Chapter Nine

Your ego is writing checks your body can’t cash, Mister!

A couple days ago a friend mentioned to me, “Hey, Prioleau—I saw your poster at Barnes & Noble for your signing. Too cool!”

Oddly, he didn’t follow up with the usual backhanded comment so many folks feel required to use:

“Wow—you’re real live, famous author now,”

or “You’ll remember us when you’re big and famous, right?”

I don’t know why humans feel compelled to make these sorts of remarks. After all, no one reads about a banker friend in the paper and upon their next encounter says, “Ohh! Big Loan Guy… remember us regular checking account folks when you start hanging with The Donald.”

But someone who gets a break in music, acting, writing? It’s hard-wired in like the need to tell a bereaved friend, “It’s part of God’s plan,” as if God’s primary job is to serve as some sort of Celestial Assassin.

Anyway, this buddy made mention of the poster, and my figuring was that the local Barnes & Noble had finally put out the books. Probably not a bad idea, since I’m within two degrees of separation from every book-buying soul that resides in the town of Mt. Pleasant.

And I live 5 miles away.

And my signing event was fast approaching.

Didn’t really think too much about it for a couple of days, but today an errand steered me right by the B&N, and curiosity got the best of me-- the next thing I knew, the car parked itself.

So this was it. The moment when, after 14 years of banging away on a keyboard in an obsessive quest for publication, my first book would emerge within real bookstore context. My ugly mug would be there on a poster, with actual sales-oriented copy announcing, “Wrote something that didn’t suck.” There would be real shelf space, trumpeting the fact that my non-sucky book managed to slip past all the built-in defenses: Agents, Publishers, Editors, Sales Reps, and Store Buyers, all with a sworn duty to defend the public from suckage in print. This was it.

Approaching the entrance, I simply could not help but wonder where the poster would be… where the books would be… and if, as a local-boy-done-good, there might be a table for my book alone.

Alone now. High noon. Only a glass door separated me from an intoxicating blast of high-inducing endorphins. I pushed it open… and there, staring right back at me, front and frickin’ center… was the picture of some mega-smile lady who writes beach-based romance novels-- who had a signing in two weeks.

No problem! So it’s not in the entrance foyer. Probably next to my table display.

Let’s see. Ah! The New Arrivals table, probably there-- 360 degree inspection- nuthin’. 360 more degress. Nuthin’.

Oh! Of course! New non-fiction table—360. 360, again. Nuthin’.

The “Staff Recommends” table-- 360—Nuthin’.

Humor section-- scan left, scan right-- left, right-- check alphabetically. Nuthin’

Local authors section-- scan, scan, scan, scan-- alphabet—Nuthin’.

Memoirs table-- 270 degree, Christ, that’s Hillary, please not here. Not with her—remaining 90 degrees—Nuthin’

Store scan-- Up, down, back, forth, forth, down, up, back. Nuthin’

Store re-scan-- Zig, zag, knick, knack, paddy-whack. And so on.

High noon, plus 15.

Leaving. Passing through the foyer where the beach romance scrivener stole my thunder. Wait! That poster has a reverse side, facing the wall.

Could it be?

Could the reverse side be my-- and so it was. And so it goes. And such is the nature of things.

I walked out the store and across the street to Kilgore’s, where I ran into an old friend, Dwayne Hoover. We decided to eat together, and we both ordered the Breakfast of Champions and a glass of Ice-Nine.

“How tricks?” he asked.

“Not so great at the moment,” I said. “How about you?”

“Not a cough in the carload,” he told me.

My first book signing.

The evening of my first book signing finally arrived. I spent a week individually emailing every single person in my address book, by name, telling them the book was available through on-line booksellers, and—if they were from Charleston—the dates and places of my two signings.

The feedback was amazing-- if a mere one in three people who said they would be there showed up, the Mt. Pleasant riot police would no doubt get the chance to use some of their crowd control toys.

“I really think I should warn them,” I told my wife. “There might be three hundred people there. It will be embarrassing if there aren’t enough books for everyone.”

My wife, the one in the family with a triple digit IQ, assuaged my concerns.

“Let’s just hope for a hundred,” she said. “That would be huge.”

I kept my mouth shut, but I was pretty sure she was wrong.

I got to the Barnes & Nobles at about thirty minutes early, where I was met by a knock-out named Emily. It immediately dawned on me that I should have had pictures of my wife and Emily in my email. (Come see Emily and Heidi standing next to each other for only $24.95, and get a free book!)

“This is my first time,” I told Emily. “I have no idea what I’m doing, so be gentle.”

“It’s pretty complex,” she explained. “You sit here, and when someone walks up you sign their book.”

Mention crowd control, Prioleau. Let Emily know. You owe it to her. She’s being very sweet, and has no idea that in thirty minutes men with shields and sticks are going to be beating her customers. Maybe her, too. And when they fire the tear gas grenades, someone is going to get hurt. Speak up, Prioleau! Say something!

“Uh, Emily?”

“Yes?”

“I, uh, there’s something you need to be aware of—“

“Yes?”

Her professional career was in my hands. My wife’s words lingered in my mind.

“I…I… don’t have a pen.”

“I think I can solve that issue.”

And pen in hand, I waited. I checked right and left for a place to seek cover, eyes scanning for a spot that could contain both me and my bride; locating a floor vent would be primo, enabling us to gulp fresh air as the tear gas rained down.

I felt conflicted: I had failed to protect my kin and kind, and all I could do now was wait. And sweat.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

7:10 pm

Once upon an evening dreary, while I sat there alone and weary,
Amongst many a volumes of self-help lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As if some one gently rapping, rapping at the bookstore door.
'Tis my wife, I muttered, tapping at that big glass door -
Only this, and nothing more.

I heard again and my eyes un-shuttered, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately stranger, dressed in tweed like days of yore.
But, with mien of English Professor, came straight through the bookstore door,
And strode straight to me, shoes ‘a clicking on the floor,
But he browsed, and nothing more.

`Professor!' said I, `you bring me evil! – whether you’re teacher or the devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul that’s totally bumming, if anyone is actually coming,
Humiliation cloaks my body, is that what I am here for?
Will I sell at this bookstore? When will a buyer walk through the door?
Quoth the tweed man, `Nevermore.'

7:30pm, and the Lord has taken mercy

The crowd drifted in, and the store got crowded. During the next two hours, about two hundred friends and family came through the store. You’ve been in crowded stores before, so I won’t spend a lot of time enchanting you with nouns and adjectives that don’t move the story along, but what I will tell you is how it felt:

1) Humbling—Anyone willing to get in their car on a rainy Thursday night to come to something as inherently boring as a book signing event is a real friend. It is a time when you get to see, first hand, the people on whom you’ve had a positive effect-- because no one there had anything to gain by showing up. I’m a nobody, and have no way to reciprocate, other than with friendship. If I’d gotten this book published when I was in the advertising business, the joint would have been awash in vendors and salespeople, each doing their job. But now? These kind souls are taking time out of their very busy schedules to cheer me on, and the feeling was nothing less than humbling.

2) Goofy— Of the 100 books I sold that night, a total of six went to people I didn’t know. And although my bride would berate me for saying so, I felt goofy. If I stood on the side of the road with a sign that said, “Why lie? I want a beer,” every one of those friends would have pulled over and given me a twenty and a lift to the bar. They were there that Thursday night as friends, and the actual words on the pages ranked about twentieth in their reasons to attend. So I felt goofy. But I also felt magnificent that my wife and I had touched that many people’s lives. The experience put into perspective the elusive pursuit of happiness.

The Weird and Wacky World of Work Ethic

As mentioned, my current life revolves around consulting, and striving to be a full-time, financially successful author. Consulting is a weird gig, because just about the time you feel like another job will never surface, it does-- and the pay-scale for a no-overhead consultant is just sick enough to soothe the savage money beast that thrashes about within all of us.

It’s fairly difficult to justify to yourself getting even a white-collar job when simply resisting that urge results in a paycheck for a week’s work that used to come at the end of a month.

However, there’s a weird part of it, too— because, after almost twenty years in the professional world, snapping into the Buffett-life doesn’t come easy. There is a tiny nagging voice in the back of your mind that haunts your every day, bitching about the fact that you aren’t playing by the normal societal rules. Here’s my latest conversation:

Voice: So, what do you have on tap today?

Me: Well, you little bastard, I’m going to go into the bank and deposit this big, fat check I got for writing and producing that corporate video.

Voice: Well, good for you. Is it enough to live on?

Me: For a bit.

Voice: That’s really good. How about home insurance? You got that covered? Car insurance? Life insurance? Flood insurance? Personal articles insurance? Catastrophic health insurance?

Me: Can’t I just enjoy today, you little son of a bitch?

Voice: Of course! All you need is three meals, a cot, and a roof over your head, right?

Me: That’s what I think. Well, that’s what the new me thinks.

Voice: I agree. So does the new you have food for groceries covered? And money for property taxes, car repairs, home repairs, water bill, electric bill, phone bill, DSL connection, cell phone bill, and pest control, right?

Me: Eat me. I’ve got my health.

Voice: Yes, yes you do. But do you have the money for the prescriptions that keep you healthy? Cash to put in the HSA savings account? Some extra dough for vet bills? Those pups need their health to.

Me: I will not be dictated to by you, you pessimistic little paraquat.

Voice: Yes, but you will be dictated to by Caesar, right? And render unto him what is his? So, thirty percent of that check will be set aside for taxes, right?

Me: Look—I’m trying to break free of all that crap. I don’t want to be constrained by the norms of society.

Voice: Guess you should’ve thought about that before you followed the societal norms right down the aisle to the responsibilities of marriage.

Me: Religious norms.

Voice: Whatever. Society… Religion… Peer pressure. All the same to me—gives us something to banter about.

Me: What the hell do you want from me?

Voice: Toil, you lazy, worthless, unproductive sloth. Unhappy, dark-to-dark, full-body-sweat, stress-filled toil. Everyone else in the world is toiling, but you—You put shaving on your list of things to do! Get back to work.

Me: And if I refuse?

Voice: Then I’ll be here to whisper sweet poetry into your ear. All day.

Me: Can I ask you to please leave me alone?

Voice: Be happy to… as soon as you tell me where you end and I start.

Me: You know, I could just have a few beers and drown you out.

Voice: It’s 9am.

Me: I mean later, at Happy Hour.

Voice: Feel free. You have fun. Stay up late. Party hearty. I’ll be sure to wake you up early so we can get an early start tomorrow.

And so it goes.

There is good news, though—There are four ways I can shut the voice up: Beer, obviously… Consulting work… Writing… and promoting myself as a writer or a consultant.

And there’s more good news. There’s an unlimited amount of promoting to be done, because a publisher doesn’t invest much in a first time author. In musical terms, it just doesn’t make much sense to sign Corporal Tunnel and the Syndromes and book Wrigley Field as their first gig.

If the good Corporal and the boys want to make it big, they need to get out there and get noticed—when records start selling, the label gets busy capitalizing on the momentum. But for a guy who spent fourteen years sweating the tiniest details about my clients’ advertising, marketing, and public relations, somebody needed to start getting jiggy on my behalf.

So, where does one begin? I’m a marketing guy—I’ve done this before. I’ve done this a thousand times before. I’ll just interview myself with the same questions I used to interview new clients:

Marketing Me: Okay, first—what’s the marketing budget?

Writer Me: Zero.

Marketing Me: The budget can’t be zero. Now how much is it?

Writer Me: You tell me.

Marketing Me: You sound like all the yo-yos I used to work for.

Writer Me: Well, maybe I’m trying to elicit a little empathy, here.

Marketing Me: Okay. Forget it. Who’s the target market?

Writer Me: Every adult in America.

Marketing Me: Tighter please.

Writer Me: Every book buying adult in America.

Marketing Me: Try again.

Writer Me: Book-buying adults, college educated.

Marketing Me: Okay, we’re down to about twenty-five million here. How else can we tighten it up?

Writer Me: They need to get my sense of humor.

Marketing Me: That takes us from twenty-five million to you, your wife, and fourteen of your closest friends. Let’s go a little wider.

Writer Me: They need a sense of humor?

Marketing Me: I can’t work with someone as dumb as you.

Writer Me: Great. Now I’ve got The Voice nagging me, and you firing me.

Marketing Me: Well, throw me a frickin’ bone. Give me something—how do you decide what books you are going to read?

Writing Me: Someone tells me about them.

Marketing Me: Okay, so we need word of mouth buzz. How do the people who tell you get told about these books in the first place?

Writing Me: Someone tells them?

Marketing Me: Magically? Like how life magically began in Darwin’s theory?

Writing Me: Hmm, maybe not.

Marketing Me: Here’s the plan: I’m going to go work for someone who has a budget. You, uh, start emailing. Email every single person in your address book, and personalize every single one. They need to know you wrote them specifically.

Writing Me: Got it.

Marketing Me: If they write back, you respond. Personally. And no “Thanks!” crap. You write them back, thank them for responding, ask them how the kids are, and beg them to email and call their friends. I don’t care if they write back ten times, you respond in depth every single time.

Writing Me: That sounds like a lot of work.

Marketing Me: You either invest money, or time. You got no money, but plenty of time. Unless, of course, this will interfere with your nap routine.

Writing Me: Does it matter that I became a writer so I could be a writer, not a self-promoting organ grinder?

Marketing Me: You can always write muffler shop radio ads.

Writing Me: One email campaign, comin’ up!

Let me tell you, writing an individual email to every single person in your address book is no small task. Even if you copy and paste the meat and potatoes portion, it takes days. And, if you’ll look through your email address book, you’ll find dozens and dozens of folks who are acquaintance-type friends that you haven’t corresponded with since you were using AOL on dial-up.

If you write them an email about your having published a book, the one thing they aren’t going to think is, “Awesome! My kind-of-a-friend Prioleau got a book published! I’ll bet he’s really busy, so I better not bother him: I’ll just quietly and effectively notify everyone I know who might be interested.” No, Ma’am. They want to know the details, and how you’ve been, and when you can get together.

The Big Day Arriveth…

April 9th, the Official Publication Day of YOU WANT FRIES WITH THAT:
A White-Collar Burnout Experiences Life at Minimum Wage by Prioleau Alexander, Arcade Publishing, New York. Distributed by Hachette Book Group, USA.

The noise generated by the public the day I hit the market made a sensory deprivation tank sound like a Who concert.