DAHLINGS-
The gall! The cheek! The sheer effrontery!
As my dear dead friend Lana Turner would say, “the nerve of some people”!
My deathless work, my creation, my book, has been TURNED DOWN by a worthless, know-nothing personage in the doesn’t-deserved-to-called-the-publishing business. The non-publishing business is more like it. And why? WHY?
Because, I was told, my protagonist is not “sympathetic enough”!
Pardonnez moi, you clot, but the protagonist is ME!
MOI!
A writer who has charmed millions with the sheer deliciousness of her prose. A writer whose blog-thing reaches millions of worshipful fans every week. A woman who has been written about in The New York Times, Glamour, international magazines, countless websites, and even Vogue.
How could I, a hard-working woman who has done naught but devote herself to the cause of Fashion In The True Sense (with an occasional veering off the topic), be considered unsympathetic?
I clutched my silk handkerchief to my copious bosom as I read the cold email from this—this non-entity, and then I began to sob. Yes, mon adoration publique, I cried, as only a woman rejected by a publisher can cry.
If the lumpkin had the nerve to face me, I would have sicc'd Bucky on this person so fast they'd never known how their ankles got shredded.
Then I realized: it is not that I am an unsympathetic character. Far from it. One admits that keeping an assistant is problematic, but that is their fault, not mine. I am a deeply sympathetic character, a symbol of working females everywhere, in every business. Outside a façade of confidence, inside there is a vulnerable heart. At least occasionally.
The TRUTH is that my book would rip the lid OFF the can of worms that is the fashion business, particularly where fashion intersects with celebrity, greed, and television cameras. My book names the names (well, not all of them, I don’t have that much money to pay in legal fees), exposes the dirty secrets of those would style the stars and the unspeakable acts to which they will stoop. I am not talking about moi, here, of course. But there are people out there who know of what I speak.
And that, my dear readers, is the reason my book will likely not see the light of day: until some courageous publisher is willing to stand up to Big Fashion and say, “Enough! Let the facts come to light! This courageous fashion-fighter needs to be heard, and now!”
Besides, my book would make a superb movie. Starring moi, of course.
Or I might be persuaded to settle for a Broadway show. (There are some superbly-written sex scenes, to boot.)
Unsympathetic, bah!
I must reclaim my inner peace by screaming at the maid. There are wet towels in the bathroom.
Ciao,
Elisa & Bucky the Wonderdog
