As we all know, I get a lot of spam calls, many of them from home improvement contractors or people who work for home improvement contractors. I also get a lot from people with companies that pretend to have some official association with Medicare and from people who want to buy or sell my home.
One interesting and pleasant one I got a few weeks ago was from a gentleman who is running for the Los Angeles City Council in an election next March. This was the actual candidate himself calling voters asking for their support and we had a lovely conversation that was mostly about the problem of homelessness. Maybe I was snowed a bit by the direct appeal but he sure sounded smart and honest and eager to win that seat for all the right reasons.
I ended the call after about ten minutes because, as I said, "You have a lot more voters to call if you're going to get elected" but he sure convinced me to vote for him…though I won't. I can't. I looked him up online and I'm not in the district where he's seeking office. He's calling the wrong people.
So this morning, I got a call of a kind I've never received before. It's from a company that wants me to hire them to promote my book. "Which book?" you might ask. This book…
Back in the eighties, I wrote a brief run on a revival of Jack Kirby's New Gods for DC. I didn't like it very much and I could list all sorts of reasons why I was prevented from doing what I wanted to do but it wasn't all the fault of others. I screwed up, starting with agreeing to what I should have known was an impossible situation. There's a great quote that is either from Alan Jay Lerner (who co-wrote My Fair Lady) or Moss Hart (who directed it). One of them said…
In my life, I have had many successes and many failures. The successes were for all different reasons and the failures were all for the same reason: I said yes when I meant no.
I must be more versatile than whichever of them said it because I've had failures for a great many reasons. Saying yes when I meant no has only been one of those reasons. But the fact that I don't think I did a good job on the book is not the reason that when DC put out some collections of those issues a few years back, I didn't plug them on this site or put up Amazon links or anything. It's a reason but I also didn't mention them on this site because I didn't know about them.
No one at the company told me in advance and I kinda understand that. The way DC Comics has been run since they relocated to Burbank out here seems somewhat chaotic. There have been times when it feels like someone high up in the Warner empire is occasionally calling one of those agencies that represents temporary office workers and asking, "Hey, have you got someone there who can run a comic book company for a few weeks?"
That's only about half a joke. I've dealt with some great people there but it feels like immediately after they deal with me, they either (a) get fired, (b) get moved to somewhere else in the company or (c) get the hell outta the company and go work for someone else in what they hope will be a more stable environment…you know, like being Donald Trump's attorney.
Anyway, I absolutely understand why no one let me know about these books before they started putting them out. The way I found out is that someone came up to me with one at a convention and asked me to sign it. And then when I got home from the con, there was a box of them waiting for me and eventually, I got some royalties. Whoever's there now at the company sending out contributor copies and royalties is good at his/her job.
I'm not sure that will explain to your satisfaction why I haven't mentioned these books here but it explains it to mine. You will notice that there is no Amazon link to any of these books here nor am I urging you to check them out.
So this morning, I got a call from some stranger who asked, inventing a whole new way to pronounce my name as he did, if I was "Mark Evanier, author of Bloodlines." I said no. That title did not register with me at first but then I remembered. He told me it was a wonderful, wonderful book so I instantly knew he hadn't read it. The conversation then went roughly as follows…
ME: Really? What was your favorite part of it?
HIM (after a long pause): The ending. I really thought the ending was great.
ME: Oh? Did you like the part with the elephant stampede?
HIM: That was the best part. (There was, of course, no elephant stampede in that book. At least, I don't think there was. I haven't read it since it first came out.)
ME: Okay. So did you just call to tell me how much you liked it?
HIM: Well, yes and how I think it's a shame that more people haven't heard about this wonderful book and bought it and read it. I happen to work with a firm here that…
ME: Let me guess. I pay you money and you publicize my book.
HIM: Yes, we are prepared to arrange for saturation publicity on the Internet as well as in print media. We could set up podcast interviews with you and get your book written about in publications for the book store trade. You would receive full penetration.
ME: Wow. I haven't had an offer of full penetration since I was about nineteen and I was being hit on by this choreographer…
HIM: Pardon me?
ME: Never mind. Listen, I'm going to save you some time. I'm not going to pay you or anyone to publicize that book.
HIM: But…but don't you want people to read this book?
ME: Not really. Please take me off whatever list you're using and don't call again. Oh and by the way, there are no elephants in my book.
Click. About twenty minutes later, I got a call from someone who said they were with "Healthcare Benefits, affiliated with Medicare" trying to get me to let them send me a back brace that I in no way need…and I'm not sure but I think it was the same guy. Different number but I think the same guy. And if I'd recognized his voice sooner, I would have told him, "And by the way, there are still no elephants in my book."