Insert shamelessly pandering blog title here

I came across this post in the interwebs this week about an e-book author who is pulling in $13,500 a month in royalties for her book. In my limited knowledge of e-booking and self-publishing, that seemed to be an unusually high sum of money for a self-published e-book.

I’ve lately been frustrated by the inordinate amounts of time I spend writing things that aren’t very stimulating to me in order to help pay the bills. I didn’t quit my job in order to pursue another career as a freelancer — I left in order to focus on my kids and the freelancing is a necessity in order to make ends meet. But it’s hard not to feel like I shouldn’t be doing more (or at least making a little more for what I do) so many days I feel like I’m attempting to build a skyscraper using grains of sand.*

Judging from the post, this e-book writer is a hard-working mom whose family was hit hard by the recession and decided she was going to channel her frustrations by writing a book based on some ideas she had floating around her head.

Well, I can certainly relate to that.

Then I read the name of her book:

“The Power of the Pussy” — a “controversial dating advice book for women” that contains some “very sexually explicit” content.

According to the description on Amazon.com, by reading this book I will learn “valuable lessons” that will teach me how to:

Flip the switch in your female brain, so you can beat men at their own game…
Have men lining up to date you and desperate for your attention…
Heal from a broken heart and never be sad over a man again!
Become the type of woman that commands respect from men…
Get the proposal, the ring, and the man of your dreams!

So I haven’t read the book. Given its success I have to imagine it contains useful advice that have enabled many, many woman to get the proposal, the ring and the man of their dreams.

But after reading the post I ranted to Brad about it. I doubt I will ever make $13,500 a month in royalties for anything I write … not necessarily because I’m a terrible writer or anything but because the subject matters I tend to write about aren’t all that sexy in a “Power of the Pussy” sort of way.

That is to say, I’m all but certain I will never write or attempt to publish a book that has an equally as scintillating, eye-ball grabbing, SEO-friendly title.

So Brad suggested I write a book called “Pussy (And Other Things I Know Nothing About)” in which I shared about my general lack of wiles, feminine and otherwise. It would probably not be the book that people searching for p-word*** related literature are looking for, however, it might be the book that people who felt they needed to read “Power of the Pussy” would relate to more.

Then tonight as I admired my evening loungeware, I came up with a sequel to my as-yet-unwritten collection of essays about frumpitude and dishelvement:

“50 Shades of Blue: Dressing for the Man You Have” ****

I hid behind my cell phone so as to cover up
the redness from my freshly waxed upper lip —
the world can only handle so much hotness.

For those of you keeping track — that’s a striped blue T-shirt shirt I’m wearing under a two-tone blue hoodie along with blue dog-and-cat-hair-covered fleece pajama pants and blue striped socks.

I feel compelled to note that I did not leave the house in this ensemble. Wait. That’s not quite true. I did leave the house wearing this outfit with a pair of blue jeans in place of the fleece star pants — but they were my good jeans!

Sigh. There’s no hope.

Go on without me world (and savvy e-book publishers).

*OK, maybe there’s a better analogy in there somewhere … maybe if I were creative enough to come up with that analogy I’d be building skyscrapers with, you know, cinderblocks and steel beams and shit** instead of sand grains.
**Not actual shit. That’d be gross.
*** Not sure why I didn’t write out the p-word there again. Actually I do know. I detest that word. It’s totally creepy to me in the same way “moist” and “supple” are totally creepy and I already felt like I’d used it too many times.
****I’m sorry it’s come to this Brad.