring. Boring people don't write great books, and there is an audience for great books. Which brings us to the second group of culprits in this conspiracy to keep me working indefinitely without pay. The fans. Yard Dog Press fans are as unique and as basically nice as the writers and artists they support. They come to the table looking for our latest books, picking and choosing according to their tastes and what they can afford. They are readers who've grown weary of fiction that's just like the last big hit; they are looking for something different. They aren't afraid to plop their money down on a fairly unknown or brand new writer. They aren't ashamed to say that they bought a book titled Licking Valley Coon Hunters Club, or Bubbas of the Apocalypse. Many of them have seen some of the big shots in this business at conventions and when they learned that their favorite writer was either completely unapproachable or worse yet just a huge prick, they decided – like me – that they didn't want to support an asshole. That is not to say that all or even most of the big shots in the field are jerks, but the ones that are sometimes make up for all the ones that aren't and make it that much harder for a shy fan to venture to meet the next one. Our writers are good to the fans, because basically they're just good people period. They will happily mingle with the fans, they'll talk to them on line, and they’ll spend time getting to know them as people. When the headliner the convention paid to be there disappears from the conventions social areas by 8:00 or doesn't appear there at all, our writers and artists are out there, going to the room parties, talking - and I readily admit drinking - with the fans, giving much wanted advice to new writers, and in general making themselves accessible. Do our YDP writers and artists occasionally get loud and wild and walk around taking a party with them throughout the convention? You bet ya, and I'll gladly go right down the primrose path with any of them. In fact, as I'm sure most of them would tell you, I'd most probably be leading the way. After seeing our writers and artists in action at Con-DFW, what can I now say except, "Thanks a whole f-cking bunch!" Thanks to you lot and the professional and friendly way in which you conducted yourselves I will doubtless be working for nothing for the rest of my natural life!!! Shalom, Selina Damn, I've Stepped In It Again
But even
at a great convention there are a few things you simply can't avoid.
There is
always at least one asshole (can I say that on the web?) that thinks it's his personal
duty to tell you that he has no idea who you are. Of
course if writers and artists were normal people the fact that some fat, greasy guy with
no social graces whatsoever was hateful to them wouldn't bother them at all. But of course we're not, so this idiot's outburst
will bother you the rest of the weekend. The
fact that he always has to do this in front of a group of people that you're sure don't
know you, either, only makes it that much worse, because you instantly think that everyone
was secretly thinking the same thing and this guy was the only one stupid enough to say
so.
You'll
forget about the incident for a while and try to go on with the rest of the convention as
if nothing has happened. You'll run around
like a prostitute, trying to sell yourself and your work – you know, doing your job. Then you'll see this guy and you'll think,
"What a freaking dumb ass, jerk." Which
would be all right except then you think. "They
all know that I'm a fake, a fraud, a no one. Why
am I wasting my time and my money here? None
of these people came to see me; they're here to see Robert Sawyer, CJ Cherryh and Michael
Shaerd. They wouldn't care if I died right here."
After that
you start to plot this guy’s murder, out by the pool if it's winter, in the sauna if
it's summer... What? You guys don't do that? Maybe it's just me.
Anyway, that's not the only recurring bitch.
I know! You're shocked.
So was I, but I've got a couple of more things to bitch about.
The second
thing that happens at every con to every writer is the obligatory attempt by some gamer to
get you to use their character in one of your books, and if you do, you only have to give
them part of the money. If this hasn't
happened to you yet then you haven't been writing very long. You don't even have to be published, all you have
to do is mention that you write – you could even be talking about a letter, and it
doesn't matter. If you say it, they will
come.
When this
happens you will look around quickly to see if any of your friends are close enough to
save you, but even if they are, they won't take your, "Come save me” for what it
is and will just smile and wave. All attempts
to escape the gamer will be futile until he has finished telling you all about his
character, thus assuring that you can never again build any character with even the same
hair color because if you do he will tell everyone that you stole his character.
And
because you're a professional in this field and can't afford to come off looking like the
worlds biggest prick you can't just look at the guy who's told you and everyone in a five
mile radius that he doesn't know you and say, "Well who the hell are you?" or my
own personal favorite, "I'm the big, fat, angry, queer, woman who's going to jump
across this table and kick your ass."
You can't
say to gamer guy, "I don't want to hear about your cockamamie rolled up character. If
I wanted to build characters that way I'd get my own dam dice. If I didn't have any ideas
of my own I'd set around and play games all day and I wouldn't write at all, like I don't
know, YOU, since you want me to write about your stupid character instead of doing it
yourself."
But the
third person there is at every con is the most insidious, because they know damn good and
well that as a professional you aren't actually aloud to be a human being, and they use
it.
These
people can either be aspiring authors (though most of them have never actually written any
thing) or just hard core fans. Either way they want to be with the pros, and I don't mean
in that harmless sitting around in a consuite or room party laughing joking and having a
good time enjoying the company of people with similar interests way that is mutually
enjoyable.
No, these
people stand way too close, they follow you to dinner and sit amongst your party without
so much as asking, and if you aren't very careful they'll cheerfully let you pick up their
bill. They will follow you to the bar. They will try to follow you back to your room. They will interrupt any conversation you try to
have with any other fan or pro. Worse yet they will tell everyone they ever meet both in
and out of fandom that you are good buddies. Since they are the equivalent of giant human
dildos people will think badly of you simply because you are friends with this person.
Imagine you're a pro being stalked by this guy and he's telling you that he's good
friends with one of the biggest names in the field (true story) and he's telling you this
when you're on a panel in front of a room full of people. Now this guy's been like snot
off a Kleenex all weekend, so you know he probably doesn't know her anymore than you do,
but the other people in the room don't know that.
He appears
to be hanging with all the pros at this convention so he probably does know them as
well.
It's very
simple he's acting important by hanging out with those people he sees as being
important and the other fans have no idea that he's driving us absolutely insane.
These
people are nothing but trouble. They keep a pro from meeting other fans, by always talking
to the pro so that other less aggressive fans are afraid to approach. They will
interrupt a panel and take it off topic to tell some story in which they can name drop.
They keep the pros from relaxing with their friends and impose themselves on private
meetings and dinners where they aren't wanted, knowing that chances are that the pros will
say nothing for fear of looking like those assholes in our field who are rude, abrupt, or
just plain mean to the fans. So... the next time I look at one of you with that deer caught in the headlights glare in my eyes you'd better get off your lazy asses and come and save me. Shalom, Selina Are You Someone? … Every pro, the big and the small, has been asked that at least once, and usually, unfortunately, that many times or more at every con. There are basically three kinds of writers you will meet at convention. First is the party animal, everyone knows them, knows what they've written, and just like to hang out with them, watching till they cease to be amusing or explode, which ever comes first. They will happily nurture new authors as long as it doesn't seriously deplete their party time. They love everyone, the fans, the other writers, the artists. It isn't hard to meet them – they're everywhere, and more times than not if you walk close to them they'll start talking to you like you’re an old friend. You see people, they never see anyone, and a convention is really the only time they get to interact with... well, people. The second kind of writer genuinely likes fans and would love to be like the writer in the first category, but they are almost hopelessly shy. Their inspiration has come from a feeling that they are always just on the outside. They spent a lot of time as a kid off on their own day dreaming and creating the fantasy worlds you now read and enjoy. They may at times seem snobbish or hard to approach, but that is not the case. If you'll initiate the conversation, smile and tell them how much you like their work, they will talk your leg off. They will take new writers under their wings and teach them everything they know – maybe more than they wanted to know. See, they never get to talk to anyone, either. It's the nature of the work. The third kind of writer we have unfortunately all had a run in with at least once. This writer has acquired a certain amount of fame, and now truly believes that the gold that they shit doesn't stink. They only go to conventions if they are being paid, and then they will do just what they are assigned to do and spend the rest of their time sight seeing or in their room. You will never see them in the room parties or the con-suite. If you ask for their autograph anywhere except at their formal signing they will dress you down. If you go to the formal signing they will only sign a certain number of books. If you try to engage them in casual conversation they will try to make you feel like a moron. They treat the fans, the con com, and any of their colleagues they deem to be beneath them, like fleas to be scratched off, discarded, and talked badly about to their friends. They will only help a new writer if they will kiss their ass in public, take their laundry to the cleaners, and clean dog shit out of their carpet. For years I have been able to put almost every writer I have met neatly into one of these three social categories, but recently I was at a convention where I met a fourth. You see, I looked around at one of the parties one night and realized that I had never in my life (and I'm pretty old) seen so many, rude, pretentious posers. They acted like a category three writer, but had no actual professional credits and had no respect for those of us who did, because, of course, we were all a bunch of sell-outs. Of course their idea of entertainment is really bleak and abysmal crap where horrible, perverted, and violent acts are center stage and there is no plot or character development. But of course this couldn't possibly be the reason they can't sell their crap to a real publisher. They were all standing around in their little black uniforms basically looking cool and complaining about how dull the convention was and how it wasn't nearly as nice as the last one they'd been to. Which sort of reminded me of a bunch of stoners talking about weed, because the weed they're smoking is never nearly as good as the weed they smoked the last time. They didn't mingle with the fans; they didn't actually talk to the publisher or any of the published writers. In fact, they shunned everyone they deemed to be "less than cool." I had something happen that I never thought I'd see. I had a writer who I had published actually snub me, and I don't mean by a little. I mean by a lot, so much so that other people noticed it. Why? He had been very friendly to me on e-mail. I published his story without a hitch, and all our royalties are current. I had never met him before so I hadn't had time to offend him. No, his only reason to snub was that, seeing me in the flesh, he instantly decided I wasn't one of the cool people. Now my definition of cool and that of these people is different. See to me the "cool" people are the ones having a good time. This guy didn't show up at the YDP party – every other YDP artist and author in attendance at least put in an appearance. He didn't bring one person to the table to look at the book; he didn't sell a single copy of the book he was in. Meanwhile, none of our other authors failed to push the anthologies they were in or their own novels, and some of them even sold out. Now here's the thing. As most of you know I don't see YDP as “I'm the boss and they're the employs” at all. I see YDP as sort of a community of writers and artists. When I say that "so and so" is one of our writers or artists, I'm not saying they belong to us. I'm basically saying they're part of our family, and that we proudly announce that they have done work for us. This guy... well he just became that bastard uncle no one talks about. At first my feelings were very hurt. No one likes to be snubbed, but then an amazing thing happened. Let me explain. You see, every artistic person – whether they will admit it or not – pursues success with their art for one reason and one reason only. We really want to stick it to all the people who were ever mean to us. We want to make them damn sorry that they ever dissed us. The cool kids picked on us all through school and kept us far away from the inner circle, allowing us only brief glances in so that it would hurt that much more when it was jerked away again. In our adult lives we've all had bosses and co-workers who looked down on us. For invitations to parties and promotions we never got, for being chosen last to play sports, for being rejected by all the pretty people… we just want to have that one shining moment when we can actually make them pay for our pain. Well, boys and girls, I got one of those moments. This guy snubbed me because I wasn't his very limited description of “cool,” and he decided if I wasn't that kind of cool, I wasn't really anybody. But you see, I now own one of the most respected micro presses around, and not only that but I have been in this business of ours for going on twenty years. I know, like, and am generally liked, by most everyone in this business. So it happened. This person sent a manuscript to another publisher. That publisher called to ask me what he was like to work with because he knew I’d worked with the guy. And I had my moment. I told my friend the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Further, it dawned on me that I could add this jackass to my list. We've talked about the list before. It's that list of people that every publisher and/or editor has that tells them who never to work with, or as in this case, work with again – and, yes, people, we do share that list. So... Are you someone? Turns out that I just might be. Shalom, Selina The Mothers' Curse, or Why Didn't We Stick To Goldfish
So everyone who had a
mother heard at least once in their life, "I hope someday you have children and they
act just like you, then you'll know what it's like." Now... if you believed yourself
cursed, didn't want to deal with the chances of having children just like yourself and
therefore had yourself fixed to make sure you could avoid the curse, then read no further.
You obviously are highly intelligent and therefore able to fight the instinctual animal
need to procreate. The rest of us are screwed!
I wanted nothing in
the world as much as I wanted a child of my own and actually worked very hard to get
pregnant. My son’s father and I spent countless hours in doctors’ offices,
waited and worked at it, taking my temperature every three seconds, the whole nine yards
until we conceived.
Why?
I gave up my figure
and whole sections of my life. Gave up everything I'd worked for in the twelve years
I was married to my son’s father so that he wouldn't even attempt to get custody of
my son and took off into the world with a $400.00 used pickup full of tools and a
six-year-old child, to try to eek out a living.
Why?
I took jobs most
people wouldn't have on a bet, at pay that kept me living at the poverty level, to make
sure I was home when my son was home. I wrote only after he'd gone to sleep and lived for
years on less than five hours of sleep a night to make sure that I was there any time he
needed me, while I wrote in the hopes of some day having a better life.
Why?
I went from being the
greatest mom in the world in his eyes to being the "Prison Warden" when he
became a teenager. I got even less sleep. I spent hours talking to him, trying to explain
why he couldn't do all the things his friends did.
Why?
Well, apparently the
answer to all these questions is – to make my mother happy. Because now I have this
twenty-two-year-old child who is constantly doing things far worse than I ever did, and
who has given me the agony I gave my parents ten times over, and now I know what I did to
my parents.
I recently went to my
mother and apologized for all the hell I had put her through over the years. She just
smiled and said I'd really been no trouble. I smiled back and said, "Oh, yes, I'm
sure you were over-joyed with the whole gay thing." She just said, "Well
that was a little unsettling."
See that's the
difference between my mother and me. She's normal. Her kids are doing crazy-assed things,
and she just takes it in stride. I'm not saying she doesn't worry because I know that she
does, but she truly believes that all will work out for the best in the end.
Not me, see I can't
help but look at my track record and come to the conclusion that everything's going to go
to hell in a hand basket on a good day.
I haven't had a good
day in a hellishly long time, because what children don't understand, -- my parents didn't
understand it, I didn't understand it and now my son doesn't get it – is that when
they are screwing up, when they're hurt, when they’re unhappy, you can't just go on
like it's business as usual. I think they're actually too young to understand what the
kind of love a parent has for a child is.
They get angry if you
even imply that their actions affect you adversely. If I try to explain this to my son he
just gets pissed off. I'm “laying a guilt trip on him”... Which I’d do in a
heart beat if I thought it would work.
It wouldn't, they
literally think you're an absolute moron at this age. They can't learn from your life
experiences because they won't even listen to what you have to say because they have
little if any respect for you
They don't understand
– and this is the real reason that we all want grand kids, because we know if they
have kids of their own, then someday they're going to come to us and say, "I'm sorry
I put you through such hell," and you can say, "That's all right. you weren't
really any trouble." But you'll know they know what they've done and now they're
truly sorry.
Life would be perfect,
if only you could stop worrying about the grandkids. Shalom, Selina Notice: I'm
leaving the first bitch in because most of you know it's all in good fun and I'm just
blowing off steam. However, someone has pointed out that I should A) shoot myself because
I'm pathetic, B) that neither Harpo or Oprah make a dime off the book club, and that C)
East of Eden is NOT in the public domain and that the publisher is making all the money. Since
my own information didn't come from perhaps the most reliable of sources, I'm going to
assume that there is a good chance that this rather angry man is right. So... I retract these parts of what you are
about to read below and willingly admit that I may not know what in the hell I'm
talking about. Thanks, Selina First
bitch... The freaking Oprah book club! In case you haven't heard, Oprah has restarted her
book club. Now did she reopen it with some new book by some new unknown author? No, of course not.
She opens it with John Steinbeck’s East Of Eden, a book that
most of us were forced to read in freaking high school. Now
many of you are saying to yourselves, "That's a great book, and it's good that it is
getting read... again." But me, I say it
freaking stinks and here's the reason why. There
are millions of books just as good, if not better, written by people who will die without
ever making a living in this business, and whose work will have the covers ripped off for
lack of sales, while meanwhile millions of people the country over are running out to
pluck down money to buy this book. For
those who don't know what this means here's a little clue Harpo – Oprah spelled
backwards – is going to make most of the money because the writer is dead, and if the
title is in public domain, Harpo stands to make even more. Now
as we all know Oprah is one of the richest women in the world, so she needs more money
like she needs a big fat hole in her head. Oprah
came from humble beginnings and worked her way up the ranks, so it's not like she doesn't
know what it's like to be at the bottom trying desperately to claw her way to the top. What
about throwing us some sort of crumb? The
dead guys don't need success or money to make them feel better about themselves. There
are writers, fantastic writers, whose whole lives would be changed forever for the better
if their books got one twentieth of the sales that the Oprah book club edition of East
of Eden got on its first day. Now Oprah gives people makeovers, has had houses built for the poor, and her "Angel Network" helped hundreds of people to obtain lifelong goals. So why does she choose to line her own pockets instead of helping some well deserving – living – writers to fulfill their goal of actually making a living writing? I
guess Oprah feels that some people are just more deserving of help than others. That some people’s dreams are more important
than others. Me... Well, if I had all the profit Oprah will make off East
Of Eden, I'd publish till I went broke. Second bitchBuying
into current trends in horror... Frankly,
this is a bitch primarily aimed at myself. The
writer/editor’s equivalent of a swift kick. See,
I have now published several books that I didn't actually like because they were well
written, and I was convinced by... well morons… that this was the future of horror. It turns out that this is actually only the
opinion of those writers who write this type of crap, and are trying to find a market for
it. These books have traditionally never sold
for us, and several titles will be phased out over the coming year or two because of the
serious lack of sales – as in we have lost money.
We have other titles that are being moved by the authors to other houses
because they were able to make bigger deals (Hurrah! We get excited when our friends
succeed), and at least one who has pulled their title because they feel they write
better now and that the book doesn't reflect the quality of their new work. These titles will also be disappearing in the
coming year or two, so... You won't actually know which titles or authors I'm bitching
about. HA! I
was told that the future of horror was all about artsy-fartsy, atmospheric crap, with no
really likeable characters, just tortured souls doing twisted things till the end of the
book where basically you are left feeling unclean and with no closure. One writer –
not one of ours – proudly described their work as being "Like an open wound that
won't close and just keeps oozing. I want to
leave the reader feeling vulnerable and lost without hope." I
should have run at that point because I just thought, “What a stupid, freaking
asshole!” You
see to me fiction should be well plotted stories with characters that drive the plot
along, with just enough setup so that you aren't saying, "Now how did that get
there?" I like likeable protagonists and
real villains I can hate. I also like books
with a beginning, middle and an ending that leaves me feeling good, and with a sense of
conflict resolved. I'm
not really into gross crap masquerading as a plot, and characters even their mother
doesn't love. "Heroes" that do one
stupid thing after another and often do really hideous things, till you wish someone would
kill them so that the book would end. I don't
give a good shit about the atmosphere of a piece, and why the hell do these clowns shy
away from the old “clichés and monsters”?
Maybe they're just afraid of success, because here's the thing – that I
have of course learned the hard way – our books that use "more traditional
horror" all sell really well, and these – we call them bastards around here
because no one loves them unless they actually bring us money – books consistently
don't sell at all. This
is what I get for not listening to my gut. The
books I like… well, they sell like hotcakes. Even
those that are slow starters eventually find their market.
The problem is that since I'm a writer I know that I have been on the other
end – more than once – of the editor who just simply doesn't like my work –
their opinion is clouding their judgment. I've
seen anthologies I've submitted to and didn't get in that published stories I didn't think
were as good as mine. And I just flat didn't
want to be that editor. I wanted to be fair
and say, "Well, I don't like this, but someone will." In
horror this was amplified by what I was being told were "The current trends." But
now I know that's all the shit. My judgment
is pretty sound, and if I don't like something then there's a good chance most YDP readers
aren't going to like it either. See, the
typical YDP reader and I are entertainment whores. We're
looking for something different, but that doesn't mean bad. The
real “current trend” in horror is that you can't give the shit away because
everyone has forgotten what really sells – entertaining, well told stories that make
people feel better about their abysmal lives. We
who have children – especially adult children – and aren't happy with the
current trend in politics, have enough to worry and fret about. We don't want to read something that leaves us
feeling "vulnerable and lost without hope." Now
the truth is that none of our books are that abysmal, but that's only because I edited
some of the crap out because I just couldn't make myself leave it in. Of course, to be honest, these “new trend
horror writers” are the only writers I've ever worked with who will argue with me
every inch of the way about edits, and in all truth most of the time I have given in
because – since I don't like or understand that kind of horror, how can I judge it? So I've spent as much as six weeks of my time line
editing one of these books only to have the author refuse to address about half the edits. As a result, several people I sent the books out
to for blurbs replied saying they couldn’t blurb the book. They apologized and gave me a list of why they
didn’t feel right doing so – a list which consisted – in each case –
of exactly, verbatim, the things I asked the writer to change that they would not. I'd
feel vindicated if it wasn't for the fact that I'm going to lose money. So...
the way I see it, I tried to make the book marketable, and they did everything in their
power to make sure that it wasn't. Then when
it fails abysmally – and if the past is any measure, it will – I'm out a bunch
of money. One of these failures is the reason
we will only be releasing four titles this year, and the authors always end up blaming
everything from the cover to my editing for the lack of sales. The
truth is I think the only people who they are trying to impress are the idiots who write
the same crap they do – and they don’t buy books. The
“new trend in horror”... Well, it's killing the whole horror market. It’s reached the point that you actually have
to call horror something else in order to sell it.
From now on I am going to trust my own judgment, and if I don't like something
we're not going to publish it. In
other words, I am now going to become that asshole editor who only prints what they like
– that one you've heard so much about. Shalom, Selina You've Got
Hate Mail!!! If you haven't already read it I had to
print a retraction on my last bitch. I got hate mail – scathing, venom dripping hate
mail – because I dared to say anything negative about Oprah. Not the Pope, not the
President, not Jesus, but Oprah. Now it turns out I wasn't even wrong. I have tipped possibly every holy cow
one can tip and never even the hint of a snotty letter in response. But apparently you can't dis Oprah and get away with it. Now after I had pointed out to the guy just how hateful his letter was he sent me a very nice apology explaining how he just didn't realize what he was saying was as bad as it was, but... too late. I'd already written this really great bitch, and I didn't want to throw it out and start over again. See here's the real problem, I didn't
know that any of you were reading my bitches and making all your decisions about people,
politics, places and things strictly on the basis of what I said. I thought you understood
that I'm mostly blowing off steam, that like FOX news I don't always have all my facts
straight. So here you go, let me make this
perfectly clear. This is not a reliable source of news – that's
posted on the news page – this is now, always has been, and always will
be strictly for entertainment value. Go figure, something called "The
Bitch of The Day" isn't serious news. Here's the thing that really bothered me
about this guy’s letter. See most of you know that I can't stand for anyone not to
like me, much less say mean things to me. So my first reaction was, "I'd better tone
down the bitches so that I don't piss people off. Besides I like Oprah, I
don't want people to think I don't." Then it hit me; that's what
“they’re” trying to do. We've seen it happening everywhere lately. People
express an unpopular opinion – or just one the rest of us have become to chicken shit
to express – and suddenly they're getting hate mail and threats and they're being
black listed. What they originally said gets blown out of proportion and before you know
it they're apologizing to the world because they happened to have an opinion that someone
else didn't have. I got dozens of letters from people
saying how funny my Oprah bitch was and how much they agreed. I got one hate letter and I
was ready to change this page completely forever. But this page is for us, not them. It's
for Sci/Fi writers and their fans who actually know what it's like to realize that
everyone, every single person who ever made it in this world, had to wait for some big
shot to throw them a crumb. And the bigger they are, the bigger crumb they got thrown.
They can say they're self-made, but no one truly is. Not you, not me, not the guy who
wrote and said if I had to depend on someone to throw me a crumb I should just shoot
myself. This guy said there aren’t enough
good books in the world to line a garbage can with. I'm thinking he just doesn't read that
much. Turns out he was dead wrong
about Harpo and Oprah not making a dime off the book club and East Of Eden.
The YDP network of spies was able to find out otherwise, though not able to find out any
details as to how much. But there is a considerable amount of money changing hands.
Knowing Oprah, most – if not all – of the money is going to support one of her
favorite charities. She has several, and they all do good work. You and I both know that wasn't really
the point of the bitch, because we know this business. It's all about getting that one
break that's going to make all the difference. Find me a successful writer who doesn't
have a “big break” story, and I'll throw in with "shoot yourself
guy." It's all about the right person seeing the right book at the right time. The point I was making was that if Oprah
had chosen to read something not on the classics and best sellers lists she might have
found a gem written by someone who could actually use a break. Pointing out that IF –
and I did say IF because I wasn't sure – the book was in public domain (and by the
way it's not. Our spies found that out, too) – Oprah would make a fortune was
just adding insult to injury. Not only did you not help someone else make a buck, but you
also made a bunch yourself doing it. Most of you knew that, but this guy just
saw someone taking pot shots at his social deity. I actually appreciate the fact that he
called me on the facts – if he had actually been right I wouldn't want to tell
you things that flat aren't true, but like I told this fellow you can tell someone they're
wrong without ending it with, "And you can go to hell, too!" I'm worried about this climate of
"You said something I don't like about one of the people I have deified so I'm going
to attack you." What ever happened to the pleasant discussion? The, "I disagree,
but you have a right to your opinion." The muttering to yourself as you walk away.
The silent boycott without demanding that everyone do the same. So... I'm going to continue to write the
bitches the way I always have. If people don't like it they can vilify me and not come to
the site anymore. If someone wants to call me on something I've said, and they can do it
without being a dick, then I'll listen and respond. If they can actually back their point
up with facts all the better. It's true that I made assumptions. Oprah's one of the richest women in the world, do any of you really believe she got there by being stupid? Do any of us really believe that she wants to make Penguin Books rich, while taking nothing either for herself or the charities she believes in? Now why the hell would she do this? Why would she put her name on something and then give all the money to a massive corporation that doesn't need any more money? This guy’s assumption that the publisher was going to make all the money on the book shows just how little he knows about our business. The book's not in public domain. That means the estate of Steinbeck gets a cut. Oprah's name is splashed all over the place and she's using her show to promote the book, she's getting a cut of the profits. Now what she chooses to do with those profits I don't know. I do know that all the profits from the book club gear go directly to Oprah's Angel Network, so maybe that's where the book money goes, too. We haven't able to find out, yet. But you'd have to be pretty naive to think that Oprah would just give a corporation millions of dollars in revenue. Do you think Oprah has a mafia? Should I
be worried? In the fish bowl of life I'm a guppy and she's a blue whale, do any of you
really believe that Oprah worries about what I say about her or her book club on my web
site? Consider that the Oprah Book Club edition of East of Eden sold more in an
hour than every Yard Dog Press title has over the last eight years. I don't think Oprah's too concerned with
me and what I have to say. If she were she'd grab up one of my books, read it, and either
fall in love with it and make it a best seller or declare her hatred for it and ruin me. Shalom, Selina Every
Dog Has Its Day
Bill said, "It
started out you had the comic book, and you're doing the comic book, and people are sort
of laughing and saying, Selina's doing a comic book. Then you did a few chapbooks, and
people were still laughing and saying, Selina's doing some chapbooks. Then you did
the comb-bound books, and people laughed (editors note-some of them more loudly than ever
before at this point), and said Selina's doing some books. Then we started doing the trade
paperbacks, and people were laughing and saying, look Selina's doing perfect-bound books.
Now suddenly they're realizing that it's not just me; there are a whole tribe of people
who make this happen, and there are all these books, and some of them are getting
nominations for awards and a couple of them have even won and people are like... Damn!
Yard Dog Press. They're still here, and they've got all these books. How the hell did that
happen?"
Believe
it or not, it didn't happen by accident. We've grown and succeeded because we have refused
to be pushed. We do things at our own pace. We do things as inexpensively as possible
until we see whether it will make money, and then and only then do we upscale.
Have we made mistakes
along the way? You bet you, and some of them rather expensive ones, but we have never
gambled with more than we could afford to lose, still pay our bills and stay in business.
Do we take chances?
Yep. Lots of the stuff we print no one else would touch with a ten-foot pole. It's
different – for many reasons. I like to think of our titles as being like a box of
assorted chocolates; no one’s going to like all of them, most of them will be
alright, and there are going to be a couple they down right dislike, but there are
going to be a few that they absolutely love.
That's what we're all
about, folks. Printing the good stuff you can't get anywhere else. We aren't publishing it
for other writers, or for other publishers, and we certainly aren't publishing it for
reviewers. We are publishing it for readers – and specifically for those readers whom
the mega publishing houses have forgotten. Hard working folks who still like to read
and who want something entertaining that's not going to be just like the last thing
they read.
I recently read a
review where the reviewer was bitching about the price of our chapbooks. They contended
that for just $2.00 more you could buy a full-length mass-market paperback by a well-known
author. I suppose this is true, but let's look at the facts here for a moment. Because it
is a mass-market paperback it cost the publisher about ten cents to reproduce. The
chapbooks cost us about $2.00 largely because we make them ourselves by hand. I'm sure that we can all agree that the writer
ought to make some money, right? As it is
when these books sell through a distributor (for the full $6.00 price) we make about
ten cents each – which we then have to split with the author so that we each make
five cents apiece. So... who’s actually ripping off the reader? And as for the
well-known author snip, some very rich and very famous writers have written the worst
crap you've ever read.
Most of our chapbooks
are a good two to four hour read depending on their word count and how fast you read. The
average mass-market paper back in the $7.00 price range is a good six to twelve hour read.
So I guess if you're just looking at how much time you can waste, then you'd better get
that fat book, cause it's more bang for your buck. However, I contend that the average YDP
reader not only understands, but also appreciates that there is more actual story being
told in one of these chapbooks than there are in some of these huge tomes.
I believe our readers
are every bit as exceptional as our writers and artists are. I think they still appreciate
quality over quantity. If a story that took you ten minutes to read stays with you for
weeks, but a book that took you three weeks to read is forgotten overnight, then
which story holds the true value?
We are a micro
press. We are working towards no other goal; we are where we want to be. I think this fact
shocks people. At this point people ask me what I see next for YDP and I say,
"Continue to print between four and five perfect bounds a year, five to six chap
books."
New York need not
tremble in fear of us; we don't want or need their attention.
If it weren’t for
the writers wanting it, I'd never run a single ad or send a single copy out for review. I
know they think both these things are important, the difference – as they say –
between wishing and having. But I have yet to have any review sell enough books to pay for
even the review copies I sent out much less postage. And the ads... Well, they didn't
bring enough sales to pay for even a quarter of their cost.
See, when it all comes
down to it there are only really two things that sell small press books. First is author
involvement. And second, more important than
the first, is readers telling other readers how much they loved a book. The truth is that
the only reviews I know sell books are the ones
that are up on Amazon.com, because people are there surfing around, looking for books, and
when they see one with a bunch of stars and read what other readers have to say they buy
the books.
Truth is a bad
professional review seems to hurt sales, but a positive professional review, while nice,
doesn't seem to carry over to sales of the book. Sad but true. If you think about it,
it makes a certain amount of sense. Professionals read the reviews, but how many
readers actually read reviews? Of them, how many make their decisions based solely on what
they read in a review? Not many. Most readers know that a review is largely reflective of
the reviewer’s own personal tastes. Now there are some readers who know a certain
reviewer has their identical taste, and they will buy anything that reviewer says is good
because they know they can trust their judgment.
There is this one
reviewer who has a bad reputation because he finds more negative than positive things to
say about every single book he reviews. There is another reviewer who has a bad reputation
because she gives great reviews to every book she reads. There are some reviewers who have
great integrity and judgment and that people have grown to trust. (Don't want people to
think I hate reviewers, after all some of my best friends are reviewers.)
One reviewer said
something about Bubbas of the Apocalypse, which they probably meant in a negative
way. This isn't, of course, an exact quote because I'm much too lazy to look it up, but it
was something to the effect of, "Bubbas of the Apocalypse is like someone
said, hey I've got all these friends and I've got a barn, let’s put on a show."
However
the reviewer meant it, I took one look and said, “Well, yee haw! Someone finally got it!”
People
in the industry can make fun of us all they like. The fact is that a lot of those people
who made fun of us aren't around anymore. Their houses folded like maxi pads in a vending
machine (A little YDP history, That's a line from the very first Yard Dog Willie and
Splotch from the very first comic book). Whether they like it or not, we're still here,
and we're a print house. We make
books, and people buy those books.
Every Dog has its day. Shalom, Selina
Bonus Bitch – This has really been a month! As most of you know I have a micro farm – which is actually just under two acres – on which I raise between sixty and eighty percent of our food depending on what sort of weather we have. In order to do this successfully everything has to be micro-managed. So, when you see the grasshopper you immediately see something you need being eaten by that grasshopper, so you kill it. There is a very careful balancing act. If an animal eats more than they produce, they have to go. If a variety of fruit or vegetable doesn't bear as well as another or is more prone to disease, you grub it out and replace it with something more productive. Manure from the animals is transported to the garden, pastures, and fruit trees. Bad fruit, weeds, or rotten vegetables are fed to the animals or added to the compost heap. This year you plant this here, and next year you plant it there. Pastures have to be fertilized and reseeded twice a year in order to keep the field and the animals healthy. Regular spraying, worming and maintenance keep problems to a minimum because, you see, when your farm is this small, if just one thing goes wrong it causes a chain reaction. If you give too much land to garden, there isn't enough pastureland for your animals, but if you have too many animals, there won't be enough to feed them. And nothing can be changed overnight. Every single thing takes great, copious amounts of time and of patience. You plant a fruit tree, and if you can keep it alive you won't get fruit from it for four to five years. You nurse an animal through a sickness, and it could take years to recoup the money you put into it. I realized just the other day that you run a successful micro press the same way. You can't get in a hurry; you have to do everything slowly and deliberately. Lately I feel like my mantra should be, if you don't like the way I do business then don't send me your work! A couple of writers are driving me nuts. They signed with us knowing who and what we were. Now I have never called anyone up begging to see their work, or asking them to write something for us. If people send me their work I assume they know how I run my business. Apparently these people think I should change the way I do my business to accommodate their needs and desires. Every writer wants huge distribution; they want their book in all the bookstores across the country. Now we work through Amazon, Baker & Taylor, and a couple of smaller distributors. Between all of them they never take more than fifty copies at any time of any one book. Thank God! For those writers who just feel like I'm holding them back, here's what mass distribution of your book means to me. Let’s say that Baker & Taylor orders 5,000 copies of your book. This costs me $15,000 to $25,000 dollars that I don't have, so I have to borrow it so I can print 5,000 copies of your book. I have to ship your books at my cost – that’s a given with distributors. I now receive no payment for these books for at least six months – and recently it’s more like eighteen months. In the meantime it takes all my money just to make the payments on the loan I took out to print your book, so no one else's book gets printed. Finally, after six (or 18) months they send me $5000.00 and 4,050 copies of your book which are now shelf worn, and will have to be discounted if I can sell them at all. Your sales were so abysmal because no one knew who the hell you were. I am now deeply in debt, and I have no money to even print the books I have under contract, so I'm now looking at lawsuits. You have just shit-canned my entire company and destroyed the dreams of less greedy writers trying to get what you wanted. Thanks a whole hell of a lot! Now here’s my way. I advertise your book and put it on Amazon when I actually have it in my hands – they won’t take it from us earlier. We sell some here; we sell some there. If the book is good and well received we sell the first hundred and I print more with the money I have already made on the book. Sales increase as word of mouth gets around and as the writer makes appearances to promote their work. Guess what? It takes you a whole year to sell that five hundred copies, but I'm still standing, and you aren't going down as the writer that single-handedly killed Yard Dog Press. Believe me I'd talk – all the dogs would. There is a definite difference between promoting your work and making the sales and getting a distributor interested so you can look like a big shot while you kill me financially. Dusty Rainbolt sold over a hundred copies of her book in under two weeks – all at full price – all of the money to be split between herself and us – nothing for a distributor. Others of our writers have done the same thing. I know no one believes me, so I'm saying these things again. First, I don't want to be anything but a Micro Press. Second, my ultimate goal is to be a mail order company, because that's where all the money is. Third, and I'm sure this won't be the last time I say this, if you don't like the way I run things and don't want to play by my rules, don't send me your damn work! Believe me, you don't want to be the grasshopper in my garden. Shalom, Selina The
World Is Shrinking The
Gaps Are Growing Something happens across the globe and we hear about it in seconds. Disease can spread from one country to another in days. You can be across the ocean in hours, and yet the gap between the “haves” and the “have-nots” has never been such a gaping chasm – at least not in my lifetime. I blame the current administration, mega corporations, and the Religious Right for most of this country’s current ills. Many of you no doubt disagree with me. There is no need for you to write and tell me; I have the Fox news network to give me your opinion. I'm forty-three years old, and I was supposed to be sitting on easy street by now. At least that's what I thought. Just three short years ago it looked like I was going to finally have everything I had ever worked for and then some. I was finally in that wonderful position of being able to quit my hated day job, write, and still be financially comfortable. I got to sit in that heady, euphoric place of security for all of about six months, and then the bottom dropped out of the economy and subsequently my life. I'm not alone, if I were... Well, if I were alone, then there wouldn't be a problem, and things would be zooming along. See, if this was only one person’s problem, then everyone else would have plenty of money to spare, and... Well, I'm sure you get the picture. I wonder if the big corporations do. See, they love the way the country is going right now. They are buying up stuff cheaply while basically making the same amount of money because they're laying people off left, right, and center. Now they're going to move their factories to other countries where they don't have to worry about slave labor, can pay less for product, sell us even crappier goods, charge us more, and get richer and richer and richer. That's what a corporate-owned world is all about, boys and girls. Five big shots at the top banging heads trying to knock each other out of the bull ring till one of them owns everything. We're all guilty of helping them screw us, of course. We all know that places like Wal-Mart kill entire downtown areas and cost two jobs for every person they employ, but we all shop there because we can't afford to go anywhere else. They've made sure of it, by using the law of supply and demand. They go to a factory and say, “We want to buy everything you've got.” So the factory quits selling to anyone else, these businesses have to get product from someplace else and spend more, so these stores get priced out of the competitive market. Then when Wal-Mart has successfully killed off all the other competitors for the product, they go to the factory and say, "Hey, we're only going to pay such and such for the product." People get laid off and everyone else does more work for the same pay. I'm just using Wal-Mart as an example, but Barnes and Noble does it, Starbucks does it... all the corporate business do it. They are skirting around laws and basically abusing the free enterprise system. But here's something I think the corporations have forgotten in their attempt to take over the country and turn us into a slave labor force. Americans are the number one consumers in the world. If you move all your factories to other parts of the world, if you continue to make less of us do more, and make American labor obsolete, none of us will have jobs. If we don't have jobs, we can't buy the crap you make in Mexico. At thirty-three I looked at my life and said, "Gee, I thought I would have made it by now, but surely by the time I'm forty-three I will have made it." Now I'm forty-three, and I'm in worse shape than I was in at thirty-three. I now work twice as many hours to make half what I used to make. I still love to write, but most of the time I'm not writing. Most of my time is spent editing and working on this company. (This is one of the reasons I now have no patience with people who don't take editorial direction and who expect me to jump through hoops to sell their books.) Will fifty-three be better, or will it be worse with me working even more hours to have even less? I heard a guy on the Fox News talking about what a bunch of whiney babies we all are. How much worse other people have it in other countries. How it's about time we get a taste of how hard life can really be. I'm looking at this guy with some big shot political title, in a five hundred dollar suit, and I'm wondering if he's felt the bite of this "recession" at all. When people work all their lives for something, they expect that eventually it's going to pay off. That's what the American dream meant to me -- that if you worked really hard you could be anything that you wanted to be. That hard work and perseverance would always pay off in the end. I'm ashamed to say that it turns out that this the American farce. Hard work and perseverance only pay off if you actually happen to be rich in the first place. In which case your idea of a really hard day’s work is playing racquetball with a client and then sitting through an especially long power lunch. It's easy for these rich, pampered, privileged few to run around telling us we're spoiled, whining, and unreasonable about what we want from our lives. Telling us we're going to have to tighten our belts as they stand at a dinner party in shoes that cost more than most of us make in a month, eating caviar off hundred dollar bills. You can bet your sweet ass that none of them are looking at the possibilities of losing their homes, their vehicles, their business, and basically everything else they have ever worked for. Everywhere you look you see houses for sale – people desperately trying to sell their homes before they lose all their equity – and I see the rich and the powerful buying those houses for little more than the existing note. The same is true of business and land. The rich are preying on the misery of the lower middle class. “Middle class” is becoming a joke. I don't think the American people are spoiled or whining. I think we work hard, and we were promised that if we worked hard life would be good, but it's not. The rich now get help to send their kids to private school even as public school falls apart. The bulk of Americans still run around without health care. Now our very jobs and business are at stake, and the country is in so much debt that our great-grandchildren will be paying for it. And our rights, our freedoms? Well those were given away with "Home Land Security." What's the answer? Vote! Think about who you are voting for and why. Buy from independent stores whenever you can afford it. Finally, if you want to save America and freedom, buy Yard Dog Press books. Hey! It's a start.
Ten
things not to do to your publisher if you ever want them to publish you again 1. Your contract says 80 thousand words max so send 130. It's exactly the same isn't it? 2. Your editor tells you to send the manuscript in January because they'll have more time to work on it. Send it in March, at least two weeks after the actual due date on the contract. 3. Argue with the editor over everything they say. 4. When the editor tells you to cut ALL repeated scenes and sixty pages of text leave all but ten thousand words in and tell your editor that you are doing this to set up your next book. 5. Bitch about your cover art in a three-page letter to your publisher, but don't stop there. Send it to all your writer friends with a note attached that says, "Tell me if you think this sucks as much as I do." Explain to your publisher that all your friends agree with you. 6. Take six months to turn in your rewrite, and then bitch about the length of time it takes the copy editor and technical editor to set up your book. 7. Ask at least once a week why the publisher isn't posting your book for presales. After all, those two sales will make all the difference in the world. 8. Ask the publisher to mail out dozens of galleys to people they've never heard of. When they don't send out all you ask for, make up your own galleys and send them off. Make a point of telling the publisher you did this. 9. Because you didn't make the changes the editor asked you to make, the well-known authors who were supposed to blurb your book refused. So you get your friends – who few people have heard of – to blurb your book. Then rub it in the publisher’s face that you were able to get blurbs when they weren't. 10. Constantly tell the publisher what they ought to be doing to best sell your book, in spite of the fact that this is your first book sale. Constantly act as if you know much more about the business than they ever will. Yes, these are the things to consider doing if you want to guarantee that you will be a struggling, tortured author-type for the rest of your life. Let the publisher know that you're no sell-out. Not only are you not going to make it easy for them to like your book, you'll make it damn near impossible. The best way to insure constant failure is to make those people who are only trying to make your work the best and most salable it can be want to rip out all their hair and pray for death, because of course while they're doing this they'll be able to smile as they tell someone how great your book is. Nothing quite pleases a publisher like losing a bundle of money on a book because the author clung to their integrity at the expense of the work. I know what I want, people, and you aren't going to change my mind. Check out ANY house you send your work to. If they don't come up to your expectations, then don't send them your work. Don't sign with someone and then expect them to run their business the way you would. You wouldn't do that to Tor or Baen, so don't do it to me or any other small press. We have a hell of a lot more invested in a single title then those big bugger-heads do. So... once again, don't
send me your freaking book if you don't like the way I do business! Shalom, Selina
Getting older
or... where has all my elasticity gone? Oh, it stretches out; it just doesn't spring out. As if arthritis, dimming eyesight and fading hearing weren't bad enough, you reach a certain age and everything just drops. Sometime in my mid-thirties I went to bed with breasts and woke up with these two pendulous things hanging on my chest, which since then have moved ever further south until it now looks like I have two tube socks with onions stuck in the end. Not a pretty sight. I have also grown batwing-like appendages under each of my arms. This as a flap of skin that hangs down under each arm. If you press a flashlight against the backside of this flap, the light will shine through the front. My ass now hangs down to my knees, hanging from my neck I now have these jowl things, and there is a permanent line between my eyebrows that you could lose a penny in. And now my belly button lives in the crevice of my two stomachs. I can only see it if I pull the top part up and look into the mirror. I'm thinking seriously of having that area tattooed. Remember the old MAD Magazine fold-ins? Well, I'm thinking I could get one picture done now, and in another ten years when it folded over it could be another picture. That might be fun. And what else can you really do about it, but laugh? Old age happens to us all; aging gracefully is a commercial farce. If you're rich you can just get everything vacuumed, tucked, and reloaded till your belly button’s on your chest, and your eyebrows have been pulled up so far that they help cover your hair loss problem. But on the inside – where it counts – you're still going to be old. I don't care if I look like I'm twenty if I feel like I'm sixty. In fact, I want to look as old as I feel, then people will be less likely to ask me to do things I don't feel like doing. I don't care if my legs look like they belong to a thirty year old if I have a catch in my left knee and the cartilage is gone in my right. Seems like everyone in Hollywood is having something done, but I don't think they understand that when all is done and said that they don't look good. Most of them just look scary to me. Plastic surgeons are getting rich making people look like plastic caricatures of themselves. I'm getting older; I hate it, but it's a sad fact of life. I look like shit, and that sucks! I don't feel as good or as strong as I used to, and that's even worse. But I have earned every sag, every wrinkle, every creak, and every moan. Unless I can feel twenty again – and, no, I don't mean anything that includes 20-year-old hookers – I sure as hell don't want to try to look 20 again. I do wish, however, that someone would invent a bra that would keep me from tripping over my tits. Second Bitch If I ain't talking to you, don't listen. I hate people who police other people's conversations and think it's their duty to tell you if they think you're wrong. If I'm not talking directly to you, then it's none of your damn business what I'm saying unless I'm talking about blowing up the building your standing in. Case in point. One of our writers was recently at a convention where they attended a very disappointing panel. Afterwards they were telling a friend that they thought the panel was going to be more about how the authors on the panel wrote about the subject and what research they had done instead of just a bunch of people talking amongst themselves seldom on topic at all. A woman who overheard their conversation says to our writer, “Well... maybe what you need is a writer workshop." What the hell is wrong with this woman! Who the hell does she think she is? I don't care if she's the biggest writer, editor, or publisher in the building. NO one's talking to you! NO one's talking about you. So why is it your business, and how dare you say something so rude to someone you don't know? The panel worked for you; that's fine. It didn't work for them; they weren't making a public outcry, they were just bitching to a friend about it. Mind your own dam, business; get a life. Here's a clue – If I'm not talking to you, maybe you shouldn't be listening! Shalom, Selina
Periodic
Problems Women,
leave men alone! Why on earth would they want
to get in touch with their feminine side! Equality
would be wonderful, but face it; women will never be equal as long as we keep bleeding
from our sexual organs. Hell, how can we even
expect to be taken seriously? This has got to
be absolutely the most insulting, uncomfortable, and humiliating thing thrust upon any
living creature on the planet. It
would be slightly less aggravating if you could actually decide when blood would
drip from your body to be trapped in either a cotton or gel-filled apparatus, but you have
no choice. And here's the real kicker – the rest of the world will not schedule
important, or even enjoyable, events to accommodate your period. This is of course because we don't all have our periods at the same time, unless of course you live in the same house, then every woman gushes together, no doubt to promote survival of the fittest. At the end of five days, whoever is still standing is the alpha female. Any male living with more than one menstruating woman should leave home till the bleeding has stopped and life has returned to normal. Because you see there isn't just the inconvenience and embarrassment of the bleeding, oh no, there are also the sever abdominal cramps, leg aches, head aches and let us never forget the moo |