BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

There are these bizarre, unwritten rules that we are supposed to follow. Not everyone has the same set of rules, or if they have similar rules, they might not be to the same degree. It’s sort of like that whole “moral-ethical” dilemma question I pose in my Ethics Workshop. What it comes down to is that whole, “we each have morals/ethics, but they are a little bit different than the guy sitting on your left or right might have.”

Same thing for the rules. We all have these unwritten rules that we have to follow, but each person’s is a little bit different – or sometimes a lot different – from those of their neighbor(s).

Some of them are self-imposed. Others are imposed by some bizarre, nameless collective in the sky. Kinda like “the cloud” I guess. Although, most of us realize what the cloud actually is… But we won’t tell the folks who don’t. We’ll just laugh at them behind their backs. Or in front of their backs as the case may be. You never know with “the cloud.”

But back to those unwritten rules. As I said, some of us have rules that are vastly different than those of our neighbors. Case in point, authors. You see, we have unwritten rules that we have to follow, and they haven’t got a damn thing in the world to do with writing. Among these unwritten rules from Mount Olympus (or wherever) is one that really, really irks me.

People get to say whatever they damn well please to us, and we are supposed to stand there and just smile and nod like one of those bobble headed cow figurines on the dashboard of your grandmother’s car…

What? That was only MY grandmother? Oh… Well, you know the figurines I’m talking about, so all good…

Anywho, I thought you might like to know what really goes through my head when people say ridiculous things to me.

Now, so you understand, I’m not talking about bad reviews. I don’t care about that crap. I’ve already stated many bazillions of times that I don’t even read reviews. They waste my time. Either you like my work or you don’t. Me calling you names if you don’t isn’t going to make you like it any better, whether I do it in public like the moron on the internet, or I do it in my head.

So, nope, that’s not what I mean. What I am talking about is when folks say ridiculous things to me during, at, or around a book signing or appearance. The unwritten rule says that I am supposed to nod and smile.

Now… You may be wondering what brought all this on. Well, nothing actually. I just happened to be looking for a blog topic and at the same time I accidentally thought about some of the utter crap that people have said to me over the years. Those two thoughts collided and I figured, “What the hell? I might be able to make something out of that.”

So… Here it is. Some of the things people have literally (I’m not kidding) said to me over the years that I have had to smile and nod at. And really, I am NOT kidding. People have actually said these things to me. And, I’ve nodded and smiled.  But here, as you are about to see, what my grin and bobbling head are doing on the outside are diametrically opposed to what is running through my gray matter.

Make note, you’ll probably find this to be a bit snarky, but ya’know, one good snark deserves another-

Random Person: “If you give me one of your books I’ll read it and let you know if it is any good.”

On The Outside: Smile… Nod… Smile

On The Inside: “If you give me your wallet I’ll go out and buy myself dinner and I’ll let you know if it was any good. Wake up you moron. Since when did I OWE you a book? On top of that, who appointed you Book Czar? Whether you like the book or not that doesn’t mean it’s good or bad. That goes for any book, not just mine. Get over yourself.”

Random Person: “You need a new cover artist. Your covers really suck.”

On The Outside: Smile… Nod… Smile

On The Inside:  “I’ll tell him you said that. By the way, you need a new fashion consultant. That shirt you’re wearing is about to make me puke.”

Random Person: “I really hated [Insert M. R. Sellars Book Title Here] .”

On The Outside: Smile… Nod… Smile

On The Inside: “Well damn. I was writing it just for you too. I’ll call the publisher and tell them to recall all of the copies and hold a public burning. Will that make you feel better?”

Random Person: “[Insert Number] of years ago I talked to you at a book signing and told you that you needed to write a book about [insert topic here] and you promised me you would. When are you going to do that? I’ve been waiting! You owe me!”

On The Outside: Smile… Nod… Smile

On The Inside: “Noooooo, actually I just nodded and smiled at you a lot. I never promised you a damn thing. I might have said that I would think about it just so I could make you go away and leave me alone, but I never promised you sh*t. You just made that up in your head. On top of that, I would still have to sell the idea to my publisher, ya’know. So, the long and short is this – If you want a book about that topic so bad I’m not stopping you from writing it.”

Random Person: “Here’s [insert babbling here] idea for a book. You can use it but you have to split the royalties with me. When can I expect a check?”

On The Outside: Smile… Nod… Smile

On The Inside: “{sigh} Not again… While your idea about pagan pirate space aliens with three penises kidnapping all of the exotic dancers in New Jersey and turning them into go-go dancing sex slaves on planet 72W-99DXZ is fascinating – especially when you seamlessly (cough) work in the disembodied ghost of Sherlock Holmes solving the Jack the Ripper case while aboard the sinking Titanic, and partnering with glowing mummies who eat nothing but SPAM… I… Uh… I just don’t think I can do it justice. Write it yourself and leave me the f*ck alone…”

 

Random Person: “Next time you have a book release party you need to have chocolate cake. I don’t like yellow cake.”

On The Outside: Smile… Nod… Smile

On The Inside: “Listen… Lardass… I just watched you eat three pieces of that damn cake, then walk past the table and stuff handfuls of hors d’oeuvres into your shopping bag as well as your face, along with one of the unopened bottles of Champagne. If you don’t like yellow cake then don’t eat it. It’s not like I charged you for any of it, and by the way, I also noticed that you didn’t even buy a goddamned book, so shut the f*ck up and get out of my face before I kick your food stealing ass into next week.

Again, I would like to stress that YES, people really and truly have said the above things to me. There are plenty more too, but I’ll leave it at that. I think you get the idea…

So, the next time you see me nodding and smiling at someone, odds are I’m ripping on them in my head. Guess what? That’s exactly how I keep myself smiling…

More to come…

Murv

There are certain things, that when said aloud, will bring most any conversation to a screeching halt. You know the things I mean. Stuff such as, “Whoops, my hair is on fire…” or “Whoa! Is that Dana Delany over there?”

Personally, I have an intense fondness for the Dana Delany comment, but then we already knew that, right? Well, if you didn’t, you do now… Oops… Guess that was sorta awkward, eh?

The thing is, there are several such phrases that can bring a conversation to a sudden halt. Case in point…

I was prattling on endlessly with my PA the other day. As it happens, the o-spring is out of school for the summer, so she was sitting there fiddling about with her Nook or some such since it is loaded up with a ton of summer reading for her. Since she’s all kinds of brilliant and has a high school level command of the English language, I often forget that she’s still just a tween, so my filters aren’t always in place. In this instance, they weren’t, and I was talking to my PA about Merrie Axemas, and In The Bleak Midwinter, giving him a synopsis of the stories, how they related, differed, and other such nonsense.

Well… Anyone who has read Merrie Axemas knows that there is a dismemberment involved. Merrie. Axe. Mas… You get the idea. So moving right along, as we are talking the o-spring pipes up and says:

“Did you know that when your head is chopped off you still live for eleven more seconds?”

This really shouldn’t – and didn’t – surprise me. After all, she’s my kid… But that’s not the thing that stopped the conversation. I mean, think about it. I research all manner of nastiness for my thriller novels… After all, I write about serial and/or spree killers for the most part. That’s why I’m a member of the HWA, and not the “Grandma’s Cozy Knitting Happily Ever After Ending Whodunit Club”…

But on with the story… you see, since both my PA and I know my kid, we just continued the convo, involving her at this point. Mainly discussing the fact that 11 seconds might be a bit of a stretch, but that there was some evidence to indicate that the brain continued to function very briefly following decapitation.

This then turned to different ways of dying, and before I knew it my PA and my daughter were into a discussion of which way to go would be the least traumatic. They got onto beheading, suffocation, drowning, etc, and I added my two cents, that being the fact that I was under the impression that suffocation wasn’t a particularly pleasant way to go, no matter HOW the suffocation happened. That’s when my PA regaled us with a tale of how he had almost drowned – or come somewhat close – when he was a child, and how it had gone from a fearful struggle to a simple calm… Well, obviously he didn’t drown, or he wouldn’t have been there having weird death conversations with my tween daughter.

But this was when the conversation stopper came.

Darling daughter pipes up, “Yeah, I almost drowned a few years ago.”

You could hear a pin drop. I stared at her. She stared at me. My PA stared at her. She stared at him. We all stared at each other.

Finally I broke down and said, “When was this?”

“A few years ago at blankity-blank pool,” she replied.

“How?”

She shrugged. “It was before I knew how to swim and my friend took me to the deep end and left me there because she didn’t know that I couldn’t swim.”

I stared some more. “Why am I just now hearing about this?”

“I dunno.”

“So, did the lifeguard jump in and save you or something? I mean, it seems to me they would have told us about it when we picked you up from summer day camp.”

“No,” she said. “My friend just took me back to the shallow end.”

“Well, did you start sinking or what? How did you almost drown?”

She thought about it a second and then said, “Well… I might’ve kinda exaggerated…”

Guess I can’t complain. She’s my kid. She got it honest…

More to come…

Murv