Dear World 01/07/2012
 
Dear World:

I now have a shiny Amazon author page. It is not yet completely updated. There's an anthology that I mistakenly added and a lot of publications that are yet to be included. It took me close to half a day to get all these done and for the books to be approved and added to my profile page. Amazon’s customer support is excellent. I also fixed my Goodreads author page. 

Writerly activities are fun. They make you believe that you are worth more than the sum of what you have achieved at this stage of your life. 
    
A lot of interesting things have happened to me these days. Interesting job-related things. I am the newest member of a team who does SEO-related tasks. The team is small and dedicated, and my coworkers (though I only see them in Skype) are very good at what they do. There’s my direct manager, some copywriters, and there's a web designer/all-around tech guy whom I need to send a text message to if I suddenly go offline in Skype. I have to be online for 8 hours, Mondays to Fridays, like a regular working girl. I will emphasize again that I am the newest member of the team. That’s why this project came crashing down on me because nobody wanted it.   

Now, this is the meat of the story:

On top of other promising projects, I was assigned an ongoing six-month to a year campaign for products and services that prevent premature ejaculation. I don’t know what to make of this new field of expertise. I may or may not have practical use for it in the future. I don’t even know that there’s a science to it until now. I only hope that someday during moments of desperation when you need guidance, and you come across something on the web, and you will pause to think -- that web copy is so convincing -- and you eventually end up ordering that lovely tube of lube because it all makes sense to simply clicky click the mouse button, buy your way out of your fears and anxieties for the fate of your unborn descendants, well… then you will know that it was I who wrote that beautiful, beautiful block of prose, those words that extol the virtues of men who practice self-restraint. 

If you should someday receive that exquisite autoresponder email message upon signing up to a members-only newsletter of a certain PE prevention manual (there's an acronym for it!), I tell you, I wrote that deathless piece of fine literature right there where it said: “you don’t know when you will need this.” One of my lowest moments in life occurred on January 5, 2012 when I seriously considered different synonyms for “squirt.” I realize now that all the respect I’ve earned from my contemporaries in the literary community, all the canoodling in various virtual social media junctions where I get to be tete-a-tete with some of the best writers in the world in some pro publications, all the elitism of the years as I looked down with utter disdain upon the Twilight-reading crowd – all these have gone down the drain as I subtly, ever gracefully sales-pitched: “there is no need to be embarrassed.”

This will be the first and last time that I will chronicle my long, arduous journey to the realm of the quick and the uncontrollable. I shall never speak of this again. So should you. Wish me luck. :)

Love,
KOM

P.S. I’m going to ask for a raise (pun not intended) sometime soon. I deserve it more than that person who gets to write for SEO niches involving quilting. And stop complaining about your jobs. Tata…


Now, for the advertisements:
Medulla Publishing released my 36-page chapbook two days ago. Reviews are forthcoming. Here's the cover:

My short fiction collection with Queen's Ferry Press has been finalized and the ARCs sent to reviewers. Cover art by Siobhan McCusker and stunning book cover design by Erin McKnight. Here are behind-the-scene blurbs from two talented poets who also happen to be enthusiasts of bovine/dairy-related things: 


The Landscape We Bury has over seventy cows in it -- and this alone deserves to have a statue erected in its honor. Kristine Ong Muslim's book shows absolute bovine inspiration. Anyone who reads this barnhouse monologue will think they've gone to bed with Heifer Sutherland and woke up with udders.
- Arlene Ang, author of Belting Sirs in Church is a Kinky Adieu

I normally don't even read manuscripts that do not contain any pastry, but I made an exception for Kristine Ong Muslim's egg-phrastic collection, because it contains ten eggs in various shapes and sizes, eight organic cows and their udders plus another eight delightful pairs of non-bovine breasts. Add to this mixture of egg and milk some flour (though misspelled as "flower" in this book), a dash of chocolate, "apple fruit" and a pinch of salt from "a gold bucket", and we're only some sugar short of a cake. It may be the "year of the carnivores", but surely nobody can resist this baked temptation?
- Michaela A. Gabriel, author of the secret meanings of greek letters


I love these two girls very much. I wish them a life of calcium-filled glory. :)
 


Comments

michaela a. gabriel
01/07/2012 11:45pm

ha! you are actually using the top-secret, udder-cover blurbs arlene and i wrote! terrific. i remember writing it, sitting in a viennese café between two films last october. it was a pleasure reading your book, and coming up with a few blurb lines!

as for all that PE-related stuff: shUDDER. ;)

Reply
Joe Roque link
01/10/2012 11:52pm

Wow, Kristine! You've got your hands full (no pun intended). Best of luck. :)

Joe Roque

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