Category: satire

How to be doomed as a writer

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire, writing5 Comments

“Get out and see the world. It’s not going to kill you to butch it up a tad. Book passage on a tramp steamer. Rustle up some dysentery; it’s worth it for the fever dreams alone. Lose a kidney in a knife fight. You’ll be glad you did.” – Colson Whitehead

RIPI found an old book in the garage called “How to Get Started as a Writer.” Looked it up on line and saw that when the thing  came out in 1965, Kirkus hated it. I glanced through it to see why I kept it and decided that it’s still in the house because I forgot about it.

I was going to write this post about it, but it drove me nuts reading the book’s advice. I took a Xanax and now I feel better. (All serious writers need to go nuts once or twice during their lives.)

If you type the words “how to be a writer” into your favorite search engine, you’ll find –well, let’s go check–161,000,000 hits. Sure, you may stumble across the Colson Whitehead piece or Stephen King’s On Writing: 10th Anniversary Edition: A Memoir of the Craft. If so, fate has smiled upon you.

If you start reading the rest of the advice, you’re doomed. As a prospective writer, you would only be in worse shape if you stayed in school until you were 35 years old getting a B.A. in English, an MFA in creative writing, and a PhD in God only knows what. Your head’s now filled with rules and, sad to say, not much else.

None of your teachers will suggest getting dysentery because that’s crude, unpleasant and harder to control than, say, using too many adjectives.

I’ve had dysentery several times. Changed my life. Just how, is one of the most guarded secrets every writer has. Hint: you know how to see what if situations (King likes “situations” better than plots) and turn them into stories. A lot of advice sites say you have to have passion. Well, okay, but it doesn’t beat dysentery or losing a toe to frostbite. (I tried to do that but failed and I really think that failure has kept me from selling as many books as King and Rowling.)

I don’t know if either of them lost toes, but I do know neither of them studied the rules in school until they were 35 and then suddenly sold a billion copies.

Doom, is thinking you need advice. Fatal doom is taking whatever advice you find.

Doom is thinking that somebody else knows better than you how to turn your own dysentery, lost toe, going nuts or a frightful encounter with _________ (fill in the blank) into the kind of “been there, done that” raw talent that makes memorable stories happen.

It helps to trust where you’ve been and what you’ve done and how you reacted when you saw what you saw. That is you. This isn’t to say you need to become a serial killer before you can write a novel about a serial killer. TMI, as people say in chat rooms. On the other hand, if you lose your kidney in a knife fight, you’ll be more apt to write memorable prose about killers than the poor doomed soul who studied language for 35 years instead of living a life.

Reading this post will also doom you as a writer. Too late now. But there is an antidote to everything I’ve said here. Get drunk and/or stand in the snow until one or more toes fall off. Only then will you have the passion and instinct to write. If you still need more passion, eating rancid pork is better than reading another “show, don’t tell” article.

Whatever you do, you need to stay alive long enough to write your stories. But fever dreams, oh yes, those will get you on the bestseller list as long as the fever breaks long enough for you to pick up a pencil before your spirit hears a doctor saying “time of death.”

—Malcolm

 

 

Audio edition of ‘Jock Stewart Strikes Back’ released

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, satire

Jock Stewart Strikes Back by Malcolm R. Campbell –Now Available Audio, Print and All Ebook Editions!

JSSB Audiographic

Jock Stewart Strikes Back

by Malcolm E. Campbell

Since modern-day journalism is going to hell in a hand basket and/or nowhere fast, Jock Stewart strikes back by categorizing news events as satirical, outlandish, strange or political. Nonetheless, according to informed sources, the use of this volume as a journalism textbook has not been authorized anywhere the world is right as rain.

The fictional news stories and “Night Beat” editorial columns in this collection began as posts on the “Morning Satirical News” weblog and subsequently appeared in the Worst of Jock Stewart and/or the “Jock Talks” series of e-books. Jock Talks…Politics was a 2013 Pushcart Prize nominee.

Stewart, who served diligently as the protagonist in Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, refutes charges that he was raised by alligators or hyenas. When he was a young boy, his dear old daddy said, “Jock, everyone but you and me is scum and I’m not sure about you.”

That proverb opened Jock’s eyes to the realities of the world, primarily that everything is worse than it seems: the small-town newspaper, the Star-Gazer, is allegedly run by fools and buffoons; the Junction City, Texas, government is allegedly corrupt and inept.

Production Notes

Jock Stewart Strikes Back is narrated and produced by Barry Newman, Florida. Barry’s career in media and journalism, including voice work in radio and TV commercials, lends a unique ‘Jock-ness’ to the production, and we look forward to working with him again in the future.

Where You Can Find It

AUDIOBOOK: http://www.amazon.com/Jock-Stewart-Strikes-Back/dp/B00K34NFPA

PRINT: http://www.amazon.com/Jock-Stewart-Strikes-Malcolm-Campbell/dp/0615989225

KINDLE: http://www.amazon.com/Jock-Stewart-Strikes-Malcolm-Campbell-ebook/dp/B00IUA1S76

ALLROMANCE/OMNILIT: https://www.omnilit.com/product-jockstewartstrikesback-1465654-242.html

APPLE: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/jock-stewart-strikes-back/id839659754

NOOK: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/jock-stewart-strikes-back-malcolm-r-campbell/1118909075

SMASHWORDS ALL EBOOK FORMATS: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/417765

Jock Stewart Strikes Back Sneak Peek Video

Prude and Prejudice, a JSSB Excerpt

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire

Jock Stewart Strikes Back, Collected Stories, by Malcolm R. Campbell,  Vanilla Heart Publishing (March 6, 2014), 122 pp, paperback ($9.46) and Kindle ($3.99).

JSSBcover2The book contains farcical and satirical news stories written by “Jock Stewart,” a reporter for the Junction City, Texas Star-Gazer. Here’s an excerpt:

Literary Investigators Discover Jane Austen Actually Wrote
‘Prude and Prejudice’

Pinnacle, MT—Forensic literary sleuths digging through the long lost ashes of a Jane Austen notebook have discovered that a publisher’s typography error forever changed the title of the witty satire incorrectly known as Pride and Prejudice.

Dr. Horace Wickam, chairman of the department of forensic literature at Slippery Slope College, told reporters that correcting Austen’s body of work will most likely be the pinnacle of his career.

“The novel we have known and loved as Pride and Prejudice was initially called First Impressions,” Wickam said. “But according to Jane’s reassembled ashes, a typographer inadvertently changed the word in the new title from ‘prude’ to ‘pride.’”

Graduate assistant Judy Netherfield said that while foul play was not yet suspected it was not yet ruled out.

According to Wickam, the error in the title was compounded, and therefore obscured, by the fact that a crucial line of dialogue was omitted from a conversation in chapter four between protagonist
Elizabeth Bennet and her sister Jane.

Elizabeth’s reassembled comment reads as, “Dear Jane, you see, don’t you, that prudes are the most prejudiced creatures in the world because they are so afraid the next person they see will say the very thing they’re most afraid of hearing.”

Mainstream literary sources said Wickam and Netherfield’s preposterous speculations were “highly prejudicial.”

Professor Darcy, chairman of the Slippery Slope department of psychic psychology, told reporters that two students working with a digital Ouija board contacted Ms. Austen who confirmed the veracity of the discovery.

“Ms. Austen, who always thought prudes to be disagreeable, remains perturbed to this day about the errors in Prude and Prejudice,” said Darcy. “Austen admitted, via the Ouija board, ‘I to not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me from liking them a great deal.’”

London scholar Edward Bingley, who has been working for 20 years on his epic What Jane Really Meant, said that since he continues to be denied access to the digital Ouija board at Slippery Slope, he doesn’t yet know what Jane really meant.

Wickam said, “as the novel illustrates in matters of love, when you have an empty-headed mother trying to expediently marry off her five daughters, prude goeth before the fall.”

Future projects on the department of forensic literature department’s 2006 schedule include investigations of The Clown of the Baskervilles, The Adventures of Blackberry Finn and The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam.

-30-

Kick the Bucket on Hallowe’en

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire5 Comments

from “Jock Talks Satirical News”

Kick the Bucket on Hallowe’en

by

Jock Stewart

Special Investigative Reporter

cemeteryJunction City, TX—Frank N. Stein, owner and operator of the Ghost-of-a-Chance Cemetery at 666 Deadline Road plans a Death by Chocolate Hallowe’en for kids trick-or-treating at “death’s door.”

“This year, we’ll be handing out our usual death bells, death watches, and door-nails to everyone who knocks at the Death’s Door entrance to the cemetery,” said Stein. “We’re especially excited about this year’s ASK NOT FOR WHOM THE OPEN GRAVE CALLS gala. I think we’re going to top last year’s BABY, CAN YOU HEAR DEATH’S RATTLE sing-along.”

Chief gravedigger T. Stone, who laughingly claims he’s the only one on the premises who knows where all the bodies are buried, said he almost worked himself into an early grave getting all the holes dug in time.

“I’m death-warmed-over exhausted,” he said, “but I’ll be cheating the grim reaper again by
Monday night.”

According to a dead letter posted at the cemetery door, every kid who successfully kicks a plastic bucket of dead men’s fingers into an open grave from six feet away will be presented with a “Dead Weight of Chocolate.”

“Most of them aren’t real dead men’s fingers,” said Stein. “We chopped up a bunch of old mannequins and littered the pieces around the place to scare the life out of the younger kids. We had enough dead hands left over to pretty much give everyone the finger.”

“I practiced kicking the bucket all afternoon,” Stone said, “and it’s not as easy as you think. Those kids will have to use a little dead reckoning to get it in the grave.”

Plans to offer vodka labeled as embalming fluid were deep-sixed once the Deadline Road Homeowners Association got wind of it and raised a stink.

bucketart“We don’t mind the spirits so much as the thought of hearing the words of that hideous old song ‘National Embalming School’ blasting away all night loud enough to wake the dead,” said association president Darla Norris. “We’re not teetotalers out here. After all, we snapped up our share of the icy sixpacks they gave away during the CRYING IN MY BIER festival three years ago.”

Ghost-of-a-Chance began inviting trick-or-treaters onto cemetery grounds 25 years ago when Stein’s father Charles announced that he could no longer afford to “buy enough deadlights and deadlocks to keep out the deadbeats who sneak in every year to knock over a tombstone or two after knocking up their girlfriends.”

Norris, who has lived on Deadline Road for 26 years, said that almost everyone in her neighborhood was conceived as a Hallowe’en trick in the years before “old Charlie Stein made vandalism a dead issue while making death and cemeteries a real treat again.”

The police department’s Dead-to-Rights Hallowe’en Task Force will work the graveyard shift again this year to provide security and to pick up anyone who is dead drunk. Doctors from Memorial Hospital will be on hand to assist anyone who gets one foot caught in the grave. Overflow parking will be available in Potter’s field.

“We’ll be dead to the world by the time the night’s over,” Stein said. “It’s worth it, though. We’re putting the boot back into boot hill to make life better for kids in the here and now while reminding their aging parents to consider us in their plans for the hereafter.”

# # #

jtsatnewsA selection of the good, the weird, and the utterly insane of investigative reporter Jock Stewart’s news stories and Night Beat columns.

Available on Smashwords in multiple e-book formats for 99 cents.

Memorial Day, a Day of Memories Sweet and Sad

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire4 Comments

At first light, the memories will find us. They are infinite and deep, though time has stripped away the individuals’ names, their faces even, who fell lifetimes ago on our behalf. Those who fell, fell for the future, for generations hardly close enough to dream about, for worlds not yet born and hopes not yet conceived.

Following the journeys of the fallen, we cannot help but think of Lincoln’s Words, “we can not dedicate…we can not consecrate…we can not hallow this ground.” It has already been consecrated, and we cannot add or detract from it as we keep the sweet and sad memories close in our hearts.

Before the twilight’s last gleaming, we will have followed our fathers and grandfathers, our mothers and grandmothers, our friends and our neighbors’ friends down the long miles of Memorial Day. It is, as Lincoln said in 1863, the “unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

Our dedication comes at a great expense of time and money as we walk the aisles our ancestors walked according to the customs of their times. The aisles are more modern now: the pickle barrel and the checker board have long since been replaced with the folkways of a new century. But we are diligent. We soldier on from appliances to apparel, from tools to jewelry, from sports and fitness equipment to automotive sales.

When evening comes, the remains of the day will sit upon tables and counter tops in either paper or plastic comprising our developing memories, both sweet and sad, of our trek across the sacred ground, kept pure and holy for those whom we follow into the night.

–

JTpoliticspushcartCopyright (c) 2011 by Malcolm R. Campbell

Excerpted from the Pushcart nominated Jock Talks…Politics

Getting Out of School on the Ides of March

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire4 Comments

Today’s Guest Post is by Trick Falls, the noted essayist from the long-gone Writing-Up blogging community. For only $1000000000000, he consented to come out of retirement and write up a few words about the Ides of March in a school house far away.

Me And Pratt Down By The School Yard

by

Trick Falls

Once upon a time, during those spring school days when time moved slower than an unwound clock, my brother Pratt and I met during recess at PS666 in Two Egg, Florida, to smoke a few Marlboros and figure out a way to legally skip school on the Ides of March for a party at Becky Thatcher’s folk’s beach house while her folks were serving time at the nearby federal correctional institute for spitting on the sidewalk while the preacher’s wife (dressed as the Statue of Liberty) marched by in the 4th of July parade the previous year. Everyone in our senior class, except for those serving time, was going too be at Becky’s.

“Most of the guys are going to sneak out,” said Pratt.

“Mama will find out,” I said. “She finds out everything.”

“She may be only 37.5% psychic,” said Pratt, “but the times when she’s right, it’s always about us.”

“Then she’ll walk around for days saying, ‘Well, it’s against the law’ and we’ll never have a chance to whitewash our lies again.”

Pratt bummed a stronger cigarette–a Gauloise if you need to know–from vice principal Jenkins who just lost another game of hopscotch out on the sidewalk. “Tastes like burnt frog dung,” said Pratt, “but now that I’ve cleared plane geometry out of my head, I can think about this in greater depth.”

“We need a note from home claiming we’re probably going to be sick that day,” I said.

Pratt smoked for a few minutes while I pretended I didn’t know him, mainly because he was turning green. Then he flipped the remains of Jenkins’ cigarette butt into a passing car and nodded sagely even though he despised sage for ruining good stuffing and heaven knew what else.

“We can hardly claim one of us is going into surgery for a C-section that day,” he said.

“You’re smarter than you appear to be,” I said. “Let’s say that our psychiatrist wants us to stay inside because we’re terrified of the Ides of March,”

“Who the hell are they?”

“It’s a date, the date of the beach blanket bingo party at Becky’s.”

“I never was any good at French, other than the kissing,” said Pratt. He laughed at his own joke, causing people to look at us like we were about to forge a note to our home room teacher Old Lady Geranium. Her real name was Edith Cranesbill, but her perfume smelled like the geraniums planted out next to the gym, so we called things as we smelled them.

“Latin,” I said.

“No matter,” said Pratt. “I’ll forge a note during study hall and hand it to Old Lady at the beginning of 6th period.”

“Go for it,” I said, and the bell rang and called us in from our goodhearted play, ready to take on solid book learning.

Late in the day, I was looking out the window rather than listening to Old Man Johnson lecturing about how the Invasion of Normandy was NOT Pickett’s Charge with modern weapons (I had to ask), when I saw Mama pick up Pratt out in front of the building. She didn’t literally pick him up because even in her Sunday-go-to-meeting dress, she weighs 120 pounds whereas Pratt weighs about twice that much due to his addiction to pizza. She pulled up to the curb and Pratt got into the car after he was led out to the street by Principal Harold G. Smith.

At that point, I lost track of the Normandy Invasion whereupon I missed a pop-test question at the end of the period when I said that the Southern forces never should have listened to Ike at Gettysburg. I felt bad. I was afraid of jeopardizing my straight-C  average.

That night, when I asked Pratt what happened, he said he got suspended for forgery, specifically, for forging a note to Old Lady Geranium about the Ides of March. He was gleefully philosophical about it because he would be free and clear to go to Becky’s party while I would be conjugating Latin and/or French verbs with the goody-two-shoes kids.

“How the hell did you get caught?’

“I still don’t know,” he said. “She looked at the note for two seconds and then marched me down to the principal’s office. Here, take a look at the note I penned.”

Dear Mrs. Cranesbill,

Ever since my sons, Pratt and Trick, heard about the warning about the Ides of March in Ivanhoe, they have been worried that they would suffer a terrible fate unless they were kept in a padded cell for the Ides of March holiday festivities. According to their shrink, Doctor Bob Anima (no longer pronounced as “enema,”), they are to be confined to bed rest, with or without female companionship as we understand it these days, with a sufficient amount of Valium not to merit being taken away.

Yours Truly,

Niagara

“Pratt,” I said, “if anyone ever tells you that crime doesn’t pay, let them know that they’ve been misinformed.”

–

‘Jock Talks…Politics’ Nominated for 2013 Pushcart Prize

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, satire9 Comments

I am honored—and quite stunned—to announce that my collection of (obviously fictional) satirical news stories Jock Talks…Politics has been nominated by Vanilla Heart Publishing (VHP) for a 2013 Pushcart Prize.  Jock Talks…Politics is one of four e-book satire collections based on my Jock Stewart character in Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire. (Click on the cover graphic to see the YouTube announcement video.)

I am happy to report that my VHP friends Smoky Zeidel (Breakfast at the Laundromat) , Melinda Clayton (Erma Puckett’s Moment of Indiscretion) and S. R. Claridge (Petals of Blood) have also been nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize.

According to Wikipedia’s entry, “The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best “poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot” published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to six works they have featured. Anthologies of the selected works have been published annually since 1976.”

My series of Jock Talks e-books is drawn from posts made on my Morning Satirical News weblog, with a few also published here. While my journalism mentors at the former Florida State School of Journalism and my professors at the Syracuse University Newhouse Communications Center would all be totally scandalized if they saw I’d given up writing real news stories in order to turn out satire, the best reply I have is: LIGHTEN UP.

If I weren’t already out of Scotch, I’d be pouring a double to celebrate. Jock himself would, of course, drink straight out of the bottle to keep from dirtying up an extra glass, using extra dishwasher energy and increasing out country’s reliance on foreign oil.

—Malc0lm

MY PUBLISHER’S ANNOUNCEMENT POSTER

‘Internet Service Provider’ Cuts Old Line Before Activating New Line

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire4 Comments

Jefferson, Georgia, September 5, 2012—Never ask your Insane Service Provider (ISP) for whom the bell tolls. They’ll say, “Nobody, because the line is dead.”

In fact, the line is deader than King Tut, the dark ages, and Wells Fargo’s stage coach service between here and yonder.

When we asked Windstream why they de-activated the old DSL line at midnight when the new line wouldn’t be activated until a service technician stopped by our house 8-18 hours later, they had multiple answers: (a) because we can, (b) our DOS 3.0 computer doesn’t know what time it is, and (c) we didn’t want to enable your Internet addiction.

“Nonetheless,” they said, reading from a canned apology script, “your quality care technician is just about to get ready to head in your general direction via the westbound stage coach.”

I wondered about my e-mail messages while the stage was delayed while the driver changed horses in midstream.

As a novelist, my first thought was, “What if Hollywood sends me an e-mail asking if they can add more nude scenes to the upcoming blockbuster 3D IMAX epic ‘Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire’?”

As an ass-kicking reporter, my second thought was, “Without my highly dependable, accurate and objective Yahoo homepage, how am I going to know diddly squat about Prince Harry’s butt and the other asinine news of the day?”

Ever resourceful, I turned on the TV like I would have done in the 1950s when it still had a set of rabbit ears with tin foil streamers on top.

The Catastrophe News Network (CNN) was airing continuing coverage of a posse chasing a horse thief down County Road 1534 near Junction City, Texas. The Frantic Old Xanthippe (FOX) network was holding a séance with a panel of deceased 1930s mobsters about the value of legalizing Tommy guns in churches. The local random access channel was showing random re-runs of the “Newlywed Game.”

HOST BOB EUBANKS: “Bambi, if your new husband turned into a serial killer, would he track down your mother, your father or you ex-boyfriends first?”

BAMBI:  Hahahaha. Good golly, no, Bob. He’d start out with Wheaties and then attack my Frosted Flakes.

I considered making something up: “Enraged over Prince Harry’s butt on Great Britain’s new ‘Olympic Assets’ postage stamps, a horse thief in Junction City grabbed a Tommy gun and pumped a hundred rounds of hot lead into a box of Lucky Charms on the back of a stolen horse.”

But then, how could I live with myself, aping the techniques of my newspaper’s rivals at CNN and FOX?

I called Windstream a new minutes ago and, after pointing out that the latest ice age had come and gone since we last shot the breeze about our nonexistent DSL, I inquired about the location of “our” service technician.

“His horse was stolen by a desperado wielding a Tommy gun two miles west of Yonder,” the CSR said. “CNN, FOX, and Yahoo are already on the scene splashing fresh vids all around the Internet. Twitter is on fire about it. Oh, but then you couldn’t have known that.”

“You’re right as rain,” I said.

“One more thing,” he said.

“What?”

“Your inbox on our ten megabyte hard drive was overflowing, so we deleted everything. It was mostly spam, especially those fake Hollywood e-mails asking if you wanted to do any nude scenes with horses in a movie.”

“One day, humanity as we now understand it, will thank you,” I said as I reached for the flask of single malt Scotch in the Tommy gun drawer of my desk.

-30-

—Jock Stewart

If your Internet Service Provider hasn’t capriciously turned off your DSL service today, you can be enjoying a darned inexpensive copy of “Jock Talks Satirical News” for only 99 cents in a matter of minutes or, otherwise, when pigs fly.

Top Ten Things a Writer Should Never Do

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire, writing15 Comments

Elmore Leonard’s “10 Rules for Good Writing” include Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose” and Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Savvy advice from an old pro. But suddenly, it occurs to me that there’s more to it than that.  After all, nobody wants to wistfully look back on a writing-career-that-could-have-been and be forced to admit that all hell broke loose when s/he violated one of Malcolm’s Top Ten Things a Writer Should Never Do.

  1. Never use words like “wistfully” and “forced to admit.”
  2. Do not drink cheap wine while describing successful people because, when all is said and done, your prose will end up smelling of sour grapes.
  3. Do not try to screw over the bastards who tried to screw over your writing career unless you’re pretty sure you won’t get caught because if you do get caught, you will personally be all said and done before having a chance to write your swan song.
  4. Never grab pithy quotes off the Internet from people you’ve never heard of because you might end up looking bad without knowing why all hell broke loose.
  5. Use of the passive voice is to be avoided.
  6. If you’re walking around quoting W. Somerset Maugham’s statement that “There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are,” stop doing it immediately. We’re all sick of hearing it and it won’t make you look smart.
  7. Don’t believe experts who say that to produce good writing “You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.” Nobody uses typewriters these days and you’ll just end up with blood on your hands when the cops bust in and accuse you of causing all hell to break loose.
  8. Never say things like “I’d sell my granny’s fanny to get a good agent” because even if you don’t, people will think you did.
  9. Never kill a book reviewer without first writing yourself an airtight alibi.
  10. Never plagiarize material from writers who have already admitted that they stole most of their stuff from somebody else.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the comedy/satire “Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire” and the “Jock Talks” series of scandalously inappropriate e-books.

He is forced to admit that while writing satire, you can do all the things you should never do and get away with it.

Texas Town Opens Tough-Love Writers Bootcamp

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire5 Comments

You Enter With a Skull Full of Mush; You Exit as a Corpse or a Writer

by Jock Stewart

Radley

Junction City, TX, January 6, 2012 (Star-Gazer News Service)—Rhett Radley fully expects 98.6% of the raw wanabees who enter Wordsmith Perdition University (WPU) to die trying.

“Every Gomer Pyle in the world wants to be a writer,” smirked Radley, who found his favorite expressions while serving as a Marine drill instructor at Parris Island. “They can’t even spell ‘Ooh-rah,’ much less use it in a coherent sentence.”

Radley, who “double-dog dares” students to say “boo” to him, plans to run WPU like a bad neighborhood on a Saturday night when it opens its gates February 29.

According to informed sources who give their names as Tom, Dick and Harry, the 1.4% of the students who survived WPU’s beta test courses held in Florida’s notorious Tate’s Hell Swamp during the snake season, went on to become bestselling authors making “exorbitant amounts of money.”

“When authors leave WPU, they are who we say they are,” Tom said. “For legal reasons, the grammar-loving writers of fortune who walk out our doors will have no memory of ever having been here.”

The Slammer Connection

While many of the university’s Tough-Love Instructors (TLIS) are currently serving time at the nearby State Pen 666, most of them have promised not to commit any really bad crimes while teaching the basic noun, verb and preposition courses.

State Pen warden Rod Curtain admitted during a recent grand jury probe of the prison’s work-release programs that there “are always risks” when experimenting with new rehabilitation methods.

“You’d think most of the cons are going to teach students the True Crime Genre,” said Curtain. “Not so because, you see, most of them are innocent.”

According to WPU’s public information director, Brenda Starr—who still claims that “A comics page without me would be a felony.”—said that the registrar’s office has been swamped with applications “even though the ads in the Star-Gazer and the Chronicle of Higher Education make WPU sound like a scary place.”

“Our core courses have captured the imagination of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there who has realized he’s a failure with nothing left to do with his life but become an author,” Starr said.

Core Courses

  • 101 – Show, Don’t Tell, Big Yard Table #1 – Only a dirty rat tells anybody anything.
  • 102 – Kiss Your Muse Goodbye, Solitary Cell Block – Muses and other nonsense are for the Pepsi Generation while real writers find inspiration in a bottle.
  • 201 – Writing Prompts, Big Yard Table #2 – Recruits quickly learn that “what I did on my summer vacation” isn’t as good a writing prompt as a kick in the ass.
  • 202 – Writing Style, Intensive Management Unit – “Without style, you’re never going to score,” according to lead instructor Charles Jones.
  • 301 – Sleeping With Agents and Publishers, Bone Yard – “If you can’t score, it won’t matter if you have any style,” according to Radley.
  • 401 -Parallel Structure, Big Yard Tables #4 and #5 – Like a Modus operandi, keeping everything lined up helps readers know where your story is.

Chow Time

During the first month of training, recruits are limited to a bread and water diet because Radley thinks low rations help weed out the prima donnas who think all writers live charmed lives “like those celebrity authors on Entertainment Tonight.”

“Every time a recruit writes a proper sentence without requiring a kick in the ass, we throw a piece of raw meat into the classroom,” Starr said.

Writers who survive the heady days of obstacle courses, long hikes and live fire training on starvation rations, move into the tenderfoot class with cafeteria privileges that allow them to take all they want as long as they eat all they take.

Outsourced to the State Pen 666 prison kitchen, the food is guaranteed to include entrées from the most inspiring food groups along with all the pruno (prison wine) a student can drink. Tenderfeet discovering any outlawed materials (files, hacksaws, shivs, or explosives) in cakes, mashed potatoes, and beef hash, are expected to inform the nearest guard and show rather than tell.

Jobs for a Depressed Area

Not counting the cons from State Pen 666, WPU is expected to hire at least 500 “regular people” to help school wannabes about the realities of plots, subplots and maguffins.

“Jobs are more effective than Paxil and Zoloft in curing what ails this little town,” said Mayor Clark Trail.

An unauthorized city hall spokesman told reporters that Trail plans to audit course 301 in hopes of discovering how to fast track his as yet unpublished memoir Looking For Bribery in All the Wrong Places to the powers that be at a Big New York Publisher.

Local authorities expect a decrease in crime throughout the Junction City metro area once WPU is up and running.

“After all,” said Chief Kruller of the JCPD, “idle hands are devil’s tools.”

Starr told local area educators that WPU “paid off somebody” to facilitate accreditation.

“Being on the up and up at a place like this is fiction we can live with and take to the bank,” Starr said.

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Jock Stewart is an investigative reporter for the Junction City Star-Gazer and the author of the highly addictive Jock Talks…Outlandish Happenings and Jock Talks…Strange People that are available on Kindle for only 99 cents.