by David Henry Sterry
I finally got the last member of my panel for the art of the Memoir: Telling and Selling Your Life Stories at the Strand on September 22. Mike Daisy. I think he's perfect for this panel. I first met Mike backstage at the assembly rooms Theatre in Edinburgh when we were both doing the Fringe Festival, me with Chicken, Mike with 21 Dog Years. He is such a funny, smart, thoughtful person. A true old-school eccentric in the best sense of all those words. And his wife is quite great also. Jean-Michele. She directs his work and does an amazing job of it. I'm so psyched about this Strand show. It's going to be such a blast. It's been so hard to get the last member of this panel. I actually talked to the publicist of Elizabeth Gilbert., best-selling author. Apparently, if I could give Liz and honorarium of 10 grand or so, and an honorary degree from Harvard, she would be happy to do my event with me, but otherwise, Liz wants nothing to do with me and my event at the present time. And I didn't even get as far as Frank McCourt's publicity person at Scribner. I did talk to the agent of Diablo Cody at Gersh. He's a really nice guy named Joey Mangano. Actually he's the assistant to the agent. I think he fee sorry for me at this point. I just seems so pitiful, knocking sweetly on Diablo Cody's door over and over and over again while she ignores me. I don't care. I really don't. To me, every time I send an e-mail, every time I make a phone call, every time I put myself out there, it's like buying a lottery ticket. And the more you buy, the more your chances go up of winning. But it's even better than a lottery ticket, because you can stack the odds by having a good product, and selling it well. Wrapping it up in a beautiful package with a very nice bow. I'm watching Wooster and Jeeves currently. starring a pre-house Hugh Laurie, and a pre-Oscar Wilde Stephen Fry, back before they were authors. This is a great episode where Jeeves becomes the toast of Harlem, in Louis Armstrong boogie-woogie days. Oh that PG Wodehouse, he really could sling the shit. So I also wrote an e-mail to book revue bookstore in Huntington New York at the suggestion of my seeker friend, Keni fine. It looks like Lily Barana will not be doing our sex worker literati show at KGB. So were going after someone named Elisabeth Eaves, I went to her website, it looks great. She looks great. I really hope she does the show with me and Tracy Quan. Tracy is really amazing I must say. Plus she's Canadian. I love Canadians. They all work so hard. Tracy is so on it. She is so plugged in and turned on. I got an e-mail from an Italian woman today. All she said was: I love your book. And I fell in love with her in that moment. My head right over my heels. It was funny to fall in love with an Italian woman based solely on an e-mail. In my mind she has long thick black Italian hair and smoldering hot Italian eyes and swively Italian hips and dark Italian skin and she's a bisexual Communist who believes in free love and the power of the workers. I must say, Hugh Laurie is fantastic as the hapless bug eyed slack-jawed aristobrat clueless inbred idiot Bertie Wooster. Such a long way from the acerbic drug addict cynical genius House. I also e-mailed Catherine Burns who runs the moth, it's a really great storytelling series. I told a story there are couple of years ago and it was so much fun. With the amazing candye cane. I also hooked up electronically with a woman who runs the Montclair writers group, her name is Harriet Halpern, they meet on Tuesday at 1015 and the Montclair public Library. I'm going to go. Usually of course I'm not up that early, but I will make the sacrifice. This is what it takes to be a writer. I sent out the NPR pitch. I send something out to Josh Wolff Shenk, who runs a writing program. At one point were friends I think. now I'm not sure. I don't expect to ever hear from him. But I'll keep e-mailing him periodically, you never know. I wish I had a manservant. Someone who took care of my needs before I even knew they were needs. I just want to keep this diary to illustrate everything I'm doing to promote Master of ceremonies. All this stuff that has nothing to do with writing a book. Okay, that's my two cents worth, and with inflation I owe you one.
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