Coming Soon....

Fifteen is hard enough.

Especially when your parents want to save the environment one hybrid car at a time.

Throw in a move from the exciting city of Portland, Oregon to a passive solar straw bale home ("the hellish house of hay") in the small mountain town of Flagstaff, Arizona and things suddenly get a lot harder for Amber Petersen.

Not only that, but while her parents are on a business trip in France, the young woman they hired to watch Amber and her brother, Jake, suddenly disappears. Now Amber has to figure out how to take care of her seven year-old brother with no real friends in her dinky new town, no driver’s license, and midterm exams.

Then things start getting complicated.

In a terrorist plot gone horribly wrong, much of the earth’s population is rapidly dying, taking the world’s infrastructure along with it. A mutated strain of the H5N1 virus has been unleashed on the world and no one can stop it in time.

Amber finds herself alone with her brother on their small farm with no way of communicating with the outside world, when Jake becomes very sick. Winter is fast approaching, and she has no idea if her parents are still alive.

Amber's parents have emerged from the global tragedy alive and find themselves in the south of France with a handful of other survivors. They travel from a village outside of Avignon to Biarritz, where they prepare for their ocean journey back to America.

Meanwhile, Amber and Jake struggle to stay alive and take care of their most basic needs, all the while figuring out what they future holds for them and for the rest of the people on earth.

Will Amber and Jake make it through the winter? Will their parents find a way to return home?

What happens when not everyone left on earth is a good person?

In less than one year, Amber finds her courage, love, and a new way of looking at life on this planet.

This is all part of Painted Maypole's Monday Mission. We had to write a movie trailer, so I took the young adult novel I've written and imagined that man with the deeeep voice doing the voiceover for mine.

Rejected

Dear Jen M:

Thank you for your recent interest in Playboy. We appreciate your photo essay submission, cover letter and video (returned; please see enclosure).

As you can imagine, we receive thousands of submissions from Bunny hopefuls like yourself each and every month. While we would love to photograph all of the lovely ladies that come to us, you can understand that we have a business to run, and certain things sell to certain demographics.

To save you the time, energy, and shipping bill in the future, perhaps it would behoove you to familiarize yourself with who, exactly, Playboy caters to. Heterosexual men of all ages read our magazine, Jen M. However, these men have a very specific age group they are willing to see naked, as long as they're paying $7.95 an issue. We thank you for your suggestion to look at 35 as the new 25, but as much as airbrushing technology has advanced in recent years, there is only so much we can do. As it stands, we consider 25 to be well past Bunny prime.

Playboy readers like viewing youthful young ladies with large breasts that rest somewhere just below the collar bone. Unfortunately, you do not meet our cutoff, although we also duly noted your suggestion to consider the belly button "the new resting place for hot mammaries." While we also appreciated your suggestion to run your photo spread in the spring issue, "With seersucker suits to coordinate with the seersucker belly syndrome that is hand in hand with the birthing of four children" we do not typically run our men's fashion spreads in conjunction with our Bunny layouts. Those are two separate areas of each issue of Playboy, namely in that one features naked girls and the other features fully clothed men in expensive and trendy clothing. That they might get naked girls with.

Furthermore, we stopped showing unshaved pubic regions in 1977. Today's Bunny favors a clean panty line, with perhaps a small strip of neatly coifed hair not to exceed 3/4 of an inch in length and 1/8 of an inch in diameter. Notably, your essay depicting your likes and dislikes is not in tandem with our typical Bunny. Our Bunnies like long walks on the beach at sunset, men that make them laugh, and soft fluffy kittens. While interesting to some of our editorial staff, we could not possibly print that you enjoy using the restroom by yourself, shopping for personal grooming items in the Sears Home and Garden Department, and drinking yourself into a stupor after assisting with seventh grade math. You understand that "Prolific Breeder" is a liability in our line of work, and not something our Bunnies list under "Awards and Achievements."

Lastly, while we see where you were going with your photo spread dedicated to Bill Maher and "all the other misogynistic asshats," under no circumstances would Mr. Hefner approve a photo spread featuring "naked women cavorting in a hayloft with Medela 2000 Breast Pumps attached to their money makers." Besides, Bill Maher happens to be a close and personal friend of Mr. Hefner.

Very Truly Yours,
Pictorial Staff
Playboy Magazine

This post was a part of Painted Maypole's Monday Mission, wherein we had to write a post in the form of a rejection letter. To join in, write your own and let Painted Mayple know.