Pan and the Housewife

Stepfordian contentment washes over her as she gazes out the picture window, her favorite jelly jar glass lathered with a healthy dose of antibacterial dish soap. The gentle foliage of her backyard wafts to and fro in the wind. She inhales the perfection of her life.

An unnatural motion parts her forsythia bush.

Impossibly, a man steps out into the expanse of grass. The jelly jar slips from her hand and shatters in the sink. His filthy skin, the bulging tattered dungarees. And the axe, the swinging axe. She clutches the Formica counter–something real. Fear and unmistakable arousal blind her to everything but him.

She swallows hard against it.

His arms flail and whip, the axe arcing wildly in the space around him. He stops all motion and locks his eyes onto hers. She is transfixed, unable to move. He punches both arms into the air and bellows out. The scream is primal and terrifying. She startles at the shock of it.

He falls silent, his chest heaving. The hot sun sheens on his body, slick with sweat. She should run. She should scream. The phone, car keys, 911–something.

She does nothing.

Running straight towards the house, he takes the axe in both hands and winds it up behind his head. At once the axe is in flight, cart-wheeling through the air. The plate glass patio door explodes into the kitchen and the axe scatters across the linoleum.

She is paralyzed.

He steps through the ragged hole. The aftermath is silent save the sound of his tortured breath. His animal smell fills her nostrils and fuels the desire beneath her fear.

She is alive.

He lunges towards her. But when the impact comes, it is only to push her aside. He plunges his face into the sink and opens his mouth to the running water. He gulps and gulps and gulps. She starts to speak, but has no words. Her throat is dry.

He stands and drags the back of his hand across his mouth, which smears away dirt and reveals lips lush and full. He rubs at himself, tugging at his filthy pants. In an instant he is naked before her, magnificently aroused.

“Fill me,” she whispers.

Her pants bunched idiotically around one ankle, she is on her back beneath him, inexorably open. Shards of glass dig into her flesh. She cries out in climax and pain, tears squeezing from her eyes.

He bucks and howls, then withdraws and rolls her over with a rough push. Her blood drips from a dozen wounds of varying depth. He sucks and licks each one with the same orgiastic intensity of the coupling. He works his teeth, chewing at the sliced edges of skin.

She is face down in the blood and glass with his seed is both planted and dripping. She blinks through blurred vision at fur-covered haunches. He turns and gallops across the flawless green lawn.

His scream waxes in the distance. She exhales once, twice, three times before finally succumbing to sleep.

The preceding post has been brought to you by Erin O’Brien.

When is a book out of print?

More on Simon & Schuster’s power grab

…with the advent of technologies like print-on-demand, publishers have been able to reduce the number of back copies that they keep in warehouses. Simon & Schuster, which until now has required that a book sell a minimum number of copies through print-on-demand technology to be deemed in print, has removed that lower limit in its new contract.

In effect, that means that as long as a consumer can order a book through a print-on-demand vendor, that book is still deemed in print, no matter how few copies it sells.

The Authors Guild says that is not fair. “If a book is only available in print-on-demand, it certainly means the publisher isn’t doing much to promote the book,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. “We’re not against the technology; we’re just against the technology being used to lock up rights.”

Mr. Aiken said that authors often ask to take back the rights of out-of-print books so they can place them with new publishers and give their work new life. He cited the example of Paula Fox, a novelist who had six out-of-print novels when Jonathan Franzen, the author of “The Corrections,” cited her work in an essay in Harpers Magazine. Ms. Fox took back the rights for her novels, resold them to W. W. Norton and revived her career.

For mid-list authors (and people like me, who aspire to be mid-list), The Authors Guild has been able to bring many OOP books back to life with its Backinprint.com program, which has also made Lazaruses out of neglected works by masters like Mary McCarthy’s The Oasis and Thornton Wilder’s American Characteristics.

(Thanks to the MSM for letting me be a parasite and cite it on this site.)

Bloggers Like to Gloat, Link to Themselves, Eat Small Children

According to the most shrill of the Critical Lumpians (see Ed’s post below), we’re just a bunch of self-linking, traffic-craving, nose-picking, basement-dwelling maggots. Well, I’m proud to be a maggot and I’m damn sure aiming to make a few bucks off it.*

*Not really.

Aside to Ed: Sorry for piping in just to post a link to my own blog. I’ll make it up to you with a free Totebag!

Frankly, Bloggers Lack Team Spirit!

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[Our Save the Blogs coverage continues with a special guest post from fifteen-year-old cheerleader Shannon Byrne, who just received an C+ in her English 3A class and has some Michael Connelly team spirit!!!!!!!!!!]

Like, OH MY GAWD! It’s time to go all like EWWWWWWWWWWWW from those dorky bloggers with the taped glasses and the pocket protectors! They have bad B.O. and certainly NO team spirit! (Go Little Brown! Go Connelly!) The other day, I was passing Pietsch a note in class! And he was like, “What have the bloggers ever done for us?” And I go, “Exactly!” So I dropped my panties and pissed all over a scribbling my varsity boy did of Mark Sarvas! Ewwwwwwww! Grosssssss!

So, like, enough “newspapers are dying” stuff and we’re talking about, like, food chains and parasites. OH MY GAWD! Bloggers. EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!