BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

My recent trip to Massachusetts to speak and sign at the SEMA PPD (Southeastern Mass Pagan Pride Day) falls into my favorite category. That being, it was a great event. There were plenty of wonderful folks, good conversations, hanging out, and excellent food as well. And, I even signed a gazillion books – gotta love that.

Of course, whenever I go on the road, even if the event is great and… well… UN-eventful… there’s always something to keep me entertained along the way – usually to and from.

So, for those who follow me on Facebook and Twitter, this is going to be redundant.  However, since there are many of my blog readers who don’t do the Twitter and Facebook thing, here, in a nutshell, is the round trip as told to my Twitter account via my cell phone. I’ll warn you up front. It’s not all that exciting…

SATURDAY

Travel Day One – Getting There From Here

Saturday 9/11 10:08AM – At Lambert STL. Busier than a whore house on dollar day. TSA Agents FASCINATED with my I <heart> EK t-shirt. O_o

Saturday 9/11 10:25AM – Almost missing those lost LBs. Took off belt for security and britches were around my knees by the time I was thru the metal detector O_O

Saturday 9/11 11:24AM – On airplane. Wheeeee!

Saturday 9/11 1:22PM – Layover BWI. Maybe I’ll see Duff and the gang…

Saturday 9/11 2:30PM – On board another air fly thingy. I’m like, YO! WEEEEEE!

Saturday 9/11 4:01PM – As a rule women make way better pilots than men. True story

Saturday 9/11 4:23PM – On ground Providence, RI. Yo! Weeeee!

Saturday 9/11 5:59PM – At the hotel. Nice room. Gang coming to pick me up for dinner at around 7:30…

Saturday 9/11 8:33PM – Dinner roundup: FRESH fish and scallops… Mmmmmmmmmm… :-P~~~~~

Saturday 9/11 8:48PM – Lost an hour today (slow damn airplane)… Gotta turn into M. R. Sellars tomorrow morning around 9… Thinking it just might be “Jammie Time”

Saturday 9/11 9:05PM – Okay… Grabbing a book and jumping into the sack. I’ll check in tomorrow morning over coffee… The maker is right here on the desk (WooHoo!)

SUNDAY

Event Day

Sunday 9/12 4:59AM – Okay, you silly whackos… I’m up. Hotel coffee cooked. It’s not DDC, but it’s definitely drinkable…

Sunday 9/12 5:26AM – Waking up just isn’t as much fun without Kat Sellars here…

Sunday 9/12 6:28AM – Clean and shiny… Even squirted on some smelly good so I won’t schteenk too badly… Now having some more coffee and diddling about on Facebook while considering heading downstairs for some breakfast…

Sunday 9/12 6:35AM – Hmmmm… Not used to that much fried food all in one place at the same time… Last night’s dinner has me feeling slightly bloaty this morning… Still better go see what’s for breakfast. Long time till lunch… O_o

Sunday 9/12 7:03AM – Hard boiled egg, a self-nukeified miniature ham & cheese quiche (never did find the ham in it), a fruit cup, and some OJ… That “oughta” hold me for a bit.

Sunday 9/12 7:07AM – Why do all of the “expert” commentators on FOX look like they’ve had botched facelifts and then lost a fight with Merle Norman?

Sunday 9/12 7:59AM – I’m not waitin’ on a lay-dayy, I’m just waitin’ on my ride… I’m just waitin’ on my ride. Do do do doo dop dee do. Do do…

Sunday 9/12 8:57AM – The Weather Channel LIED!

Sunday 9/12 10:47AM – First workshop done. Plenty of hopeful writers in attendance. Great questions

Sunday 9/12 11:10AM – Minor crisis averted – Yes, folks, I found the little authors room, weee! (Literally)

Sunday 9/12 11:38AM – Lunch: AMAZING Morrocan stew, and the cook gave me her secret recipe

Sunday 9/12 1:52pM – Booksigning rule #1 – Slow at your table? Put food in your mouth and that’ll change

Sunday 9/12 3:55pM – SIGN… SIGN… SIGN… Writer’s cramp!

Sunday 9/12 4:06pM – WHAT? WHAT? SPEAK UP! (Metal band closing out the festival – but I have coffee and cheesecake, so it’s all good.) 😀

Sunday 9/12 8:01pM – Back to the hotel. Great dinner of fish & chips at a local diner ala Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Fieri would’ve said, “Now that’s money right there.” Now working on packing. They’ll be here to shuttle me back to the air-fly-thingy place bright & early.

Sunday 9/12 8:15pM – So… How’d y’all like the periodic SMS updates? Should I keep that as part of my regimen, or no?

Sunday 9/12 8:55pM – Okay, that’s all the schnitzengruebers I can take… I’ll be up early enough to annoy everyone before they come take me to the airport. G’night all…

Monday

Travel Day Two – Homeward Bound

Monday 9/13 5:22AM – Almost finished with the packing. Swilling some hotel coffee and thinking about spending some time in that little room with the water that sprays out of the nozzle on the wall. What a concept… Sure beats a garden hose. I gotta see if I can have me one of these deals installed at the house.

Monday 9/13 6:34AM – Just called the Evil Redhead to make sure she was up and moving. I got the distinct impression she likes her daily “wake up back massage” a WHOLE LOT MORE than the aforementioned “wake up phone call”…

Monday 9/13 9:32AM – At Providence air fly place wearing EK recycles tee. TSA afraid of Evil Kat. They promise to recycle so that she won’t hurt them.

Monday 9/13 12:56PM – On ground Orlando, FL. Might have to resuscitate woman in seat behind me. She talked non-stop for 3 hours without taking a breath.

Monday 9/13 1:00PM – Just showed hi-pressure salesman my appendectomy scar & told him EK did it to me with a hi-heel the last time I spent money w/o permission

Monday 9/13 1:15PM – Orlando air fly place dining: Chef salad, heavy on the salad, LIGHT on the “chef”. Got my roughage for the day

Monday 9/13 2:00PM – On board air fly machine. M R go home…

Monday 9/13 5:30PM – I’M HOME! I’M HOME! Well… STL anyway. Redhead might leave me standing here at the East terminal. She’s mean like that.

*     *     *     *     *

And, there you have it… Murv on tour. Next stop, Ohio…

You never know… He might even come to your town.

More to come…

Murv

I’m going to break my own rule again. Yeah, for real…

No, I’m not going to defy The Evil Redhead. That’s not “breaking a rule,” that’s “committing suicide.” Really. Just try it and see what happens.

So… Anyway… Back to breaking that rule. As you all know I despise writing about writing. I’m not even a big fan of writing about being an author. That’s what the book writing thing is all about. This, on the other hand, is my shot at being a humor columnist for a major metropolitan newspaper. Not that any major metropolitan newspapers are taking notice, mind you…

Yeah… That’s the rule I’m going to break. Well… Bend, more or less. I’m going to write about writing. Or more specifically, about what happens when you’ve written something and it gets published.

You see, there’s this thing in the industry called BSSP. That stands for Blatant Shameless Self-Promotion.  Now this differs a bit from SP, which is just Self-Promotion. Why? Because those of us who engage in SP are ashamed. Well, not really. But we DO make it a point to show restraint, courtesy, and manners. Self-promotion is necessary. However, being like a cracked up used car salesman about it is not.

Allow me to give you an example…

Let’s say I’m having a conversation with someone:

Random Person says: “I had a really great corned beef sandwich at Bob’s Deli the other day.”

Murv says: “Never been there. I’ll have to take EK. She really loves corned beef.”

Now, let us imagine this conversation with a new author who has been bitten by the BSSP bug:

Random Person says: “I had a really great corned beef sandwich at Bob’s Deli the other day.”

BSSP Newbie says: “Well, since you like corned beef then you would love my new novel, The Pickling Brine Murders, because my main character Lazarus Q. Ladysmith always has corned beef sandwiches for lunch.”

Believe it or not, while the book and character name have been changed, the above example is NOT an exaggeration. Yes. Not only did it happen, but this sort of thing happens all the time.

Now I’ll be honest. We were all new once. I’m sure I did some self-promoting that toed that line just a bit – although I can guarantee you I was never as bad as the example. Fortunately, I settled down pretty quickly. Like I said before, self-promotion is a necessary evil. But if you pay attention you discover that you can be much more effective by selling yourself – not the book. Once you’ve done that, folks will generally buy your book. If you keep being an idiot, however, they will not only NOT buy your book, they will tell everyone they know to NOT buy it as well.

So… Why is this blog entry called “This Space NOT For Rent”?

Simple. The BSSP is happening all over the social networking sites too. On the FB Wall, on the Myspace Comments. It is running rampant. Just the other day I received a friend request from another author I’d never met and didn’t know from Eve. I approved it, no biggie. Less than 24 hours later a post appeared on my wall. It said, “Congratulations on your success! You deserve it!” I found these opening sentences a bit odd, because since we didn’t know one another she had no clue whether I deserved my successes or not. For all she knew I could be a complete ass.

In fact, I guess I am a complete ass because I removed the post and deleted her as a friend. Why? Because as I said, that was just the opening two sentences. The rest of her post contained several paragraphs about her new book along with links to the places where I could buy it. There was even a picture of the book cover.

Sorry honey. I am not a billboard company. This space not for rent…

More to come…

Murv