- GHOSTY McGHOSTWRITER: Adorable ghostwriter.
- LITERARY McAGENT, JR.: Possibly adorable literary agent. But possibly not.
- MUMBLES McREALITY: Almost adorable reality TV star who, um, mumbles.
- CONFUSED McMANAGER: Mumbles' confused manager.
- FRUSTRATED McEDITOR: Mumbles' frustrated editor at Mega Books.
I'm not going to lie: When Literary McAgent sent me the email -- a one sentence thing: "Do you want to do Mumbles McReality's book?" -- I had to do a quick Google search to find out who the heck Mumbles was. Mumbles, who'd just turned 21, was a cute young woman (little girl?) who'd used up 14 of her 15 fame minutes. She was beloved by fans of her show, but kind of a joke among the rest of the world. Like Letterman did a Mumbles Top Ten List, and Kimmel did an entire skewer-Mumbles sketch. The show was on hiatus, and there was no guarantee Mumbles would be back next season, but that didn't stop Mega Books from sniffing around.
It wasn't like Mega was all excited about the project. Frustrated McEditor managed to convince his boss to take a gamble on the book, and the boss finally agreed, but with a financial caveat. Mumbles' advance was horrible, but the royalty rate was better than usual, so if the book tanked, Mega wouldn't feel too bad. But if the book blew up, everybody would be happy...except, of course, me, because, as noted in "Ghosty McGhostwriter Meets the Whacked-Out Child Star," Literary McAgent wasn't one to fight for decent $$$ her ghosts, and this was no exception.
I was free, so, sap that I am, I accepted the job -- and the crappy advance -- without speaking with to either Mumbles or Mumbles' rep, Confused McManager. Sometimes, I'm an idiot.
Literary and Confused finally tracked down Mumbles, and scheduled a phoner. On the plus side, Mumbles took the call on time. On the minus side, Mumbles, well, she mumbled.
Next: In which Ghosty tries to discern what the hell her new client was saying, and then learns she has four weeks to write a 60,000 word book.
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