TRUE LIVES

Mis Lit is taking over the world. Apparently readers console themselves by discovering that their crappy lives might have been worse. I'm glad this genre is doing well. I've got ONE TO SELL. Actually, very nearly sold the darn thing but the agent got cold feet and told me the market was dying. My old editor friend said that was simply not true. Readers tell me they enjoy these stories because they believe them. (NOTE TO AUTHOR: MAKE IT UP) I've held dozens of these conversations over the years and everyone tells me it's not that they don't like fiction, simply that the stories are not real. In other words, the writer has failed in her job. You see, they believe in Harry Potter. He's real in a fictional sense. Couldn't be more simple. I'm working on a story about a literary agent. It's a thriller in which the poor creature dies in the opening chapter but reappears later on - FLASHBACK, darling. It draws on my limited knowledge of the publishing world combined with life in small villages peopled by rather shady but immensely wealthy characters. Could this be a new genre: LIT LIT? Or does being a thriller rule it out of the LIT category? Don't you just wish for a living Raymond Chandler to cast his acerbic pen over these debates?