My Book and Other Short Stories

I’d like to write a book someday. It seems like one of those cool things to do and more significantly it satisfies the following two important criteria:

1. It will earn me some money, and
2. [I think] I can do it.

There are plenty of little problems along the way though. For example, I haven’t a darned clue what I’m going to write the book about or even, for that matter, which genre of literature it should belong to. My Experiences With Women seemed like a good idea for a while, but like I’ve said before somewhere, I’m not a big fan of fantasy fiction. A Dull and Boring Teenage Life, on the other hand, is very writable, but I’m not sure I could even convince my own wife to spend her money on buying something like that. (And let’s not forget that we’re talking about a lady who’d buy a pair of shoes just because they’ll “look nice next to that other pair in her wardrobe”.)

Humor sounds doable. I could possibly write something funny. Well, funny to me at least. And therein lies my next problem. Most of the things that crack me up rarely have much effect on too many other people. I guess if it’s EXTREMELY funny, I might be able to con myself into buying 853,000 copies of the book. But that would make me the first penniless person to be famous since -- ummm, K-Fed. And I don’t want to go there.

I need a sure-shot plan for getting rich by writing, and that too one that doesn’t call for too much talent. If you think that’s impossible, I have one name for you -- Sidney Sheldon. Anyway, here’s my plan. I’m going to write a suspense novel. It’ll have a long, winding plot. There’ll be plenty of sex, lies, scandal, murder, smashing-in-of-skulls-using-crowbars, and maybe even some violent crime. There’ll be hot, rich bombshells, and dirty scallywags and the occasional hooker thrown in. Someone might die somewhere along the way (though I’m not promising you anything just yet), and some new characters may be born. Everything that you can think of will be there in the book.

Now here’s the REALLY brilliant part of the plan. I end the book right in the MIDDLE of the suspense. Then a year later, a release another book -- one that promises to put an end the suspense created by the first one. Everyone who’s bought the first book will just HAVE to buy this one. And those who want to buy this one will have to buy the first. (Double profits! Yippee!) Once again there’ll be everything in it! Everything, that is, except the ending. That I shall save for the third book of the series, where I’ll shall reveal that I’m actually saving it for the fourth book. I’m not sure I can fool an entire population of stupid, book-buying idiots any more than that, so there won’t actually be a fifth book. People might start to get a little cheesed off with me after this, but by then I’m hoping to be rich enough to buy the planet Mars, where I’ll be safe from the suspense-charged masses crying for my blood.

Now I crawl into a little thinking-hole to conjure up a good name for the hooker.