INDCJournal: Get Ready

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January 26, 2005

Get Ready

Posted by Bill

... for a disturbing peek inside the bleak emptiness of Barbara Boxer's weepy noggin:

Chronicle Books to Publish Senator Barbara Boxer Novel
Chronicle Books has acquired the rights to a novel by United States Senator Barbara Boxer of California. The yet untitled book, to be written with Mary-Rose Hayes, who has written several novels, will be published in November 2005. The authors are represented by Frederick Hill of Frederick Hill/Bonnie Nadell Literary Agency. This is Senator Boxer's first novel.

The novel will tell a tale of personal friendships and betrayal, political in-fighting and pragmatism. The novel follows Ellen from her days as an idealistic college student, through romantic entanglements, to a difficult marriage to a rising political star. When her husband is killed, she steps into his campaign for the Senate and is elected. On the eve of a crucial senate vote, her personal and political worlds collide when her right-wing adversaries recruit her former lover to sabotage her credibility and career.

It's appropriate for someone that derives most of their political ideology from neatly crafted fictional narratives to write a novel, I suppose. I leaned on a few sources and scored an exclusive excerpt:

Night had fallen over Room 487 of the Russell Senate Office Building, and there she was. She couldn't believe it. She was the courageous, hardscrabble product of a broken home; the triumphant honors graduate of a prestigious (and patriarchal) university; the courageous, devoted single mother of two children; perhaps the most courageous progressive political activist, infighter and rising star in the country - yet there she was. On the verge of defeat. Not by evil intellect or cunning or unforeseen political maneuvering - but by passion.
Her heart fluttered spastically, like a panicked Gilded Northern Flicker on the brink of habitat displacement via the unnatural predation of a steel-toothed, carbon-emitting behemoth. Her body felt aflame, her razor-sharp nipples tracing tiny elliptical contours along the inside of her cream-colored Claiborne silk blouse, her torso straining and heaving with ragged breaths under her chocolate Nicole Miller herringbone pantsuit. She was burning, trapped and conflicted in the wanton and unwavering gaze of Senator Kent Dott, her conservative arch-nemesis from the slack-jawed hamlet of Mississippi.

"As ... as I was saying, this legislation ... is ... unacceptable. The destruction ... of Social Security cannot be passed off as reform. You are lying to ..." She struggled to mouth the words.

Senator Dott stood and walked with a big cat's grace to the front of his desk, stopping and leaning a mere two feet from her pounding breast and gently parted lips, his legs slightly askew, his gaze unflinching.

"Now Ellen, you and I both know that something needs to be done here," Dott breathily rumbled in his smooth southern drawl.

"No. The system will be fine until 2052, and all it requires is an increase in the payroll tax ..."

"No Ellen. I'm not talking about Social Security. I'm talking about you and me."

He reached down and grabbed her wrist, roughly pulling her up into a dark and manly embrace that smelled of wool and cedar cologne. She could feel herself melting, yielding to his unilateral hegemony over the ebb and flow of her loins. For the very first time in her life, her unrelenting, courageous battle to protect the rights of the underprivileged was put on hold by the inviolable needs of her body. She looked into Dott's lustful eyes until the very last moment before his glasses fogged over in the hot vapors of their mingling breath. Without another word he kissed her, gently at first, but with a mounting ardor that quickly grew into the frenzied assault of a starving lion feasting on freshly killed meat.

A noise startled them both, and they bounded slightly apart, turning to spy the massive, ruddy intruder standing in the doorway to Dott's office.

"Eddie! This isn't ... I don't ..." Ellen stammered in shock.

The bovine Senator from New England blinked once, twice, then briefly stared at the embrace of his two colleagues, smiled a subtle smile and walked into the room, placing his scotch on the mantle and closing and locking the door behind him. The dawning surprise in his bloodshot eyes had been replaced by something else.

It was hunger.

Posted by Bill at January 26, 2005 12:32 PM | TrackBack (9)

Comments

And? And?

Just when your pulse-pounding bodice-ripping yarn had grabbed my full -- attention -- and I was fully erect -- in my chair -- greedily gulping down -- each sensational sentence -- you cruelly drain all the -- tension from the moment -- by withdrawing -- from the post.

Now I'm off to clean my pants -- of the soda that dribbled from my mouth while entranced by your prose.

Posted by: Tongue Boy at January 26, 2005 01:44 PM

Hey, don't yell at me, yell at Barbara Boxer.

Posted by: Bill from INDC at January 26, 2005 01:47 PM

Here's some inspiration for the cover, when you're/she's ready to publish.

http://www.likesbooks.com/covrcol14g.html

I think the third one's an excellent place to start. Instead of "Viking", it'll be "Conservative", with a picture of the Capitol building behind him, instead of the boat.

Posted by: ninme at January 26, 2005 02:22 PM

"She could feel herself melting, yielding to his unilateral hegemony over the internal affairs of her loins. For the very first time in her life, her omnipresent, unrelenting, courageous battle to protect the rights of the underprivileged was put on hold by the will of her body. "

Isn't Liberal Sleaze redundant? With prose like that, I'm guessing you're shooting to be the next Washingtonienne.

Posted by: Cranky Neocon at January 26, 2005 02:43 PM

Oh yeah, I guess *that's* what you meant by "scored an exclusive excerpt".

Never mind!

/Emily Latelle mode

Posted by: Tongue Boy at January 26, 2005 03:56 PM

Jeeze. Do you always pull out before the climax? You should be investigated for the crime of "coitus interruptus"

Posted by: bsp at January 26, 2005 04:04 PM

"The bovine Senator from New England..." ???

OMG. Whatever happened to the preposterously pandering porcine prig from Petaluma?

This verbal swill is still a step above her screeches from the Senate floor. Let's make her the US Ambassador to France and settle all scores once and for all.

Posted by: willem at January 26, 2005 04:08 PM

that's a howler. exactly who is behind the pen name Mary-Rose Hayes, anyway? well, whoever she is, she can be had for the Huidige Prijs of 4 �.

Posted by: tee bee at January 26, 2005 10:01 PM

PS can't wait for it to come out in paperback.

Posted by: tee bee at January 26, 2005 10:02 PM

I can't believe anybody wants to read the climax of that story. That's just sick, sick, sick.

I think Bill showed some real class.

Posted by: Veeshir at January 27, 2005 08:09 AM

Oh, man, that hegemony sure makes me hot!

Posted by: PJ at January 27, 2005 11:33 AM

Have you seen Mary Rose-Hayes' other sudsers? I had a class with her at a writing conference, she's a rather eccentric Brit, altho I suppose that's redundant

Posted by: beautifulatrocities at January 27, 2005 02:38 PM

I feel so ... soiled.

Posted by: Puddle Pirate at January 27, 2005 08:19 PM

I didn't know it was possible to laugh and vomit nearly simultaneously. I wish I still didn't know that. But it's so appropriate that this discovery was Boxer-inspired.

Posted by: Laura Curtis at February 2, 2005 04:57 AM