Okay, Then This Happened . . .

“Where you been at, boy?,” came the query from the crinkly-brown black man who, for some unknown and unquestioned reason, inhabits the lowest front step of my West Village townhouse on Tuesday and Fridays, in the morning. I flipped off a comment something akin to “Why? It’s not like I missed feeding you.” or something in that vein. “Boy – ,” and actually it sounded more like bwouye, “we done thought you was dead.”

Well, I’m not dead, but I probably should have killed myself after getting suckered into writing a column on a “test” basis for a major newspaper chain who will remain nameless, as they most certainly are faceless and undoubtedly, clue-less. Shoot – don’ get me started, now, y’all, ’cause this gonna get aaallll outta hand up in heah. Okay: I will control myself. Here’s the story.

As you know, faithful reader, I have got out a book in the last few months, or rather, finished a book tour (they told be to be as vague as possible and they promised to let me out once a week to make an entry here) and have done B+N, Borders, radio (thank you BRIAN L!!!), a tiny bit of television (snoooze), and an actual internet thing. Long story short, while going back and forth with edits nearly a year ago, I had four very excellent ideas, or, at least they were ideas that excited me at the time as massive flashes of intense brilliance that surely rival the most energetic supernova ev-er to have expelled its atoms into the void of space. Money shot! So, back to shortening the story: one of my brilliant ideas had not to do with creating more fiction (and oh, boy, have I got some good fiction for you! no, really, it’s not a lie . . .) but instead to use my writing skill to offer advice based on a former profession. I casually mentioned this in the form of “You know, I dispense so much advice for free, I might as well write a weekly column,” when mistakenly patting my (ex)agent on the proverbial back while he moaned about how hard it was to be divorced with only a six-figure income. I thought he was making a bad and tasteless joke at the time so I chimed in. Apparently he was serious and so, though I was, too. He took my thought and marketed it to a number of outlet, the least likely ever in my mind said, “Oh, sure, absolutely, sounds great, he’s gonna be a star, we’ll sell a million more papers a day.” This excited my (ex)agent VERY much and went so far as to make a move all the way up to a contract. He came back to me with the deal. I said, “Absolutely not. I was kidding. You must be out of your mind. I’m not blowing my wad on a Dear Abby-type column each week. You must thing I’m insane. That will totally diminish my literary position. You must be cracked.” He said, “Please, just try it. Just send in a piece each week for the next twelve. If it works for you and they like it, then we can negotiate the rest. Please?”

Since he was polite at the beginning AND the end of the sentence, I told him I would think about it. I thought about it and promptly flipped my crappy cell phone open to call him. He somehow anticipated this and was already on the line when I pressed the little green button marked with the glowingly incomprehensible symbol that signifies “go ahead – make my call” or something. “Good news,” he gushed with anatomically impossible animation, “thheyy wennt fforr it, hook line and sinker!” “You can’t mean that column-thing,” I said in my gravest, most down-cast voice. “Absolutely. It’s nailed.” He was gleeful. It sounded a little perverse. “I told you,” I was making a pronouncement now, sonorous, paced and with some force, “that I was merely joking. Are you deaf? Are you stupid? Are you truly so greedy as to take the chance that I would step away from my exceedingly lazy ways long enough to kick your ass to the curb? Hmmm? Well?”

Silence. “Can you hear me know?” said I, wondering whether I had railed uselessly having had truncated my signal by turning my head. “I thought,” he whimpered, “that this was something we were on the same page with.” Yes, that’s what he said and how he said it. A literary agent that ain’t been learned good English talkin’ skills. Okay. I’m a softy. Let’s give a try.

The long and short of it is this: this particular media chain has one thing in mind only – craft the content, don’t get content from craft. Now, I simply wrote them twelve sample columns, each EXACTLY 600 words. That was the deal. It was on the topics we discussed, and I submitted them to my agent who submitted them to his counterpart at K . . sorry, this media chain. Over the next eight days, I got contacted by two production people, two PR people, two editors (both still in high school, I think) and three attorneys. And a fact checker. WTF? I directed the back to my agent (I’m not even sure who gave them my number – that’s not funny at all.) I actually think that he tried to control them but they were not having it. After fielding my thirtieth call from a fact-checker in Los Angeles at 1 AM (“But it’s ten o’clock and this really needs to get done and if I don’t get it done tonight I have to come in tomorrow so can’t you pleeeeze help me out and I read your last book and it was really great and I hope they make it into a movie and Tom Cruise should be in it”) and there’s no period at the end of that sentence because I hung up. I then called my agent and explained the following plan of action:
“X, I want you to call your contact and let them know that I want to have nothing to do with them in any way, shape or form. I don’t want them to publish a column, I don’t want them to review my books, I don’t even want to run advertising (like that’s up to me) in their freaking papers. I want out, out, out, out, OUT!!!) He calmed me down and contacted them. Their response was that I owed them 40 more columns and that they had better have access or else.

The “Or Else” was a restraining order I received on the following Monday morning, at my home ( I have an office at which I sometimes write, meet people, and so forth) that enjoined me from writing (yes, that’s what it said) any material for sale or for any other purpose prior to fulfilling my contractual obligation to this media company. I knew they were insane, but I didn’t think they were crazy.

Being familiar with these sorts of shenanigans, I promptly did what I had to do and a) got the order quashed and b) swore out a criminal complaint of menancing with my local buddies at Precinct (X) and had c) contacted an old pal in let’s say, government circles, to see about dealing with what were clearly terroristic threats. Well, to me, anyway.

A few days later, after some BS roundtable negotiating to which my answer was “Go away” literally, I got a called from a higher-up there. Here is a transcript of what he actually had the gonads to say.

TRANSCRIPT GOES HERE

Can you believe that? In the end, my lack of faith in humanity has been duly confirmed.