About a year ago, we retired “Reject A Hit,” the fan-favorite humor column that donned the back page of Writer’s Digest for five long years, in which writers assumed the position of a fake agent or publisher respectfully (or at times, not-so-respectfully) declining such classic novels as Moby-Dick, Great Expectations and The Hobbit.
While we encourage you to check out our new humor column—Platforms of Yore—over the coming months we’ll slowly be revisiting some Reject A Hit comedic gems that never made their way online. In lieu of Halloween, let’s start with something seasonally appropriate (and, funny enough, the first-ever Reject A Hit back from the March/April 2010 issue): Dracula by Bram Stoker.
Greetings Mr. Stoker,
Let me get this straight: A vile blood-drinking rogue tormenting the purity of a devoted fiancée and eliciting the vapors in every woman he comes across whilst causing a man to go insane and eat bugs?
We regret to inform you that your attached cloth-bound manuscript, DRACULA, though so dramatically presented—what with the faux gilt edges and marbled endpapers—is not right for us. Moreover, of the stench of garlic that has permeated every fiber of the slush pile, I can only say it’s to the great misfortune of those authors we will now be forced to reject without reading.
To conclude: Such vile creatures will never sell.
Put that in your Meerschaum clay pipe and smoke it.
Tidings,
Archibald Heinrick Montpellier, IV
Editorial assistant, Archibald & Archibald
The post What if Publishers Rejected Dracula? (Happy Halloween) appeared first on WritersDigest.com.
from Writing Editor Blogs – WritersDigest.com
http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/if-publishers-rejected-dracula
No comments:
Post a Comment