everything that's fit to print

At work my co-worker showed me a copy of a book written by a soap opera character. You read that right: a character wrote a book. The back page is an advertisement for a perfume designed to coincide with the release of this book. You can buy the perfume at Sears.

This makes me nuts.

Fiction is already having a hard enough keeping its head above water. Publishing houses are shutting down like crazy, sales of fiction are dropping (as touted in all the publishing periodicals), writers are constantly being called on plagiarism. This isn't a good time for fiction.

And then this sort of crap comes out.

My other co-worker informed me that Snoop Dogg is writing fiction now. I'm checking titles in our online catalogue and on the same page see that Kix Brooks and Ronnie Dunn (aka Brooks and Dunn) have a western book out, and Gene Hackman wrote a prison-break book. I have never wanted to read works of fiction from any of those people and, quite frankly, never want to encounter them because I think it would put into question my ideas on censorship.

Maybe people really are becoming more stupid. If people actually want to read this crap, wouldn't they have to be? I mean, I won't even sign out Pam Anderson's fiction, let alone pay for it.