The following email was forwarded to me by an author.

Richard Curtis

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My Dear Miss Klimstrock,

I’m writing to tender an apology for my intemperate outburst in response to your email greeting me as “Hey, Pat.”  I have been aware for some time that the Internet tends to dissolve formalities but I did not realize that things had progressed quite so far.

I assure you that I usually have far better control over my impulses but perhaps you can appreciate that, given my title and social position, I am accustomed to being addressed Milord or Sir. In the circles in which I was raised, familiarity by peers and indeed even intimate friends is considered shockingly vulgar. Thus, to be addressed “Hey” by a perfect stranger was so alien to my fundamental sense of respect and dignity that I momentarily forgot that the civilized ladies and gentlemen who once populated the publishing profession have been replaced by ignorant and uncouth ragamuffins who speak to one another in grunts, slang and monosyllabic code and send texts in incomprehensible shorthand. I would not have guessed, however, that such liberties are now extended to authors and perfect strangers.

I hasten to assure you that these derogatory remarks are not directed at you specifically, Miss Klimstrock. I also wish to make it clear that I am not reacting spitefully to your rejection of my submission, though I confess that the crudeness of your expression and illiteracy of your spelling and grammar did fuel the rage that compelled me to write my regrettably childish outburst of spleen before I could gain control of my emotions.

Hard as it is, I know I must reconcile myself to the common parlance of the modern world. I realize that we no longer live in an age when we saluted our correspondents with such phrases as “Your Excellency” and Esteemed Madame” or even “Dear Author” and I will endeavor to adjust to the usages of the 21 century, however offensive they may be to the well-bred.

I will remit a cheque for the return of my manuscript.

Believe me to be very truly yours,

Patrick Marley-Clockbridge, Third Earl of Crumfleath

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This blog post was originally published on Digital Book World as The Decline and Fall of the English Salutation

Science fiction and humor seldom interface successfully – unless your name is John DeChancie.  But for DeChancie it’s a piece of cake.  His wickedly funny Castle series has been cracking readers up for years. But it’s going to be hard to top The Kruton Interface. For one thing, it features a hero named Wanker.

Just when Captain David Wanker thinks his career has hit rock bottom, he’s assigned to the starship Repulse, the lowest-rated ship in the Space Forces. The navigator gets lost, the engineer speaks only Gaelic, the security personnel have narcolepsy, and the ship’s doctor needs medication.

No sooner does he takes command than his job as captain is lost to automation invented by a scientist who thinks he’s Groucho Marx. Worse yet, when he meets up with the inhabitants of the planet Kruton, a world that is one huge law firm, he finds himself a defendant in the biggest lawsuit ever to hit the Galactic courts. Hilarity not only ensues–it practically goes supernova!

“Unerring Marxmanship. This book would have left Harpo speechless.” — “William Tenn” (classic science fiction author, pseudonym of Philip Klass)

“Madcap science fantasy–fun filled adventure!” — Booklist

“DeChancie always delivers!” — Mike Resnick (Hugo Award winner)

Catch up on your John DeChancie – once you catch your breath after reading The Kruton Interface.

The original edition of The Man Who Wrote Dirty B00ks by Hal Dresner had a brown paper wrapper for a dust jacket. It was published at a time when people actually noticed, and judged you by, the cover of the book you were reading. Had you been seen reading a dirty book you might have been banished from polite company. Thus the brown paper wrapper.

But in the 21st century anything goes and you can walk the streets freely with The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books, risking only to be stared at as you chuckle at the preposterous fix that Dresner’s porn-writer protagonist  has gotten himself into, having retreated to the wilderness to focus on his next book under a looming deadline.

Instead of peace, he is harassed by his old girlfriend and her angry father who are convinced that the nymphomaniac character in his last novel was based on the man’s daughter. Soon, the author finds his quiet getaway beset by a lawsuit and an investigation by the FBI and local sheriff. How to convince these yahoos that art does not imitate life – that’s the hero’s dilemma and the delicious irony of The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books, which has been delighting readers since its first publication in 1964.

“Really funny”
–The New York Times

“There is a superabundance of owlishly solemn writers in America, but very few with the comic talents of Hal Dresner”
–Chicago News

Not THAT kind of flap, you idiot!

Daniel Menaker, Editor of Grin and Tonic, has codified the rules for writing foolproof flap copy.  Writing in the Barnes & Noble Review, he offers such recommendations as:

# Always use “stunning,” except when the book is about the history of the stun gun.
#Always use “deeply.”
#Use items in a series as often as possible. “In this stunning, deeply passionate, and thrilling tale of guns, gangs, and gambling…”
# In addition to “stunning,” use at least three of the following adjectives for every flap: “Enthralling,” “gritty,” “original,” “remarkable,” “magical,” “ground-breaking,” “arresting,” “dazzling,” “heartbreaking,” “compelling,” “devastating,” “captivating.”
#Find a way to work in “best-selling,” even if it has to take the form of something like “Often compared to the stunning best-selling novelist _________…”
#Try to end the flap with the word “resolve” or “resolution.” (“Stunning” should always be placed near the beginning.)
#Forget “subtly.”

Flap Rules by Daniel Menaker

Thanks to Andy Borowitz we have this dire assessment of consequences facing Internet users as Hurricane Irene bears down on the United States East Coast.

“WASHINGTON – As Hurricane Irene prepared to batter the East Coast of the United States, federal disaster officials warned that Internet outages caused by the storm could force people to interact with other people for the first time in years. News of the possible interpersonal interactions created panic up and down the coast as residents braced themselves for the horror of awkward silences and unwanted eye contact. And as officials warned people in the hurricane zone to stay indoors, residents feared the worst: conversations with members of their immediate family.”

Read the rest: “Internet Outages from Hurricane Could Force People to Interact with Other People, Officials Warn”

RC

Apropos of our recent posting The Real Kindle Killer…

How far can you thrust your tongue into your cheek without it punching through your flesh? You’ll find out when you read The Future of Books by James Warner on the Mcsweeneys.net website. Warner projects the evolution of books decade by decade until 2080, when we learn what dolphins will be reading.

Here’s a preview from 2030.

RC

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2030: All Books Will Be Crowdsourced and Cloud-Based

Novelists will start out designing their characters in the form of sets of vinyl figurines. If these generate enough buzz, fans will produce the actual novel collaboratively as a wiki. As you read it, thermal cameras will measure your physiological signals, including flickers in eye movement, facial muscle contractions, and heart rate, to determine where you want the story to go next—it will be expected to read itself to you, explain itself, and unobtrusively weave your incoming text messages into the dialogue. You will also be able to fine-tune details of how the characters are digitally rendered, fire at them, and (when imperative) indulge in cybersex with them. If a novelist is posthumously discovered, his or her vinyl figurines may wind up as collector’s items.

RC

Mr. Curtis said he expects to eventually see product placement in digital books that will generate ads for e-books. “If you see a link in a novel to a product being advertised, you’re generating synergy between the content and the advertiser. It will be the same principle as product placement in movies and television,” he said.
(Richard Curtis, New York literary agent and digital book publisher, commenting in the Wall Street Journal on Amazon’s introduction of a Kindle carrying advertising.)

Product placement in novels? Hmm, just how would that work….?

Donna applied one last dab of lipstick and critically appraised her makeup in the magnifying mirror on her vanity table.  She frowned as the  image revealed the merest hint of a wrinkle on her brow. Tonight she had to be perfect: she’d been casually dating Todd for three weeks but she knew that tonight he was going to make his move. For the third time in five minutes she peered out of her bedroom window searching the street for his familiar car with the dented right fender. From the moment she’s set eyes on his face she’d wondered what it would be like to kiss that sensuous mouth…

Richard Curtis

This book that will enable you to watch the final convulsions of civilization from the veranda of your country estate. When the last trumpet sounds and the end of the world is nigh, remember to pick up your dry cleaning, cancel your subscriptions and call your mother. And don’t forget to pack your copy of Richard Curtis’s How to Prosper In the Coming Apocalypse. It’s available in e-book and will be in paperback before long.

From the introduction.

“The most important things for you to concern yourself with in the coming bad years is, Who’s responsible and how can I get even? It is essential that we find someone to blame and really beat the hell out of him. Sure, the tragedy of the past is that we are condemned to repeat it, but does that make you feel any better? No! Your first task is to find a scapegoat.” (You can click here to read the complete introduction, “What is an Apocalypse, and Why Can’t People Just Call It Doomsday?)

And if you enjoy Curtis’s brand of whacked-out humor, read his satires on authors, agents and publishers in The Client From Hell.

For seven or eight years in the mid 1980s and early ’90s Publisher’s Weekly ran literary agent Richard Curtis’s end-of-the-year summary, in tongue-in-cheek verse, of the highlights and lowlights of the year in the publishing industry. The annual rhymes carried such titles as, “Merger, He Wrote,” (1986), “Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Industry of Mine” (1989) and “Stop the Millennium, I Want to Get Off” (1990).

After a hiatus of some fifteen years, the verse-atile agent returned to PW in 2007 with “The Year of the Platform,” which boasted such lines as,

Are our values turning asswards
When opening books requires passwords?

Last year’s effusion, “The Coming of the POD People,” had this memorable doggerel:

Agents now submit their schlock
By means of email as dot-doc.

In 2009′s poem, “The Yr of the Tweet“, Curtis writes,

It’s fine for paradigms to shift
As long as authors don’t get stiffed.

Click here to read it in its entirety, and discover how Curtis actually found a rhyme for “Shatzkin”. Verses for prior years as well as his prose spoofs are collected in The Client From Hell and Other Publishing Satires.