Dispatch 15: I Am Not Dr. Seuss

by Lupe Fernandez

Whenever I wax gloomy about the prospects of being published, I often hear the legendary tale of Dr. Seuss' first book being rejected 27 times before being published. The tale is meant to encourage the forlorn artist to keep the faith.

Yet, I can't help thinking about other lessor known persons of note who suffered the slings and arrows of rejection before achieving some modicum of fame. Here are a few: 

Norge Polar Expedition

Captain Gustav Norge - Famed Norwegian Explorer
Born in 1870, as a boy Captain Norge hated the water and the snow. He got motion-sickness every time his family went climbing in the mountains above icy fjords. As a young naval officer, Lt. Norge suffered from home-sickness every time his ship left port. His first Arctic Expedition failed due to a leaky boat and contaminated food tins. His second Arctic Expedition failed due to a bad case of gout. It was only in 1919, that his ship The Moose plowed through the summer ice fields and placed Captain Norge within 100 miles of the North Pole. Of course, Admiral Peary had reached the North Pole ten years earlier, but who's quibbling. Captain Norge heroic expedition sealed his name forever in the annuals of guys who voyaged to the North Pole after the first guy.

Thedore  M. Heimline

Theodore M. Heimline - Inventor of the Heimline Maneuver
In 1973, Heimline invented a method to stop hiccups by having the afflicted bark into a paper bag. His son suffered from chronic hiccuping and Heimline trying all manner of remedies to stop the hiccuping, including suspending a bag of water over his son's head and slapping the boy's feet with a cod fish. His great breakthrough of using a paper lunch bag had the potential of catapulting Heimline to great medical fame. Unfortunately, in 1974, Dr. Henry Heimlich perfected the Heimlich Maneuver to great acclaim and Heimline, due to the spelling of his last name, was accused of poaching Dr. Heimlich's success. Heimline intended to change his name, but the great Cootie Outbreak of 1973 at his son's school drained Heimline's finances as his son was accused of having being a Cootie Monster.

Russell Marquez

Russell "Do Over" Marquez - Author of Russell's Guide to Girls
Class of 2011, Russell Marquez began an anonymous blog called "Guide to Girls", explaining to shy and uninitiated freshman how high school girls behave. His blog achieved great success with boys and great notoriety with girls. When a publishing house - who shall remain nameless - approached Russell, still an anonymous blogger, with a book deal consisting of his various blog posts, Russell announced the news on Guide to Girls and revealed his identity. The ensuing legal action by outraged parents, the FCC, the CDC and the PTA scared off the publishing house and Russell was forced to close down his blog as part of a legal settlement. Snippets of his "Guide to Girls" still can be heard in faint whispers among clashing hallway locker and read in code embedded in unicorn images appearing in a random Google search.

Other notables:

• Mimi Lee Menagerie, circa 1954, creator of the literary genre Southern Punk with the obscure novel "I Got a Case of the Vapors."
• Rattinus L. Finkius aka Joe Pietra, circa 1929, inventor of the "step car" known today to airline travelers as the step ladder used to disembark passengers on airport tarmacs.
• Ms. Beatrice Conroy Deveer, circa 1996, technician at Bell Laboratories perfected a device known as the IVD which is implanted into a adolescent female nether regions and administers an electric shock of 20 milliampers at the introduction of the adolescent male verpa. Patent pending.

So the next time I feel pessimistic about my writing career, I ponder the problems of software engineer, Mona "Bumpers" Quintana, who is actively shopping her memoir about her love affair with Sam, a cyber voice service. Ms. Quintana is currently serving 5 to 10 years in Chino State Correction Facility for Women for assault and battery on a Trademark. Ms. Quintana claimed Sam was "stepping out on me with that bitch Siri."

National Chocolate Chip Cookie DayMay 15, 2012

Hilde's Killer Cookie Recipe

for all our fans

Las Galletas del Diablo

    "I'm not reading your manuscript until you send the damn cookies"

                                                          -- Allyn Johnston, Editor, Beach Lane Books

                                             (Editor tested, writer approved.)

Ingredients:

1 cup of unsalted butter or organic shortening (I use Earth Balance to make this vegan).

1/2 cup of brown sugar

1/2 cup of sugar (I use cane juice sugar)

1/4 cup of Vanilla Silk Soy Milk (not regular- the vanilla is key)

1 teaspoon of vanilla

2 1/4 cups of unbleached flour

1/2 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1 teaspoon of cinnamon- my secret ingredient

12 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chips- I personally use more like 16 ounces or 20 depending on my mood- usually 20.

2 kids- preferably cute

Instructions:

1- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, put two chairs in front of oven for proper viewing or kids can sit on floor.  In order for this recipe to work, you must have noise, kids running around in the kitchen and the dog barking.

2- Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy.  Slowly add Silk, cream well, then add vanilla.  Kids will stop running to be part of this step.  Use can use a mixer on low speed and kids as manual labor.

3- Combine the dry ingredients in a mixing bowl.  Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture, then fold in the chocolatechips. Answer the phone and trip over the dog. (I find that when I do this, my batch turns out magnificent).

4- Freeze dough mixture for about 30 minutes.  Then make small balls on cookie sheets.  Kids will be on hand to help with this step, every time. When I don't use them, the cookies aren't as yummy. (Yours were a quite yummy because both twins helped.)  The recipe says to line the sheets, but I don't.  I also use my Pampered Chef scoop for perfectly shaped cookies.  (Medium scoop makes larger cookies. Small scoop works great for mini bites, like when you have kids and you want to limit the sugar overload).

5- Recipe says to bake for 8-10 minutes, but I keep a close eye on them because you don't want to burn the bottoms, and you want them gooey on the top without becoming "crispy."  So, I plop the kids in front and they watch the cookies.  Way more effective than a timer.  The phone must ring at least 6 times and usually I answer about 3 emails, do the dishes and throw a load of laundry in between freezing the dough and watching it  3 to 4 cookie sheets bake.

6- Now, the most, most important part- make sure you have milk- any kind on hand, the two kids, and lots of napkins. EAT as many as you can.  You know it's a good batch when there are none left or when a potential Editor won't open your MS until she gets the recipe.

WARNINGS:

You must double the recipe (not the kids).  No matter what, you will never have enough cookies.  People can smell them from miles away it seems and somehow everyone knows when I'm baking.

Do not use the electric mixer to mix dry and wet ingredients together or you will get cookie crumbles and want to pull your hair out. (Been there, done that and it wasn't pretty.)

You must freeze dough for perfectly looking cookies. (But don't forget the dough. I once found it three days later.  Don't remember why. I think the phone rang and then I had to go and write a book or something).

Use as many chips as you can get away with and you can do any type of chip: semi-sweet, dark, peanut butter, white chip or even carob. My best friend calls them a bunch of chips with some cookie.

In fact, I will often separate batch into two halves and add different chips depending on the crowd.  My husband is hoping to make partner one day with my cookies because his boss loves dark chocolate chip cookies I make for him, but for my husband who has dairy, nut and chocolate allergies, I make carob cookiesand he says they are exquisite.

If you aren't multi tasking, the recipe doesn't work as well.  It seems that I bake while emailing, washing dishes and feeding family at once.

This recipe was on the back of the Silk Soy Milk Container 12 years ago and it is my signature baking item and most requested by everyone who knows me or even strangers that just met me at a conference, like you...  Seriously, we had a fundraiser at my kids' school and I got pimped out to sell cookies and once someone posted on Facebook that they were really good and someone in New Zealand replied that they agreed. Yes, they had made it to NZ with my tupperware.