My 30 Seconds of Fame That Didn't Happen

When my second doll book was still in its just-published infancy, I “almost” had my thirty seconds of fame. I was scheduled to sell at a doll show when the promoter called me a couple of days beforehand. “How would you like to be interviewed on The Today Show?” she asked. 

The Sunday edition of The Today Show was going to report live from the doll show and wanted to interview some of the vendors there. The promoter thought since I was the author of a doll book AND a vendor, I would be a great candidate. She instructed me to bring plenty of copies of my book to the show because when people saw me on television, they would flock to my booth to buy my book and I’d sell millions of copies.

HA!

So here’s what really happened:

Thursday afternoon: I learn I am going to be interviewed live on-location by The Today Show (I am thrilled, excited, terrified).

Thursday night: I count how many copies of my book I have on hand and discover I don’t have nearly enough for the droves of Today Show fans who will rush to the doll show to buy it after seeing me on television.

Friday morning: I call my publisher to get more copies of my book. I instruct them to FedEx them Overnight Express to be delivered early the next morning (shipping cost: $135.95). 

Saturday 10:00 am: Books don’t arrive.

Saturday 10:30 am: I call FedEx to find out why my books haven’t arrived. I’m told they will be delivered on Monday morning. (I begin to hyperventilate). FedEx Customer Service Person explains there is no way I can get them that day as they are located in some airplane hanger somewhere with no one working that facility on weekends. I hang up the phone in despair.

Saturday 10:45 am: I recover from despair and become empowered. I call FedEx back and ask to speak with a manager. FedEx Manager calmly tells me someone will research the problem and will get back to me in about an hour. I inquire what are the odds of getting the books that day and she admits, “not very good.” I insist I need the packages on Saturday and not on Monday and that I hadn't paid $135.95 to have them delivered a day later than I needed them. Manager calmly keeps repeating her mantra, “Someone will research the problem and will get back to you.”

Now for the record, I don’t lose my cool too often, but by this time the good-natured, fun-loving me was replaced by some crazy, panicked, hysterical person. This person (who I swear does not normally live in my house or in my body) begins to yell at the poor FedEx Manager, “I am going to be on The Today Show promoting my book tomorrow morning and if the boxes of books I was expecting are not in my hands by then I will be sure to tell the entire world how FedEx could not deliver on time!”  I hang up the phone angry, frustrated, and a little bit embarrassed that I actually yelled.

Saturday, 15 minutes later:  Mr. Big Wig from Corporate FedEx calls me to assure me they are doing everything they can to locate my books. Apparently my bad publicity threat triggered enough fear to move my case up the ranks.

Saturday, One Hour Later: Local FedEx Center calls to tell me they have my books in hand and I can come pick them up.

Saturday, Shortly After That Call: The Husband picks up a couple of boxes of books at Local FedEx Center and Clerk asks, “So…is your wife the one who is going to bad-mouth FedEx on TV?” 

Amazing how name dropping The Today Show gets results, right?

There is more craziness to this story that followed after we had the books in hand, but since I’m shortening it to the Reader’s Digest condensed version size, I’ll just zoom to the ending.

Sunday morning after waking at 3:30 a.m. and arriving early at the doll show to set up my booth, I learn The Today Show had cancelled because of flooding throughout the state. Apparently they felt the flooding deserved more coverage than the doll show and some little-known author who wrote a book about dolls.

So there you have it--my near brush with the big time. I certainly didn’t gain any fame from television, but who knows what kind of notoriety I received in FedEx offices and airplane hangers around the country.  If anyone from FedEx sees this, I humbly apologize. I have no idea who that crazy person was who took over my body and made the whole company jump through hoops to deliver my packages, but thank you for going beyond the scope of every day service to get them to me in time for my Almost 30 seconds of fame. And if anyone from The Today Show happens to see this, I’m still available for interviews.

Why Write When You Can eBay?

Had I known I could auction off my book ideas on Ebay for millions of dollars, I would have saved myself years of hard work and the bother of waiting for those royalty checks to trickle in.

All over the blogosphere are posts about a guy who was trying to sell his story idea on eBay for an opening bid of three million dollars with a buy-it-now for ten million dollars. He claims this great idea of his “will bring in endless fame and money to anyone who takes it.”

After hearing about the auction, I had to see for myself if this “sell your story idea” is worth doing because I have a head full of ideas that I know will make someone rich (obviously not me, but someone). I headed over to eBay to research how viable this selling of ideas could be. Unfortunately, it seems to be a slow week on eBay and no one is actually selling any brilliant story ideas right now, which might turn out to be a good thing because if I do go this route, there will be little competition for my own brilliant ideas.

Even though there were no story ideas for sale, there were plenty of other interesting auctions listed. I found an author trying to sell all rights to his book including the book, movie,“et al” for a cool $1,500,000-- that’s one million, five hundred-thousand dollars, just to clarify.

Another author was selling the movie rights for his book for a bargain price of only $95,000. That price doesn’t include a copy of the actual book, which the seller says the winner can purchase on Amazon. You’d think he’d at least throw in a copy of his book to whoever buys the movie rights, but I guess that’s why it’s such a bargain price.

It’s not just book ideas or movie rights that people are trying to sell on eBay. I also found for sale a used copy of a book for $6,099,577.95. Again…so your brain can wrap around a figure that size, it’s six million, ninety-nine thousand, five hundred seventy-seven AND ninety-five cents. That’s over $6 million dollars for a used book, and not even a rare antique book. It’s a book published in 2008 that is available on Amazon for as low as $9.18. The only thing I could figure is that the book on eBay was printed on a solid gold brick lined with diamond studs. But even at that, you’d think it would be worth only about $3 million because it’s USED.

My own books often turn up on ebay and one time a seller actually tried to sell a copy for $900. That same book was readily available all over the internet for $24.95. Needless to say, the book didn’t sell--not even when the seller dropped the price down to $358. I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered the seller thought my book was worthy enough to command those prices or be insulted that it didn’t sell. If it had sold, I would have jumped on the eBay bandwagon and offered a signed copy for double the selling price. Seriously, who needs royalty checks from a publisher if you can get eBay prices like that? Come to think of it, why even write books if you can just sell the ideas for them for a few million dollars?

You have to say this about eBay—it is the sales-land of opportunity. Anyone with the guts not to care if people think the asking price is delusional has the chance to hit it big—either in dollars if the item actually sells or in fame based on the number of blog posts and tweets the auction generates.

If I ever have a brilliant story idea that rivals Harry Potter, I’m going to think about posting it on eBay instead of wasting time working on it myself. Even if I never sell another book, I could still earn my fame as a writer with a multi-million dollar eBay listing. And to help sweeten the deal...any of my ideas that I sell on ebay will include FREE shipping.

Presenting the New, Soon-To-Be-Released Tammy Book

You saw it here first, folks!  Here's a sneak preview of the cover of Tammy Rarities From Around The World:

The book, written by me and my co-author Rebecca Wingler, will be out in May, however, pre-orders start April 1st at www.toysofanothertime.com. It was a long time coming, but finally--Tammy Rarities will make its publishing debut in just a matter of weeks.

It's Almost a Real Book!

On Friday the book proofs for “Tammy Rarities From Around The World” were delivered to my home.

Here’s a sneak preview of what the book is shaping up to look like: 

 

 After snapping this photo, I thought about jumping in the middle of the pile and rolling around in it, but being the refined and dignified person that I am, I resisted. 

So Close, Yet...Not

Big News! Harper Collins called my home. Harper Collins, as in one of the world’s leading publishing houses!!!

When I saw their name on caller ID I was so excited thinking they were calling to tell me they wanted to publish one of my YA books. But then confusion took over and I wondered how they even knew I had an unpublished YA book since I had never contacted them telling that? Could a friend of a friend of a friend’s brother-in-law’s cousin have mentioned to someone who worked there that I write YA books?

I picked up the phone using my most bestselling-author-like voice.

Me: Hello?

HC Person: Is this Representative Boehner’s office?

*pause while confusion boggled my brain, then…*

Me: No, I’m sorry, you have the wrong number.

HC Person: Oh, I’m sorry.

Phone: *click*

That was the closest I’ve ever been to negotiations with a major publishing house.

*logo copyright HarperCollins

Getting Not-So-Serious About Writing

Nothing satisfies my attention-seeking-middle-child-syndrome like making people laugh. I love to make people laugh, and have no problem making myself the brunt of any joke if I think someone will get a good laugh out of it.

Early in my writing career I tried my hand at writing a few short funny pieces. One of those humor pieces got me a job with a local newspaper whose editor must have liked the piece so much she hired me as a regular contributor to write serious pieces for the newspaper. Ironically, she didn’t invite me to write more humorous pieces for her. Each month the serious editor assigned a serious topic for me to write about, and requested I interview some serious people for the article. From that job I learned how to write about things I knew little about as well as the art of serious interviewing. It was a wonderfully serious learning experience.

Fast forward years later…I was at a writing seminar and I was joking with some people about two of the YA books I was working on--both of them on serious, edgy topics and one person asked me, “Why do you write about such serious topics? You seem so funny, I figured you’d write about funny things.”

And a light bulb suddenly flicked on in my overly-cluttered head where the lights don’t always work. Somewhere along the line of trying to be a serious writer, I lost my writing sense of humor. After I got home from the seminar, I took out one of the dark, edgy, serious-topic manuscripts I had written and started lightening it up a little. My characters became more sarcastic and funny. Serious parts were rewritten so they had some humorous scenes sprinkled in. And the story, which is about such a serious topic, has only gotten better taken with a little bit of humor. Kind of like life.