My novel frustrations

It was the call I’d been dreaming of since I first began submitting my satiric novel to agents years and years ago. It was later summarized in an e-mail I can’t quit reading.

“First of all, I want to say that you have such a unique, distinctive voice,” wrote the prestigious agent. “You also have an amazing sense of humor and consequently, your prose positively vibrates with energy. Our team of readers had wonderful things to say about this book and even threw out comparisons to Kurt Vonnegut and Christopher Moore.”

She is a founder of a top New York literary group that finds book contracts for authors with prestigious publishers.

I’m author of the world’s most rejected novel.

It is “The Last Baby Boomer: The Story of the Ultimate Ghoul Pool.” It’s about Martin J. McCrae, who in the year 2081 will be identified by government demographers as the world’s last baby boomer.

The premise is that people will be so sick of baby boomers by then they’ll isolate him in a museum suite. Contestants will pay $25 to spend 15 minutes with him. If they’re in the room when he dies, they win the jackpot.

One problem: He just won’t die.

I’ve spent years cycling it through submission and rejection to then sit it on a shelf for as long as a year until I was ready to flog the heck out of the thing in the hopes of making it irresistible. 

The conference call from this agency had me convinced that’s exactly what I’d finally done.

It couldn’t have gone better.

She said they wanted me to take the time to really polish it, go over it with an editor then zip it back to them for submission to top publishers.

“It’s great right now, but are you willing to take the time to make it  really special.”

I can do it!

“Don’t rush it. And get it back to us in . . .”

Yes?

“One year. Or two. Really take your time.”

Huh?

“There’s no way any of us could ever forget a character like Marty McCrae, so please do take the time you need to make this book the best it can be!”

One year? Two?

With sufficient motivation and the right doctors, I could be well on my way to becoming a woman by then.

Who knows what state the publishing industry will be like then? Will people still be reading books? Will some unscrupulous hack thieve my idea? Will the earth still  even exist in two years?

I take pride in working lightning fast. It’s my newspaper background. It’s more workmanlike than prissy artistry and it serves me well.

Last fall I submitted a story pitch to MSNBC.com about what people named Pat Downs think about TSA pat downs.

Excited editors called me right up and said in a panic, “Can you have this to us in 12 hours?”

I did it in three.

To have someone gift-wrap a dream come true and then defer it for 12 to 24 months is like telling a 6 year old on December 24 it’s going to be the best Christmas ever -- and he can start unwrapping presents in June.

It’s maddening.

So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to bust my rear on once again taking the book apart, changing every verb, examining every character and making sure every sentence crackles with wit and purpose.

And I plan on having it done in three lickety-split months.

Then with the time left over I’ll take those aforementioned steps and start the process of becoming a woman.

Because if anything happens in the interim that would interfere with successful publication of my cherished novel, then I’m going to become a real drama queen.

And I’ll at least want to look the part.

What Pat Downs thinks about pat downs

Here’s a story that ran Tuesday on msnbc.com and, hey, they pay! I’d already scored a couple of holiday assignments from them, but this one is special to me because it's the first and it came straight from my blog.


I’d posted on Monday a blog bit about invasive airport pat downs titled “Keep me safe! Touch my junk!”

As usual, it meandered all over the place as I, uh, groped for a snappy conclusion. Out of nowhere, this popped into my head:

“I think I’m going to spend the day searching the internet for a Patrick or a Patricia Downs to ask them if they’re invasive by nature or upset that people are hating all these pat downs. I’ll let you know if anything comes of it.”

Well, this is what came of it. I pitched the idea to an editor there and she asked if I could have it to her in 24 hours. It was a cinch. There must be 10,000 people named Pat Downs on Facebook and five of them called right back.

So here you go. I wish you a truly Happy Thanksgiving and urge you all to download the 2006 Ray Davies song, “Thanksgiving Day,” and make it a tradition of playing it full blast first thing in the morning to get our best holiday off on the right foot.

Leave it to a Brit to write the song about the quintessential American holiday.

Read on . . .

It was bound to happen. A quiet backlash is brewing amongst the people who love pat downs, enjoy pat downs and, gadzooks, have even become parents because of loving encounters with pat downs.

Talk about invasive procedures.

“I absolutely adore my Pat Downs,” says Jim Downs, who in a 1972 act of holy matrimony turned his beloved fiancee into something an increasing number of fidgety travelers denounce with venom.

He turned a perfectly respectable Pat Reed into Pat Downs.

“I flipped on the news the other day and saw scrolling across the bottom, ‘People angry about pat downs at the airport,’ and I thought, ‘I don’t remember angering anyone at the airport,’” says Pat Downs, an Avenel, Maryland, secretary. 

News reports late Monday indicated the government intends to reduce the number of pat downs, something that ought to make a number of confused and frightened Pat Downs flee for the border.

Thanks to the TSA’s intimate security measures, pat downs have overnight become a national punching bag. They do pat down skits on SNL, cable news channels air experts debating the efficacy of pat downs at the airport and at coffee shops, taverns, and hair salons across the nation, the topic of pat downs has become a conversational lightning rod.

Well, let’s clear the air.

First of all, there are Pat Downs in nearly every town in America. Pat Downs delivers your mail in Toledo. She teaches piano in Spokane. You could be sitting right next to a genuine Pat Downs on a bus and never even know it.

They’re just like the rest of us.

“I put on my Facebook page the other night, ‘I am Pat Downs and I do not appreciate people not wanting me in their airports!’” says Pat Downs, a 48-year-old systems administrator for a Little Rock, Arkansas, general contractor.

She said the onslaught of news stories about Pat Downs has put a focus on a name that for years had been unburdened by any snickering notoriety. 

“A friend of mine, I’ve known him for years, never made any connection about my name until he saw ‘Pat Downs’ in a headline,” she says. “Now, he thinks it’s hilarious.”

Others, like 33-year-old Pat Downs of Toledo, Ohio, was so enamored with the name’s connotations he almost let it dictate his career.

“Honest, I almost went into law enforcement because I wanted to be known every where I went as Officer Pat Downs,” he says. “Instead I became a mailman for the U.S. Postal Service.”

Now he’s postman Pat Downs, something that goes far beyond the normal job description.

Whenever he wants to avoid hearing predictable jokes, he simply introduces himself as Patrick Downs so most people fail to making the obvious connection.

Of course, some of those who love their Pat Downs will hasten to inform others that they are getting their pat downs from the real thing.

“I’m a mechanic and I heard the guys talking about pat downs and I told them I know everything there is to know about Pat Downs,” says Jim Downs, 68. “She’s the mother of my two kids. I’ve loved her since the day we met. When people say they hate pat downs, I tell them they’ve never met my Pat Downs. I’m a lucky man to have Pat Downs in my life.”

As for the crux of the debate, Pat Downs it seems are, like the rest of us, divided on pat downs.

“I disagree with the procedure,” says the Toledo Pat Downs. “I know these guys have a job to do and are only getting paid about $12 an hour. I’m sure they’re not thrilled about it either. But I don’t think they should be able to use the front of their hands or come that close to the private parts. I wouldn’t want them doing that to my daughter.”

Little Rock Pat Downs, however, disagrees. “I don’t really see the problem,” she says. “It’s done in public and not in a private area behind closed doors. If it prevents anyone from getting on a plane with a bomb, then I’m for it. It makes me feel safer. We’ve already had one underwear bomber so it’s not like this is something someone just dreamed up.”

So let’s hope that clears up some misconceptions and restores some civility to a debate about what we have to expect from Pat Downs -- “a delicious barbecue chicken for one thing,” according to Jim Downs. “She’s a great cook, but that chicken’s outstanding.”

And then there’s this: Of all the Pat Downs surveyed for this story, Pat Downses from around the country, not a one of them confessed to an urge to spend a long day going from one garage sale to another to browse over tables of stuff you no longer want.

In short, Pat Downs don’t want anything to do with your junk.