Jake Kilroy for Publication in 2011!

Do you know how sick I am of not bathing in champagne? Well, I'll tell you, I'm pretty effin' sick of it. I take showers in water and all the while I think, "Hey, what the hell is this? Water?" It is water. And fuck that. Fuck that forever. No more, I say!

I am hereby announcing my candidacy for publication.

Yes, people, I wasn't sure we'd get here either, but today is a day for you to mark on your calendars with the words "finally" and "fuck yeah."

Now, publication is a long way off, but I have faith in us. Well, I mostly have faith in you. My faith in me is touch-and-go. But, when I'm on, I am on, people. Why, just today, I looked up literary agents. Sure, there are naysayers out there who say, "Jake, that's not enough. In fact, just looking them up isn't nearly the same thing as sending it to them." To those people, I say, "Who are you and why are you reading my blog?"

The road will not be easy, but I've been down this road before. When I was 20, I spent the summer drunk on rum in swimming trunks wearing a sombrero and sending out book proposals. I haven't sent out a book proposal since and I don't often wear sombreros these days. I think my head is too fat. But I march on!

About a year and a half ago, I started a novel. In three months, I wrote ten chapters that I really liked. Then it took me a year to write another ten chapters that I loved. I returned to that novel last Saturday and, let me tell you...I wrote like some idiot savant. I reread what I wrote as an unemployed shit-for-brains and it was at least eight times better than what I was writing Saturday. Can I tell you something? It didn't feel good. Actually, it made me furious. So, at the public library, with the mutants and the dorks, I put away the story I once loved like an honor roll student and played Tetris online instead.

I once wanted a bumper sticker that said, "I'm the proud creator of a Faulker Awarded novel at Haper Collins." And now? Well, now, I'm angry at that son of a bitch novel. I'm close to being done, but it needs work and editing, and rewriting 120,000 words (with three chapters left to go) seems like a lot to do.

And I want to be rich now. Not a year from now. Now ten years from now. NOW. I want to spit in somebody's face and then give them a hundred dollars just to mellow the fuck out TODAY. Well, maybe tomorrow. I have things to do today.

Shit, I don't even really have things to do today. But I would if I were wealthy, I bet.

In December, I realized that I had writer's block. Maybe I still have it. Either way, my novel was being kind of a dickhead to me and I didn't want to put up with that shit. So I moved on, at least for a little while. In January, I wrote a television pilot. In February, I wrote a children's novel. In March...who knows? Maybe I'll start freelancing suicide notes. I don't know! I'm not trying to win the future here. I can barely even tell you what I'll be doing in a month (though, again, hopefully, it will be bathing in champagne...maybe with a few famous actresses, I don't know!).

I'll try these new projects out while also working on my new main focus: a collection of essays, poems, stories, etc. For now, as I don't have a title, so let's call it...Working Title. Its contents are already written on this blog. So, honestly, all I have to do now is just send out query letters and finally get mail that isn't bills. I'm going see where this takes me (Hollywood or the moon, nobody really knows).

All I know is that I want money. I want to move out of my parents' house so I can stop telling hot chicks at bars, "Hey, let's go to your place. My mansion is still being renovated."

I want to eat at Pho America all the time and be on an airplane at least once a month. I want to upgrade to the two-disc Netflix account and I want to people to understand what I do for a living. In fact, I'd like to understand what I do for a living. I want to own more than one belt too. I also want to people to say, "That guy, Jake...he's going places. Right now...I think it's to Club Awesome" (hopefully, that's a place by then). I'm no longer interested in sending out an essay to east coast literary magazines and waiting eight months to hear that I'm "uneducated" or "mentally disfigured." I want to send out the collection of my 50 best/better/pretty good/decent pieces (aka Working Title) to a shit-ton of literary agents that will get back to me within two or three months. I think I may have a shot at this. And, if I don't, then all it cost me was the price of postage and my dignity.

And both of those are pretty goddamn cheap.

Jake Kilroy for Publication in 2011!