Step Two of the Game

Plus Some Iffy Swag

Never Enter Screaming

That’s what my first agent — my agent for 20+ years, until his agency imploded — a fine actor named Edward Hibbert, told me In his salad days he’d signed on to assist the legendary literary agent Eric Ashworth. As Edward’s acting career ramped up — roles on Fraiser and Friends as well as countless roles on Broadway — he managed fewer and fewer writers, but I was always happy to be on his roster.

Aside from being a great deal maker, Edward knew every celebrity in the room. During our many dinners at Orso’s, he might flag any movie actor from the crowd and ask them to join us. Edward could hold forth with off-color stories about Maggie Smith, a personal friend, and he could procure front/center tickets for any show in New York, then boldly drag me backstage to the dressing room of that show’s star. Heady times. Edward is a wonder.

As an actor, he always warned me, “Never go on stage screaming.” To do so meant you had no place to escalate to. The issue first came up with my book Haunted. Edward worried about putting the story Guts at the beginning. He felt it was too strong, too early — that I’d be entering screaming. The way Brian Evenson does in his collection Song for the Unraveling of the World, the way he put a short-short piece of flash fiction at the beginning, I’d wanted to open with Guts to both hook the reader and warn that this book was going to be … upsetting. Edward graciously agree with my line of thinking, but I’ve never forgotten: Never enter screaming.

That said, in our eventual story About Our Contributors, we’ve got to open without any hint that we’re bullshitting. The first round of Bios must be straight-faced. Yes, they can be boastful, evasive, snobby, coy, whatever such Bios tend to be, but they cannot hint at the inevitable absurdity we’re striving to achieve.

For now, hide your Freak Flag.

You’ve Got to Morph to Keep the Reader Engaged

Once the reader decides the nature of your story — oh, this is a farce or satire or “I see where this is headed” — the reader is likely to bail. So if you can morph the story at least three times, you’ll keep the reader tagging along. If you read the story What I Learned Over My Summer Vacation you saw how it evolved from a trite essay written by a middle schooler … to the grim story of a kid being sex trafficked … to the story of a powerful kid who refuses to be a victim and plans to exploit his victimizers. In other words: Twists. Escalation. Keep the reader guessing.

If the writing is a sustained ecstasy, so should the reading be. Foreplay, people. Foreplay.

To do that, we’ve got to make the first round of Bios as straight as possible. No vamping. No camping. Stay in erstwhile character.

Below, please repost your initial Bios. The first-round ones. The straight ones. This weekend, I’ll review them. Moving forward we can begin the process of adding new Bios that do the cross talk. This weekend, I’ll choose a half dozen of the most straight Bios, and future Bios can springboard from those. Make sense?

So, for now, don’t enter screaming. Give me your best straight-faced Bios, below.

Now the Questionable Swag

Once upon a time a publisher got the great idea for the lapel buttons you see above. They’re printed with a Tyler Durden quote: “I Fuck Who You Want to Fuck.” While they seemed like a good idea at the time, we all got cold feet, and the buttons never saw the light of day.

To date I’ve got a big, heavy box of these buttons. Should I bring them to Dark Delicacies for the November 23rd event? Will you take them all home? I can autograph them, but that obscures the message. See the above photo as proof.

If you’ll take these buttons off my hands I’ll bring them to Del’s store in Burbank.

What say you?