Oh goodness. So many demons that need to be slayed. I love this idea. Getting it out and down on paper - virtual or otherwise - is amazingly cathartic.

But where to start?

Who is the bitch at Whole Foods who thinks it’s a great idea to put out huge bowls of guac and chips, chocolate chip cookies and potato chips to sample?

Who are all these people with so much money who have driven up the real estate prices in my town?

What the hell is wrong with the producers of the Soprano's that they think it's okay to make us wait so damn long between the last season and this one.

Why do all these products say they will get my dog's teeth really clean without having to give her an anesthetic when they can't?

Who are these lunatic women who love love love exercise when I hate hate hate it?

But nothing gets me seeing red like the media who have delegated books to the bottom of the entertainment chain.

Ever look at Entertainment Weekly magazine? All the other categories go first and get more pages. Books come at the very end. Ever look at Vogue, Time, People, even the New Yorker? Everything, anything gets more press than books. And when the media does deal with fiction, what do they deal with? The same 5 books.

Ever wonder how this happens? Is there a secret email that goes around the world of critics and editors?

Your assignment if you chose to accept it is to only deal with the following five titles this week/month.

And who decided that fiction doesn't deserve TV time? From Jon Stewart to C-Span (how's that for a long stretch) no one brings the novelists on. What are we? Chopped liver? Ever really listen to those actors and actresses on the late night talk show circuit? The key word here being talk. They can't. Sure they are nice to look at. But listen to? Actors do their best work when they are reading lines someone else has written.

But the writers? Not enough eye candy? Or is it that we're not "names." No billboard power here. (And when there is a celeb author - like Dan Brown - what does he do? Become a recluse.)

Ever sit in a hospital waiting room? Ever look around? You don't find many people in there reading the a smart non-fiction tome on Ben Franklin. We escape into fiction. It saves us every time. It makes us laugh and cry and forget our selves. We fall in love and murder and solve crimes and we can do it all by turning pages.

Yet, less time and attention is paid to fiction by our media than any other form of entertainment.

And who complains?

See any readers petitioning newspapers to review more fiction?
Hear about any groups of parents boycotting TV shows because they don't show enough/any characters reading books? Hell they don't show them holding books, leaning on books, or even throwing books.

And while we're at it. I'm pretty damn sick that when the press does pay attention it's to write snarky articles making click lit look bad and literary fiction look good when it isn't trying to make the point that literary fiction never sells and is boring, boring, boring. How bout the fact they still call romances bodice rippers. Bodice rippers? How many bodices do you think are ripped in the 2000 romance novels written each year? One? Two? And how about the fact that mystery/suspense reviewers are still harboring the illusion (delusion) that only the guys can write a thriller? Or what about the book review editors who assign books to friends of the author or they go the other way and assign books to other authors with chips on their shoulders.

Recently in my own blog I complained about the fact that it seems like the only press novelists get anymore is when they argue loudly and vehemently with each other. I suggested weekly catfight nights in cities across the country where writers get to battle each other on the issues. I was being facetious.

But I got dozens of mail from readers saying they'd pay to come.

And I got one letter from an editor of a major weekly mag saying she'd send a reporter if we did it. "This is the kind of idea we've been looking for. Something to make books exciting."

Ever hear of a plotline?
Sigh.


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M.J. Rose (www.mjrose.com) is the author of five novels including THE HALO EFFECT in stores and online now. Click here to watch a Vidlit about the book. (http://www.vidlit.com/mj) She also runs two blogs Backstory (http://mjroseblog.typepad.com/backstory/ ) where authors write about what inspired their current novels and Buzz, Balls, & Hype (http://mjroseblog.typepad.com/buzz_balls_hype/) which is about the publishing industry. And while she has been on TV to talk about her books, she hasn't been on nearly enough.