Cover Letter for The Cabin

Barista Publishing Corp.
5385 Pacific Coast Highway
Huntington Beach, CA 92605

Dear Fiction Editor:

Before considering The Cabin for publication, please understand that my writing is a bit rusty. You should know what happened last year, even if you don’t believe me.

You see, I’m a hemophiliac. I’ve never been “diagnosed,” but I was hospitalized after getting a paper cut. At first, one red drop mushroomed on my right thumb; however, once I realized I was cut, the blood streamed down my wrist and dripped from my elbow. I had seventy pages left of my Nicholas Sparks book, so I just bled into an empty coffee cup. By the time I finished, I swear the blood was spilling over the rim. Luckily, I dialed 911 before passing out. The operator sighed when she heard my voice.

All my lousy insurance covered was a four minute doctor’s visit. But it was just as well. Those nurses–I’m married–make it hard to concentrate in a hospital. That’s why The Cabin took so long to write.

And not writing makes me nervous. I bite my fingernails. I spit them, and they stick on the computer screen like crescent flakes on a windowpane. Then I nibble the thin layer underneath and dirty fragments fall between the buttons on the keyboard. I bite lower and lower every time I can’t think of a word. Have you ever seen someone without a thumbnail? It’s abject, that gooey, strawberry tissue blackened with burst vessels.

Halfway through writing The Cabin last year, I chewed down to the lunula–that’s the white part at the base of the nail. Clear fluid oozed over my laptop, and my right thumb got infected. The doctor called it “subungual abscess” and drilled a hole to drain the pus. After he bandaged it, I couldn’t type for two weeks. I never cleaned the keyboard. My fingers still stick to some buttons, so if this letter has typos, you’ll know why.

My poor right thumb. I’ve always mistreated it. When I was a kid, I sucked my thumb. During spelling tests, alone in a dark bedroom, when my brother made me watch Tales from the Crypt…I sucked with nervous abandon.

Then one day at McDonald’s, my stepdad yelled at me for being a messy eater. I had slopped extra ketchup on my hamburger, and the red paste had dripped on my hands and clothes. “Look at this waste,” he said loud enough for the fry-cook to hear. “Stupid kid.”

I quickly licked my fingers clean, sucking the last bit off my thumb. It tasted sweet on skin, much better than on salty French fries. I stuffed thirty packets of McDonald’s ketchup into my pockets. That night in bed, I squeezed every last one flat, dressing my thumb in tomato blood.

And there you have it. Instead of buying G.I. Joe action figures with my allowance, I bought 64 ounces of ketchup at Thrifty each week. My brother ate his ice cream while I spent those summer days sucking my ketchup Popsicle.

Eventually, my thumb became a piece of art. There was no dead skin or calloused edges. My tongue sculpted it into a soft pink, the tip was slick and round and shimmering in the glow of the television.

Mom didn’t intervene until after my first communion. “The body of Christ,” the priest had said. “Ah-mah,” I had replied with mouth-of-thumb. I removed it so the wafer could dissolve in my mouth. Mmm. . . It could’ve used ketchup, but when you haven’t eaten all morning, that stale bread tastes real good. Pop! Back went the thumb for dessert while God’s eyes watched from every pew.

Mom started painting my thumb with clear nail polish before school each morning. It tasted awful, particularly when sand and dirt clung to it. However, with extra ketchup, I sucked off the bitter coating by lunchtime.

Next, Mom Duct-Taped it. The kids at recess pretended to suck their thumbs. But I didn’t mind being made fun of. The real problem was that Mom had wrapped it with four layers of the thickest tape on the market. All day I gnawed that gummy onion but could strip only the top half before she picked me up. She rewrapped, and I had to start over.

Then on May 21st, 1992, I accidentally bit my nail instead of the tape. I call it a productive bad habit. Your nails have to be trimmed, right?

Yet, from all those years of sucking, I have a shrunken right thumb. Seriously, it’s noticeably small. When I meet people, I shake with my left hand. When I write at Starbucks, I sit on my right hand and type using my left. It takes longer this way, but at least the new girl behind the counter doesn’t know it’s small. The old cashier smirked when she saw it. I rearranged my writing schedule so I’m not there when she works.

My wife, Jennifer, says it’s cute. Instead of holding hands, she holds my thumb. She assures me it’s big. She caresses the knuckles with her fingers and then grazes her lips over the tip. I tell her to let go so I can go write.

Just to clarify, my thumb issues and hemophilia didn’t completely ruin my writing last year. Although work on The Cabin was delayed, I did revise some old short stories. I’m a mature writer now, so it’s easy to spot amateurish flaws, such as clichés which stick out like soar thumbs. Thank God you editors rejected them when you did! What if those clichés had been published?

I’m such a better writer now. The Cabin is fabulous, even if it took forever to write. You see, revision is like a mule tied to a stake: I circle round and round, thinking I’m doing something new every time. I replace old words with new ones, then delete those ones and retype the original words. Then, while I’m sitting back, pleased with my day’s work, I wonder if the whole section might be omitted. For example, this paragraph is exactly one hundred words up to this point. Go ahead and count. After changing it thirteen times, I’m now deleting the whole thing. It’s boring and unimportant. However, if you’re reading this, that means I retyped it again.

Here’s another one. In a story about a lawyer who goes to heaven called “Postmodern Christianity,” I edited forty pages for profanity and blasphemy. Why? Mom had come to stay with us, and she always inspects my stories. So I entertained her with Jennifer’s yoga videos while I escaped to Starbucks each morning to revise. However, somewhere in those two weeks, the lawyer became a prostitute and the title became “Mary’s Universal Flavor.” It was fine work. But once Mom learned I had a new story, she demanded to see it. She had started drawing up her will, so I censored it.

That’s when Starbucks really became my sanctuary. Jennifer is the only attorney in Orange County who doesn’t like coffee, so it’s a great place to focus on writing. My order is a venti caramel macchiato with extra whipped cream. I ask for skimmed organic milk because artists should have basic, ethical diets. Since the classic coffee cake is a tad dry, I drench it in ketchup. My stepdad said that people who put ketchup on everything are idiots, but I get a fruit and a vegetable serving, and he died from heart disease.

I’m on Twitter while I write. Multitasking separates the professionals from the amateurs. Everything important is streamed right to my laptop, so it’s easy to keep up with the contemporary publishing trends. I listen to my iPod simultaneously, drumming along with a pencil against my thigh. One time, during a Nine Inch Nails song, I hurt myself. I drummed so hard that I tore the skin.

That’s how I met Keez. He was sitting at the next table when it happened. Apparently, he overheard the 911 operator refusing to send me an ambulance. He whipped out a sewing kit from his fanny pack. I trusted him because he wore an Eagle Scout uniform, and those merit badges didn’t sew themselves on. Besides, even if the paramedics got me to the ER in time, I would’ve bled to death while they sorted out my insurance.

After borrowing a Bic lighter, he laid me on the restroom floor. He threaded a needle. “According to Yahoo! Answers dot-com,” he said, burning the metal point over the flame, “needles harbor spore-forming bacteria which can reproduce in the blood stream. I’m not saving you now if you’re just going to die from infection.” He rubbed soap in my wound. “It burns!” I cried, pounding the sticky tile. The sting was almost as bad as when I masturbated with shampoo when I was thirteen.

“Now this is gonna hurt,” Keez said, raising the needle. I took a deep breath. With my right hand, I clutched the porcelain rim of the toilet bowl. As the water warmed my fingertips, he pricked me.

Have you ever had your nipples pierced? Well, I have. My brother bet me that you could milk a man. He used a rusty bobby pin he found in the garage. I won six dollars. The supersize bottle of ketchup would’ve been worth it except Mom made me get a tetanus shot when she found out how I got the money.

The pain lasted much longer this time. When Keez pulled the needle through, the rough thread scraped underneath the skin. He zig-zagged, resubmerging the metal into my flesh each time. My shriek echoed off the walls. At some point, a man knocking on the door asked if I knew I was in the wrong restroom. He apologized when Keez said “We’re almost done.” Keez yanked the thread tight before snipping the end with the mini-scissors on his Swiss army knife.

He helped me up. “Way to go, big guy,” he said, high-fiving me. Our hands peeled off each other. I bought us the signature red velvet cupcakes and gladly let some ketchup make my hands even stickier.

Later that night, Jennifer cooked a Valentine’s Day dinner, and I told her all about him. “His real name is Keith, but he goes by Keez. He used to play bass in a ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic tribute band, but now he plays in a World of Warcraft guild. He’s worked on his novel for nine years and says it’s almost done. It’s about two FBI agents, Mullet and Ginger, who investigate alien abductions and the government conspiracy surrounding them. He calls it Paranormal Truth and says it’s inspired by real events.” She smiled. “Your friend sounds nice,” she said, touching my thumb. “I gotta go,” I said, pulling away. “He’s gonna show me Venus through his telescope.”

We started meeting at Starbucks each morning. It’s important to correspond with older, established authors, especially when they’ve got connections. His girlfriend, whom he met in a reptile enthusiast chat room, works at a Dairy Queen two blocks from The New Yorker. This is to inform you that there are other publishers interested in my novel.

I apologize, dear Fiction Editor. You’ve probably read Keez’s work. Back to why The Cabin took so long. Last January, or maybe the one before that, I finished it. Back then, though, it was Three Men Trapped in a Cabin: careers and wives had distanced three childhood friends, but they rediscovered one another while being snowed in. It was a happy story about the most important thing in the world: friendship.

Anxious, I put the manuscript in a shoebox and picked up Keez on route to the post office. While standing in line, I thought about the two hundred and fifty-six double spaced pages. My blood was in these pages. It was 100% genuine. No publisher could deny it. “Please let us sell your book,” they’d say and pump ketchup into my empty swimming pool: “You want mustard in the Jacuzzi, too?” Anything I wanted.

But when the teller weighed the manuscript, I shook my head at the numbers of the scale. “Twenty-one ounces? That’s going to be expensive to mail.” I returned the manuscript into the shoe box. “It’s got to be shorter. No publisher will want to print all those pages.”

On the drive home, I asked Keez how to reduce the page count. He replied that tag lines were unnecessary. “There’s no reason to write ‘she said’ or ‘the man said’ after every line of dialogue. It’s obvious a character is speaking aloud if you use ‘quotations.’” He bent his fingers when he said quotations.

Ignoring Jennifer’s “Congratulations, Mr. Author” cake, I removed every “he said” from Three Men Trapped in a Cabin. It dwindled by two and half pages. To save more weight, I used scissors to cut off the blank part of the last page.

My new technique was avant-garde, marketable, and environmentally sound. Everything you needed to win a Pulitzer. Yet, since you get one crack at publishing before you’re labeled a reject, I visited a Barnes and Noble creative writing workshop.

The attendees were amateurs. They all had day jobs. One man who wore scrubs and tennis shoes stressed about finding time while paying bills. David, the workshop facilitator, answered: “Make writing a habit no matter how busy you get.” He was an English professor at the local community college and edited their literary journal. I scoffed. I didn’t need some menial job so I could write.

“What should I write about?” a fat woman cried. David smiled. “Your job, your problems, your friends and family. Whatever is most important to you.”

I decided not to stay. These donkeys didn’t know anything. They’d probably try to steal my ideas. Before leaving though, I asked David to scan my manuscript since he probably had connections as an editor. He wrote a suggestion on the first page.

“You got ink!” Keez exclaimed the next day. He was right. David had written, “Two of the characters, Matt and Mark, are indistinguishable, not because it’s unclear which man is speaking, but because neither man has his own voice.” When I reexamined the dialogue, Matt’s first line, “This cabin is freezing,” was eerily similar to Mark’s “It’s freezing in this cabin.” Since they were the same flat character, I combined them into a super round character, Miguel, and aptly changed the title to Two Men Trapped in a Cabin.

My writing consumed me during these revisions. Without my noticing, Jennifer spent a week in San Diego defending some teacher in a sexual harassment case. I didn’t know I was alone until the manager of a 24-hour Walmart called saying Mom had been in the store for three days. “That’s the last time I drop her off,” I said.

When Jennifer came back, I announced that, for the first time in my life, I had mailed my writing. I had submitted to three different publishers. She kissed me and added something about her firm offering to make her a partner.

No responses arrived over the next few weeks, which meant my story had passed the preliminary editorial cuts. Every writer knows the worst stories are weaved out first. So while Two Men Trapped in a Cabin was in limbo, I pursued other talents, namely golf.

Golf and writing are similar; both are lucrative and easier than they appear, and all professionals lead friendly, leisurely lives. I haven’t followed the PGA too closely since dedicating myself to writing, but I’d say that Tiger Woods is the most respected man alive, besides, perhaps, Dan Brown.

One afternoon I got paired up with this older guy who coughed in my backswing on the first hole. Embarrassed, he apologized that he had just gotten over pneumonia and that it was his first day outside in two months. While bedridden, he had coughed so much that three of his ribs had cracked. “I’m better now, though,” he said tight-lipped around a Marlboro Red while limping up to the tee box. After he swung, he grimaced.

This continued throughout the round. Every time he hit his ball, he coughed and clutched his side while hobbling back to the cart. Luckily, the slow pace didn’t matter because we were the last golfers of the day and weren’t holding anyone up. In fact, the tempo was the perfect rhythm for me. Each drive, fairway shot, chip, and putt brought me closer to breaking my best score.

I had tuned out his coughing, that is, until the eighteenth hole where he took such a mighty hack that he collapsed. He lay on the grass, holding his chest and gasping for air. Sweat marbled his pale face. Then his eyes glazed over. He was dying right in front of me.

Of course this happened. I was this close to my best score, but what could I do? There comes a time when you learn what’s most important.

Without picking up my ball, I rushed to Starbucks and immediately informed each publisher that I was withdrawing Two Men Trapped in a Cabin. The story needed a third character: a dying man in need of medical attention. The ending needed to be depressingly realistic, not tied up in a happy bow. I worked until closing and then went to Denny’s for six hours before Starbucks opened back up.

The plot transformed. Instead of rekindling friendships, now two men argued while their wounded friend bled to death. I typed the last line: “At that moment, blame was more important than telling their beloved friend they loved him.”

When I sat back, my vision was blurry. I had typed for twenty-six hours straight without distraction. There wasn’t a fingernail on the keyboard. It was one of those grooves where you don’t realize how hungry or tired or horny you are. Your hands can’t keep up with your mind. You don’t stumble for the right word; it comes to you like that perfect Tetris piece.

Then I reread the entire novel, pretending I was an editor.

It’s absolutely terrible. None of it makes sense. The protagonist is unlikeable. There is no feeling when the man dies. The writing is bad. Why aren’t there any taglines? The story is contrived. You clearly haven’t suffered. You live in a six bedroom house in the hills with your wife. You have to have a shit life to be a writer. All you have is a shit thumb.

As I bit hard on my nail, Keez walked into Starbucks. “Big news, buddy,” he said. “I’m moving to Brooklyn. I’m finally meeting my girlfriend. I’m gonna work as a chief distributer for The New Yorker and some other big-time publications. Check out my office!” But he must’ve showed me the wrong photo because the picture was of a magazine stand next to a subway entrance. “I listed you as a reference,” he said proudly.

The news didn’t upset or inspire me. My life was a waste. Remember when I said that I’m like a mule tied to a stake, circling round and round? Well, it’s much worse than that. At least a mule doesn’t consciously do it. I’m the guy who goes by himself to Disneyland on Christmas so he can ride Space Mountain over and over without getting off because the crowds are at home.

I chewed my thumb driving home. When I turned on to my street, I ripped the nail clean off. The whole thumb was next. My teeth grinded the knuckle. I’d have done it too, if it weren’t for the two cops standing on my front porch. What’d they want? I’d probably forgotten to pick up Mom again.

“Mr. Schulzé,” the female cop said, walking toward me. “Yesterday, a man died of congested heart failure on Strawberry Farms Golf Course. The employees informed us that you were golfing with him. . . Are you bleeding?” Her partner examined me. “Jesus,” he said. “This looks serious. You need medical attention right away.”

I said that an ambulance wouldn’t come. I wasn’t a hemophiliac. I just made that up as a sob story to slap on a book jacket. But I couldn’t even make up a story that the 911 operator would believe, let alone a fiction editor.

The cops drove me to the emergency room anyway. Thirty-eight stitches, an acrylic nail, some drugs, and a lumpy hospital bed for the night. They questioned me the next morning. “We know there’s nothing you could’ve done. He would’ve died anyway, but why didn’t you report what happened?”

“Honestly?” I said. “At that time, I didn’t want to waste the story.”

The cops weren’t satisfied, and neither was the dead man’s wife who filed a criminal suit. Jennifer was my lawyer. She held my thumb in the courtroom the day the judge read the settlement. “For the criminal charge of negligent manslaughter, you will not be prosecuted,” he said. “However, for your gross incompetency and incredibly poor judgment of priorities. . . Twelve months house arrest.” He slammed his hammer. Jennifer smiled. She’s a good lawyer.

Jennifer declined her promotion to be partner. Instead, she started working from home. Every night, she strokes the soft scar tissue where the stitches used to be while we watch romantic comedies. I like the genre. I even wrote something about a honeymoon in the mountains, throwing in some dark humor to make it less conventional.

We take Mom to mass on Sundays. Afterwards, they get manicures while I read The New Yorker. I don’t need a manicure. I use the nail clippers on the Swiss Army knife that Keez sent me.

Writing at home is the best. I stay there all day, kind of working. . .But I’m really just spending time with my wife.

I hope you like The Cabin. It’s a simple story with simple prose. Every word is important. And if they’re not, I’m moving on. I can’t waste my whole life trying to write one story with one hand.

You know what? My thumb isn’t so small after all.

Sincerely,

Michael J. Schulzé

Michael J Schulzé: I’m from Orange County, California, but I currently live and write in Xinzheng, China. Their government has forbidden me from listing my best seller publications–I swear–so, if “Cover Letter for The Cabin” isn’t enough, visit michaeljschulze.weebly.com for more embarrassing stories.

Photo by Hello Turkey Toe.