Monday, May 22, 2006

Q & A 18 Tell us about yourself, EE.


I was wondering how you got into publishing and what you majored in during college.



Evil Editor has been asked many personal questions over the past few weeks, everything from, "For which publishing house do you work?" to "May I have your baby," to "Where do you get off criticizing my writing, you #$&%#$ bastard." Thus he's throwing together a brief biography.

I started out as a reader, which was somewhat time-consuming. I then progressed to writer, which required the performance of work. Eventually it occurred to me that editor was the perfect compromise: aspiring writers do all the work, and reading their books isn't time-consuming at all, as I generally need read only a few sentences.

The Early Years

I guess you could say my first book was the one my mother would read aloud to me during her third trimester as I waited in her womb, that book being Finnegans Wake. The earliest books I can recall reading myself, at the age of about three, were The Little Engine that Could, Have You Seen My Duckling?, and Dante's Inferno. I still pick these books up every so often, especially Have You Seen My Duckling?, which my son enjoys hearing me read, whenever he's home on break from college.

In college, I received a degree in English, which I discovered (after graduation) would get me a meal at Denny's, assuming I also had five dollars. Needing income, I wrote my first novel, a 900-page tome entitled Sherlock Holmes Versus The Cat in the Hat. In it, Holmes introduces the Cat to cocaine, whereupon the feline leaves London looking like a war zone. Although my Holmes wore a tall red and white striped hat, and my Cat wore a deerstalker, Publishers Weekly still had the nerve to call the book derivative.

My first attempt at nonfiction was based on my theory that, like icebergs, only one ninth of the volume of the Egyptian pyramids is visible, and thus the big question is not how they built them so high, but how they built them so deep. My answer to this question was revealed in my book, Bulldozers of the Gods.

I also tried my hand at writing a mystery, which was entitled, The Butler Didn't Do It. I'm thinking that not too many people guessed the ending, as the butler actually did do it. The title was just a red herring.

Coming soon: The Later Years

14 comments:

Brenda said...

Well hell, I'd have offered to have your baby, too, 'cept I have no uterus now.

Anonymous said...

Conveniently skipped right over that whole ant/magnifying glass phase, dintcha, Yves?

michael gavaghen said...

I'm not surprised you've blocked out the flash card incident. No one from the rest home is likely to forget your mother's fury when you kept putting Timberal and Braedyn in Agnesia and King Viroun in Enodian.

What a sad, sad little boy you were, slipping out during recess to smoke a cigarette and read some Camus. Those other third graders -- what did they know of life?

Anonymous said...

I'd have your baby, EE. Well, I would, if I hadn't vowed to rip my reproductive organs out with my bare hands before I let another child have its way with what was once a very svelte figure.

And I'm guessing that burning ants with a magnifying glass was probably not a tactile enough activity for the likes of young Evil. To be honest, for a wee minion, nothing beats tearing the wings off of flies.

:)

Evil Editor said...

Evil Editor is pleased to have so many romance writers among his fans. However, he feels some of you may be crossing into the Too Much Information realm. If guys start writing in now to brag about their hernia operations, don't blame Evil Editor.

Anonymous said...

I was going to venture into that time worn phrase of: too much information, but EE beat me to it. WTH. at the risk of sounding cliche and getting rejected... too much information!

Emmy Ellis said...

which my son enjoys hearing me read, whenever he's home on break from college.

HHAHAHAHA!

Nutty bloke!

:o)

Anonymous said...

I was gonna ask brenda have my baby, but I had a vasectomy years ago.

Brenda said...

*laughs* Well, anon, yours can be reversed!

And writing romance has nothing to do with it, thankyouverymuch (in fact, my first novel was horror). If you say you can't do a particular thing even if you wanted to do it, you have to provide validity and reasoning to the statement. Hmmph. :P

Anonymous said...

So, my hernia operation...

Not a moment too soon, I can tell you. Folks were coming up to me in the street and asking if I was, by any chance, a potato farmer and, y'know, even if I was, that's not where I'd keep 'em. Not my first choice, anyhow... But I'll tell ya, not being able to sit for three weeks is no fun either, not for me and not for the people riding my bus...

You did ask, right?

Rhonda Helms said...

LOLOLOL to both your memoir and the comments in here.

Beautiful.

Anonymous said...

You kill me, EE.

This must be sweeps month on the blogosphere, so at least we can count on The Later Years finding its way to our screens before May ends and the Nielsen folks pack up their machines.

John

Sponge Girl said...

Dear Evil,

Do you believe it to be

a)incestuous
b)acceptable
c)sacriligeous
or
d)splendiferous

for someone to be both an Evil Minion and a Snarkling?

Regards etc...

Anonymous said...

Hilarious! I read your bio as I was holding on the telephone, handling an office crisis. I laughed aloud as the irate party returned to the phone. (The Cat on cocaine is priceless!)