A Writer’s Frustration – Schemes to get Published. Pt 1 - The Stephanie Meyer School of Writing

         Despite writing seven novels of a strong literary merit in a variety of genres, I am yet to find an agent willing to even look at my work, let alone a publisher. Here then, are some ideas to boost that possibility. 

A Writer’s Frustration – Schemes to get Published

Part 1 of 3 - The Stephanie Meyer School of Writing 

He's just sooo sensitive!

Reinvent the genre. You know what I mean. Vampires that believe in sex after marriage. Vampires that can walk around in the daylight and sparkle. Vampires who don't kill. I could do this too. Forget tradition and all that. There’s money to be made.

I was thinking along the lines of werewolves who sleep at night. No? How about a lonely down and out Dracula? We’ll call it True Mud. We want readers to feel sorry for him so he definitely can’t eat people. He could live on dung beetles. No, that’s almost as dumb as sparkling vampires.

How about gay fairies? You leave your tooth in a glass, get left a dollar and wake up gay!

No, too out there. Has to be more, I don’t know, beige. So safe your great-grandmother wouldn’t be offended. How about Frankenstein? Instead of being created from body parts, (that’s sooo gross), we’ll make him born of an immaculate birth (no sex, ew). We don't want to scare anyone either so instead of a scary guy, we’ll make him a hot her. Franken-sheila.

Brilliant. We’ll set it in the Australian Outback. She’s an American journalist and travels to do a story. She meets a Doctor, like the traditional Dr. Frankenstein, except he works in the Flying Doctor service. 

He goes around stealing organs from the rich to give to the poor. That way, we keep some of the whole yucky body parts tradition alive. Wouldn’t want people to get too upset with me. There’s an element of Robin Hood in there too! She’s a lot like Marion. Don’t want her to be too smart either. Stephanie Meyer is a housewife after all, so we’ll make her a bimbo tourist. Genius! We’ll throw in a bit of Colleen McCullough’s The Thorn Birds in there and make it a real love fest. They can Konoodle on the plane over Ayers Rock or Uluru or whatever you want to call it. 

Uluru at sunset - My photo - 2006

We’ll call it Cradle Rock, because who cares about sticking to folklore right? Tradition? What’s that? Fuck it, we’ll call it Konoodle Rock and they can get married on top. Then, and only then, can they consummate the relationship. Missionary style of course.

I just heard a hundred million teenage voices go aahhhhhhhh.

I think I’m going to be rich.

(2021 Update, after several small books published, I went my own way. Now there's plenty for you at...)

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