Now I know how Lee Goldberg feels

Recently I received what might be the most speechless-inducing email I've ever received:

Hello Sarah.

 

I found your blog online.  I have a manuscript that fits into the crime/suspense category.  I am presently trying to get the manuscript to publishers.  Do you have any suggestions on publishers who love a great crime/suspense story?  Any info would be greatly appreciated.

XYZ

XYZ Literary Agency

Now, I do like to give people the benefit of the doubt.  But if you're calling yourself an agent, um, shouldn't you know these things already? Or at least be willing to research publishing trends and tastes yourself?

I really feel sorry for the client.

 

Comments

[christin]

I KNEW I should've picked a more reputable agency than one called XYZ...damn it!

[Guyot]

You know, Sarah, I sent you that in confidence. I am busting my butt to try and get David J. Montgomery a deal. But fitting his manuscript into the crime/suspense category is like trying to fit Star Jones into one of Paris Hilton's thongs...

I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

[John Rickards]

Oh, you claim you threw up.

But you'd watch it if it happened on TV.

We all would.

Especially if Paris was still wearing the thong when it happened.

[Victor Gischler]

Dear Sarah,

Do you know where I parked my car? Are my shoes on? What time is it?

Thanks for your help,
XYZ Literary Agency

[Bryon]

Sarah,

Do you know what happened to my literary agent? He was trying to sell my next book and has stopped returning my calls.

Thanks for your help,
Victor Gischler

[Ray]

Dear Sarah,
I also found your blog online. I tried to find it down the back of the couch, etched on the side of a dead budgie and even braved the smell to examine Rickards' End, but to no avail. Apparently your blog can only be found online. Had you thought about making your blog available on stray dogs or midgets wearing sandwich boards? Everyone loves a midget.

Especially if you dress it up as either a hobo or a nun.

[John D.]

Ray,
Don't be making fun of midgets. Especially Cambodian midgets.

http://www.newturfers.com/mwf/attach/38/355838/BBCNEWSWorldLionMutilates42MidgetsinCambodianRing-Fight.htm

[Guyot]

Dear Sarah,
I found your blog online. I have a manuscript that fits into the crime/suspense category. I am presently trying to get the manuscript to publishers. Do you have any suggestions on publishers who love a great crime/suspense story that involves Cambodian midgets who go on a crime spree (only they say "Whee!") killing people of height by crushing their skulls with sandwich boards? Any info would be greatly appreciated.

[John Rickards]

Dear Sarah,

I found your blog online with the aid of a stepladder because the goddamn internet cafe where I am doesn't have chairs that change height properly, the bastards.

I am a Cambodian midget on the run following a spree of killings I carried out using only my sandwich board. I escaped the country disguised as a hobo nun and I am now looking to sell my story.

Do you have any suggestions for publishers who would be interested in a crime/suspense/midget autobiography? Any info would be greatly appreciated.

[Sarah]

I think I'm having a mad crush on my backblog.

[Ingrid]

I know I'm having a mad crush on your backblog. Funniest thing I've read in weeks.

[Clair Lamb]

Thank God I didn't have to break my moratorium on righteous indignation:

http://lionvs40midgets.uk-directory.com/

[Guyot]

Dear Sarah,
I found your blog online after failing looking for it in the bushes and behind my couch.

I am a detective currently hunting a nasty little Cambodian bastard responsible for a number of malfeasance far too disquieting to go into here.

Do you have any suggestions on publishers who love a good crime/mystery/Cambodianmidgetkillingpeoplewithsandwichboards story told from the point of view of the ACTUAL cop on the case?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Jack Stryker
Foreign Dwarf & Little people task force

[Ray]

Dear Miss Weinman,

I am a liger. I found your blog address tattooed on the rump of a Cambodian midget I liked to call Pepsi. This was before I ate him. I have written the first of a series of liger/nun slashfic, each book to be approximately 200,000 words long (roughly double the size of a MacBride tome and four times the size of a normal book) and falling into the "book" genre. Dealing with the sticky and topical subject of lions versus tigers and the cross-breeding that occurs, as well as nuns gittin' it awn, my series aims to blow the lid off American Idol, Trading Spaces, Enron and the moon landings.

Please excuse the sloppy writing, but I'm a liger and therefore do not possess opposable thumbs.

Rowr.

[Stuart MacBride]

Dear Miss Weinman,

I am a wandering evangelical minister of no fixed abode. I found your blog between the hardcore weasel porn and naked pictures of Martha Stewart, sinful hussy that she is. I have been ministering to a bus conductor of dubious intent, who dresses up as a ligon at children’s parties in order to ‘get it on’ with the balloons and novelty cake.

I was wondering if you knew of any Cambodian Midgets that might be interested in publishing a story about my dealings with said ligon-impersonating sexual deviant and our struggle to reclaim his self-esteem and underpants. It is a story full of tragedy, laughter, illegal frolics and opposable thumbs in the mystery/self-help/voyeuristic-nun book category.

Any info would be treated in the strictest confidence, but if you could send a naked photograph it would be most appreciated.

Yours in fraternal incest,

Rev. Richmond T Wilberforce ESQ. DDS & Bar

[Dave White]

Dear Sarah,

I have recently completed a suspense/crime story entitled PROMISES TO KEEP. I am currently looking for a place to publish it. I stumbled on to your blog online and find it is a great source for this kind of thing.

Any help you can lend would be appreciated.

Sincerely,

Dave White

(Oh... wait... you guys are making fun? Shit.)

[Joe]

Dear Ms. Whineman (is that spelled right?):

I found your blog while vacuuming my underwear drawer. I don't write screenplays. I have a girlfriend who does. Would that be okay to put in my query regarding my someday-to-be-published best-selling novel involving Cambodian Ligers and PETA? Because, like, when the movie deals start rolling in, I want to have an answer for my agent about whether or not I can do the screenplay.

Um. Could you be my agent?

Are you an agent?

If you're not an agent, do you know any?

Should I just get that screenplay writing software and lie about whether or not I can write screenplays?

Any help at all is appreciated.

Joe Blowthemandown
Happy Willows Rest Center

[Jennifer Jordan]

Dear Ms. Whynmane,

Your blog was linked from a site devoted to bread fetishists and I know you're the person that can help me.

I am a cross-dressing midget vacuum salesmas that had a girlfriend that wanted to be an agent.

I've just killed her by stuffing underwear down her throat and feeding her to a hobo liger with a sign that said,"Will write screenplay for food"

Now I'm stuck with a screenplay and I've no idea where to sell it.

Any ideas?

Pedantically yours,

Will M. DeVoe

[Kaytie]

Dear Ms. Whynmain,

I found your blog conveniently located on a shelf at Walgreens, where I was in line to exchange the Humulin U they gave me this morning for the Humulin L I'm accustomed to giving my dog every day.

Unfortunately, the pharmacist was killed for his Star Wars tickets by a Cambodian midget wearing two-tone green sandwich-boards for pants and a liger-fur bikini top before he could hand over the correct Insulin (which, incidently, it turns out, my local Walgreen's doesn't have today).

My questions are two-part and two-fold. 1a) Don't you think this would make a tremendous book/movie/tv spin-off and 1b) do you know how to move the pictures in my memory to the blank white page? If so, 2a) Would you mind writing and publishing it under my name before 2b), transfering all proceeds to my Nigerian bank account via cashier's check?

I'll love you forever,
Faith Cares

[Daisy]

Hello Miss Sarah Weinman

I found your blog delightful and I think you are a person who can help me. I am an official in the government of Nigeria and I need to move a large sum of money out my country before the Cambodian-midget-supported coup occurs next week. I was considering using a liger disguiesed as a nun as a courier, but I have been told they are not very reliable. Therefore, I have two questions to be asking you:
1) Can you tell me the names and home telephone numbers of several agents and publishers who will publish my fiction novel in the crime/suspense/cookbook genre without reading it and give me lots of money?
2) How many ligers does it take to defeat a medium-sized midget?
3) Please give me your bank account number.

Thank You Dearly
X. Y. Zinnania

[Andi]

Dear Sarah Jackman,
How's by you?
I found your blog offline....scuze me, I couldn't get past sentence one. WHERE THE FRAP ELSE DOES SOMEONE FIND A BLOG? By FRAGGIN flapping definition, Scout, this is on-line.

You know those "they license people to drive but not to become parent" rants? And the famous writers schools that people pay money to in the SAD belief that they'll end up writers? PATHETIC if indeed this friggin moron idiot is claiming to be an agent because his/her so-called clients are setting fire to their money and burning it. Poof. Gone. Of course, I don't suppose it occured to said so-called clients (if they exist) to CHECK credentials, references, word around town about this so-called agent?

This alleged human is to agents as Publish America is to publishers...

I can only offer as a close "this sort of thing happened to me once" an email I got a few years ago where I was asked to provide assistance, for nothing "for the purpose of enhancing a particular organization's image". An organization I was not a member of, not especially welcome in, but apaprently it was felt that the "prestige" of being associated in such a project was payment enough. I saved the email for it's jaw-dropping qualities. I was nicer in my response than I remembered.

[Someone Else]

My Darling Miz Weinman,

I am most prominent in wishing you felicitations of welcome. I have become apparent of various undercurrents and wish to approach you with bended elbow, regarding the very much betterment of books. Labouring under the ministrations of an itinerant lay preacher – laying hands on mens and womens and all gods creatures, whether they like it or not – I have crafted a sublime novel of infinite depths and words. I am wondering if you are mostly able to help my insecuring of agents and publishers with a Cambodian-midget-Liger bent who are interested mostly in perpetrating a naughty nun/mystery/musical with overtones of baboon semen?

I would require you to conjugate between the hours of three and six Mondays to Friday and wear an camisole fashioned from tea-towels featuring Mr George Bush President in fedora and lederhosen. I am also wishing a naked picture and I will send this to you on receipt of your address. Once you have one.

Be not afraid, already I am oiling.

All best wishes and God Bless these untidied states,

Yours truly,

Gandolpho Ermenigham
Email in security most high – No salesman will call!

[Guyot]

Dear Sarah,
I found your blog while attempting to scrub off the defensive marks on my throat and elbows after trying to overcome a liger with a doily and a dreidel.

I have a manuscript that fits into the hassid/gnome category called YIDDISH WITH CAMBODIAN MIDGETS AND CHARLES KURALT. I am presently trying to get the manuscript to publishers or Russian Orthodox Winnebago drivers. Do you have any suggestions on publishers who love a great Yiddish/midget story?

Please note that I am NOT talking about dwarves. Or is it dwarfs? I am talking about midgets. The ones the Dead Kennedys sang about in "Holiday in Cambodia." Dwarfs freak me out and when in their presence can only manage to strut around in a crescent-shaped path singing "Fly Me to the Moon."

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Yours in Christ,
Shmuel Felch

[Alina Adams]

Dear Ms. Weinman and Co.

I am a Cambodian midget.

You will be hearing from my lawyer.

Do you know any?

[Bryon]

Dear Ms. Weinman:

I read your manuscript with great interest this week but after careful consideration I have decided I would not be able to successfully market your Cambodian midget pyscho-sexual hitman thriller told from the point of view of the cop on the case to the publishers I regularly do business with. We wish you the best of luck with your project.

Sincerly,
XYZ Literary Agency