Using fiction to explore the unpleasant(and I'm not talking about eating the flesh of George Clooney)

 

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Though I could talk about eating the flesh of George Clooney. The story now titled “The Price of Meat” started life as a jokey little near-future noir to be called “Celebrity Meat” (still a great title and I should still write that story someday). But it spun out and away from the fun idea of illicit lab meat and became something much longer and much darker.

Anyway, it’s available to preorder now, if you’re already talked into it and don’t need to read more:

(I believe it will also be available on paper, but for some reason, preorder is currently Kindle only. This is a dark future indeed.)

Once it was written, it was hard to find a place to submit this story, let alone sell it. Here’s one response I got from an editorial team who asked to see the story post-query:

Thank you again for submitting '[previous title]' for consideration by [publication]. The editors have read this work and after some discussion we have decided not to take it for publication.  As you suspected, it ended up just being a bit too explicit and the subject matter a bit too unpleasant for our tastes. This is a shame, because otherwise this might have been the sort of story we would have been looking for, and your writing is excellent. I do hope you'll consider sending us more of your work some time.  We'd like to thank you again for thinking of us with this piece, and wish you the very best with your writing in the future. 

Which is nice. But further proof I had a story likely to live in a drawer the rest of my life.

I don’t want to give away too much of the plot, but I should say that, while it never appears on screen (so to speak), “The Price of Meat” ends up being an investigation into not just Clooney steaks, but into the monetized sexual abuse of children.

(I recently read someone else grapping with this question.)

I hope readers will agree I take the topic seriously but, then again, once a book exists, you can’t control what happens next. Let me note to the world that I am a proud mandated reporter.

When I was in high school, my younger brother and I wrote and illustrated an ABC book of dinosaurs. And a friend and I plotted out a series of potential picture books to synergize our fledgling videogame company.

I went down to the library and checked out the latest available printing of The Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market (which I believe no longer exists as of 2022). I wrote up a query letter, and sent it off to maybe half a dozen companies that seemed like they should be interested.

In return, I got some nice little packets of submission instructions, a couple ignorals and—

I also received something I never should have received.

I don’t remember all the details of what was in there.

Do you remember that 90s meme of a duck hitting a computer with a hammer that was faxed from office to office? That cartoon was there, only the duck was now wearing a wig and labeled “Hillary Duck.” Hillaryous.

There was another cartoon. Not particularly well drawn. Of a middle-aged man, bearded, surrounded by happy and naked prepubescent girls. The caption was something like “Protect our abusers!” and, as you might imagine, it stopped me cold.

The rest of the packet was photocopies of photocopies of prose. I don’t remember them in detail but it was a mix of weird-uncle stuff you still see on Facebook—complaints about the economy and politics . . . and how lame it is that people get mad when you abuse children.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I thought I should probably take it to my local post office? Isn’t this is the postmaster’s job?

I bounced the question off my friend. He felt we shouldn’t get ourselves involved. We needed an adult to take care of it. His dad worked with foster kids; surely he would know what to do? In the end, my friend gave the full packet to his dad and I’ve not heard about it since.

But that doesn’t mean the actual problem has gone away.

I’ve already upset you enough. I’ll talk a little more about my story after the break, but if you want to skip the worst of this post, please do.

We don’t really know how common pedophilia is. And we’re not quite certain how much choice pedophiles have over their feelings and behavior. I’m not going to speak to those questions. But I will observe that a) children are generally safe and we can worry less than we do, but b) life is long and the world is wide and danger does exist.

I once met a proud pedophile (though he had not yet been caught and thus was not yet admitting to anything). He lived here one summer for a summer job with his new wife. They were barely in town on weekends and his wife was much the chattier of the two. Honestly, I’m not sure I actually remember him at all, even though I know they were together when I spoke to her.

Anyway, three summers later the news broke: he’d been arrested.

(Actually, the news broke two years later, but it was another year before anyone here heard about it.)

A later version of the story includes this horrifying excerpt that has haunted me ever since:

[He] told police he had sexually abused numerous children and young female relatives younger than 6 years old.

"{He] liked this age because he thought if they were younger than 5 or 6, then they would not remember what was happening," according to the probable cause statement.

It is hard for me to imagine a more straightforward depiction of evil.

I wrote the rough draft of “The Price of Meat” between meeting this person and learning of his actions. I suppose it’s “fun” to imagine I sensed it on some level, but I doubt that very much.

The title “Celebrity Meat” didn’t survive long. Since my hero’s a cop, I used “To Serve and Protect”* for a while (“serve” serving as a vestigial restaurant pun). I also tried “F*****g H**l,” after some final-page wordplay most readers will just find confusing. “To Serve Me” got it’s shot.

I did figure out the perfect title, once, but didn’t write it down. This will haunt me forever.

I found that perfect title doing one more full pass. But, even if the title would rereveal itself, I’ve never wanted to do another. While I stand by my novella as a solid piece of entertainment and a serious-minded commentary on serious stuff, the subject matter is such that it’s unlikely to be anyone’s favorite reread.

I first submitted it in 2016 (a year after my other meat-in-the-title fiction appeared), but I’ve had a hard time finding places to even send it since. This was only it’s fifth time out of the house. So I’m grateful to Dragon Soul to giving it a home.

I don’t know what else is in Malice, but I think you should expect more darkness. Hopefully just as entertaining as mine. But maybe starring more tasteful crimes . . . like arson. Or murder.

Anyway. That’s “The Price of Meat.” On September, 30th, discover a hero who finds a problem that must be solved now.

In the meantime, let me advertize with an excerpt that makes it just sound fun: