FAT-CATS AND FIRE-ANTS

Does anyone out there want to give Wall Street to the Terrorists?

I think I have a plan for fixing this whole mess. We take all the fat-cat CEOs out to the desert. We cover them in molasses and then set a case of fire-ants free.

Okay, maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but actually that's kind of what's happening to us poor slobs. They are the fire-ants, and we're the bodies covered with molasses. They misappropriated funds, lied, cheated their way to fat wallets, and when the shoe finally dropped, they want us to bail them out while running for the comfort of their off-shore bank accounts and faraway-island estates There is something wrong with this picture!

Please Wall-Street-Gods, don't let them get away with it.

SOCIAL NETWORKING

Besides working on my Iran book, I’m also getting ready for my “Social Networking Tour.” Hopefully it will take place in the next week.

How does it work? Not really sure, but according to Penny Sansevieri at Author Marketing Experts, Inc., I should end up with a bazillion people hitting my website and blog.

How much is a bazillion? Not sure, but I like the sound of it. Okay, maybe not a bazillion, but hopefully many more than I have now. People who’ve never heard of my book: A Broad Abroad in Thailand will now see it on the internet, along with my work in progress, A Broad Abroad in Iran.

Getting your name out there is the biggie. Sitting in your office and hoping that Oprah is dialing 411 at this very minute and asking for your phone number is a great dream, but you have to do more.

It’s tough out there. I keep reading about all those wonderful writers who’ve made it to the big-time publishers, and wonder if it will ever happen. I sent out a wonderful query the other day and just knew the agent would be so eager to represent me that she’d call me the second she read it. Well, there must be a reason. She’s probably on a short vacation, or maybe ill in a hospital somewhere and no one is reading her e-mails. That’s it. So, I'll just wait until she returns from her vacation or recovers from the flu, or whatever. But I will not think negative thoughts. Nosiree! She’ll call. How could she not? The book’s a hoot, even one of her clients agreed.

Here’s one of the problems: it’s self-published. Why agents don’t want to go after these books is beyond me. If you have a good selling record I’d think they’d say, Hey, let me see the book, maybe we have a best-seller here! Then again, I guess they think if you self-published that you’ve been turned down by other agents. Well, maybe they need to realize that we all can’t wait the four years it takes to get the book out. I don’t have that long. I don’t even buy green bananas anymore. So, come on, agents. Lighten up!

But just in case your phone does ring, make sure you answer with your most professional voice. You never know, it could be Oprah! Whoops, have to go. The phone’s ringing.

WRITING MY IRAN MEMOIR

IRAN IN RETROSPECT
A Broad Abroad in Iran:
One Strappy-Sandaled Foot Ahead of the Mullahs
(during the revolution)

Hooray! Since my last post, A Broad Abroad in Thailand has received some great awards: “First Place" in the National Indie Book Awards 2008 for Memoir, and also placed as a “Finalist” in the Humor category. Abroad also won “Silver” in Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Awards in the Humor category, presented to me at the BookExpo America in L.A. That's pretty exciting for a first time book.

It’s been some time since I’ve had a chance to get back here. The only changes I see in my marketing strategy are a few more grey hairs and wrinkles.

I now struggle to write my second memoir about living in Iran during the 70s. It won’t be as easy as my first memoir, A Broad Abroad in Thailand. The Thai people were gracious, happy, smiling and welcoming. In the70s, with the revolution already in motion (of course we expats had no clue), the Iranian people seemed unhappy, cross, maybe even pissed that westerners had invaded their land.

In retrospect, it’s easy to look back now and try to understand why they hated us, but at the time we just thought they weren’t happy campers and let it go at that. In our ignorance, we thought the Shah was just trying to bring his country up to the 20th Century, and not leave it lagging in the Old Testament era. Hiring expatriates from all over the world to help bring his country to a new global respect seemed like a generous undertaking. But, retrospection is a wondrous tool. We seem to want to look at casualties “after the fact” and then sort out the problems. But, at the time, we didn’t know there were problems.

What I did notice was the incongruity of it all!

The well-dressed driver of a Mercedes-Benz lays on his horn as he is surrounded by a herd of sheep. They slowly meander across the potholed dirt road, brushing against the front, sides and back of his gleaming car with their filthy, wet coats, while he screams obscenities at the sheep, the herder and at his illiterate countrymen that would allow this to happen.

A chador-clad woman stands in the street. As she waves her arm and tries to hail a taxi, her chador rides up revealing a bare arm dripping with a fortune in pure gold bangles, while an ancient, blind woman squats at her feet, begging for money or scraps of food.

A towering mosque, laden with gold and jade, stands in tribute to the incredible architecture of centuries past, while beggars with limbs missing seek shelter in the shade provided by its magnificent minarets.

In the capital city of Tehran, a theater marquee stands twelve feet high and pictures a female strapped to a pillar; she is wearing black fishnet stockings, garter belt, stiletto heels, and black bra with cleavage pouring forth. Lined up on the sidewalks and spilling over into the dirty streets are throngs of men, salivating and waiting to enter. Walking by the theater and on both sides of the street are other figures; covered from head to toe in the traditional black chador, eyes, nose and mouth the only indication that they are women, yet having to hide every strand of hair and femininity to insure they do not cause a man to have “unholy thoughts.” Hellllooooooooooooo!

Okay, now I have to get busy and turn it into a 300-page book and sell it.

Agents, feel free to contact me!