Lots of good things today.  Pinchbeck has sold around 11,000
copies.  Our publisher is thrilled, and has set the bar at
30,000.  Some guy is flying Pinchbeck out to LA to tape a show
about prophecy and oracles for The History Channel.  We’re trying
to get him blog space on Amazon.com.  He’s happy with me. 
I’m happy with him.  I’m getting a lot of attention at work. 
I’m still coming up with new ideas for this book. 

Joe has invited me to a party for his book next week.  Yay! 
Book parties are actually kind of rare these days.  Publishers
don’t really do ‘em anymore because they cost a lot and don’t really
sell books.  So you generally only have them when a friend of the
author’s throws one, or someone donates space, like the CoSM thing for
Pinchbeck.  So there’s a party for Joe’s book a week from Friday,
and I’m invited, and so is Ben.  The e-mail didn’t seem to be cc’d
to too many people.  I know Jim Knipfel was invited so I hope to
get to meet him.  Joe and I had a couple of pleasingly bantering
e-mails after I got the invite, which pleased me.

But I’m juggling a lot; there wasn’t much time to sit and smile. 
One of my backlist authors had to get yelled at.  I had to sort of
mediate with an outside publicist for one of Ben’s books who can’t
write to save her life; I’ve been quietly revising her letters, but Ben
blew his stack with her today and I had to make nice.  Then I had
a phone meeting with one of my new authors; she’s a good friend of the
publisher and her book has already been mislaunched twice.  Now
she has a better cover and me for her publicist.  I might actually
be able to push this book somewhere, but even if I don’t, I’ll give it
my best shot.  She’s very sweet and we hit it off.  The
publisher loved the introductory e-mail I sent her and I’m sure will
get a good report on today’s conversation. 

The Italian author of my little inspirational book is going to be in LA
for three weeks in July-August, and his English seems to be good enough
for me to set up some interviews for him.  I haven’t heard as much
noise as I’d like from my galley mailing, so maybe it’s time to follow
up with a blast e-mail.  Lee and I are also talking about spending
a little ad money on this book, since the author is flying in on his
own dollar.

This was also one of those days when Ben and I worked really well
together.  I think he inspires devotion in the people who work for
him.  Lee, I know, is really attached to him. 

I think the new publicist is, too (I have momentarily forgotten her
phony name), but she’s basically a very happy and adaptable
person.  She’s not at all into politics but she’s gotten almost
all of our political authors laid on her, and she’s okay with
that.  I’d be miserable if it were me, I think. 

Of course, that’s partly my doing and my fault:  I caught on very
quickly to which books I wanted to do and there was always a good and
demonstrable reason why, and that’s why I got those and not the
political books.  (I’d probably feel guiltier about laying those
books on the other publicist except for the fact that our political
books are pretty much all liberal.)  I demonstrated a feel for new
age books and their authors and for cultural topics and for fiction (we
do very little fiction, and Ben of course will continue to handle and
micro-manage Erica Jong, but I really might get to handle Jim Knipfel’s
next book).

Ben farms out just about nothing as concerns Erica because, let’s face
it, Erica is a fucking goddess to people like Ben and like me. 
She’s one of our very few big-ticket authors, which means she tours a
lot and you have to plan out most moments of her day, the car service
in LA from her hotel to a radio interview at 3:20 PM and her pickup
from the radio interview at a time TBD when her media escort will phone
you — with the number of the hotel, the escort’s cell number, the
radio producer’s phone number, the phone number of the studio green
room, the publicist’s phone number, the travel agent’s phone number,
the car service’s phone number…that’s first-class treatment and it’s
very fussy and detail-oriented and has to run like clockwork.  I
don’t think Ben could sleep at night if he had to worry that someone
else had to do one or more of those things and maybe got distracted and
forgot.  I can do a Pinchbeck tour mailing two days after I
originally planned and it isn’t the end of the world; if Erica’s
flight’s been changed and someone forgot to change the car service,
that’s bad.  He’ll ask me to mail her books and paste up
clippings, but that’s all.

I will have to do a lot of that shit for the Lynch book.  I won’t
get to be sole publicist on that one — it’s too big, which is fine
with me.  No one had to say so.  At one point in a department
meeting, Ben said, “J. will work with me on that,” which just means
that someone higher than me, maybe even Ben, decided that I wasn’t yet
ready to do it alone.  If that’s the case, I count it as a
favor.  It’s one thing to be a newbie and surprise them by
performing with Pinchbeck; it’s quite another to be a newbie and be
over your head with David Lynch.  I also believe that when Ben
says “J. will work with me on that,” his intention is for us to split
the work pretty equally.  Of course, Lynch has his own people, and
final approval over all material, so it may be that both Ben and I and
excluded from tour planning and may just be soliciting reviews. 
But hey, that drives sales too.

Sales?  it’s a way to measure my effectiveness.  I’m trying
to get a particular book in front of every single person who might be
interested in it; if a book outsells its expectation, it means I’ve
found and attracted more people than the publisher and editor thought
were there to be found.  Dollars are not meaningful but
identifying and communicating with the target audience is; that’s my
job.  And this is a little different than advertising because the
media are a real wild card; in Pinchbeck’s case, I got his book into
the Village Voice and the New York Times,
but they both gave him shitty reviews.  The editor was bummed, but
I’m actually at least a little happy that the book was mentioned at
all.  I mean, I’m a publicist for two months, and I got a book
into the Voice and the Times. 
(I do fuckin’ rock, don’t I?  I’m usually too busy to sit back and
look and something like that and say, holy shit, look what I just
did!  At the office, I can kind of congratulate myself if I do it
in a good-news-for-the-book sort of way, like today:  “This guy is
flying Pinchbeck out to LA next month to interview him for a show on
prophecy and oracles for The History Channel.”  Subtext: 
“Holy shit, I got Pinchbeck on TV!”  I never got anyone on TV or
into the Times Book Review before. 

In fact, the only media placement I ever got in my life before this job
was in the early 80s, when I very briefly had a PR job where I could
actually work on accounts, and I got a client who did on-campus alcohol
abuse awareness programs into Glamour.

Sidebar:  that woman Molly I used to work for in one of the BIG
imprints just promoted her two assistants, the one I worked with and
the one I *was* but didn’t get to be permanently.  They have these
new administrative titles.  I’m glad for them and congratulated
them both, but I’m so much happier to be doing publicity than I would
have been as Molly’s second assistant.  Molly’s keeping an eye on
me and has been quite friendly.  Her department’s stolen a
publicist from ours in recent years.  Someone from her imprint
came asking us for a copy of 2012
the other day; her department is right next door, but — pardon me for
bragging again — there is buzz about this book all over the
company.  The president (Ben refers to her as “Boss Lady”) is very
aware of this book.  If I can make some fancy numbers on this
book, and do a little something with the self-help and inspiration
books, I should have a bit of a name for myself.

How embarassingly unused to success am I?  how sadly unused to loving my work?

Yesterday, I brought a CD into work (I got speakers for my work
computer recently to listen to radio interviews and podcasts), and
listened to it twice through.  I do listen to music at my home
computer some, but it’s usually one-at-a-time selections from my hard
drive.  I haven’t sat and listened to a CD for a long time. 
And I enjoyed this one thoroughly, a long-time favorite.  Almost
every track on it is great.

Had a sex date with Will yesterday, and because I’ve been kind of
ambivalent about the whole thing, I requested a scene of my choosing
last week:  The Strange Man.  But Will, natch, made it all
about him, and came in with a veritable laundry list of what *he*
wanted.  The Strange Man, for you latecomers, is a little drama
where Will plays a guy that “Will” has sent to see me and has told that
he can use me as he pleases.  Maybe I’m being picky here, but I
would expect Will in this scene to adopt a different persona and to
come in with some novel ideas that the Strange Man wants which are
really calculated to work for me.  It’s my scene.  Instead,
he basically play-acted during the making-out portion of our program,
which was the part that really got me turned-on, and then required me
to do things that were either his usual preference or that he’d told me
he was interested in.  Plus he whispered a whole other scene he
wanted done after this one, which means that only half of the date
would be devoted to “my” scene, etc.  I just kind of quit in the
middle, after he came.  I had absolutely no interest in doing even
one more thing, not touching him, not coming myself, none of it. 
I wanted to be elsewhere.  I felt used.  I also still have
the “disconnect” problem, where everything with us is so
compartmentalized that nothing even hinting of sex hapens outside these
dates, and I feel like I need to get aroused on cue, which doesn’t
always work.  And he’s not helping.

I could bitch about a lot of specifics, but I don’t think I need to
obsess on this problem.  Already, he’s focused on sex to the point
that it’s worrisome to me, and to the point where again he seems
careless about the friendship.  But I’m also realizing that this
is his natural state, and I’m not going to nit-pick him into
changing.  I think I may just have to stop fucking him, and see if
he becomes a good friend again or if we just lose interest in each
other.

I still feel really excited about my work.  Someone else from
another one of the big imprints asked me for a copy of 2012
yesterday;  the buzz is starting to build, the book is continuing
to sell, my author is happy, my boss is delighted.  It isn’t yet
the hit we need for “Team T____,” but it might just get there. 
Found out yesterday that the book placed #14 on the Booksense (indie
stores) bestseller list for Southern California, tho it was mistakenly
classified as “fiction.”  (My guess is that it’s harder to place
on the fiction list than on non-fiction.)  I’m working on press
for the new tour cities; I mailed Durham, NC yesterday, and will start
working on DC, Philly and Boston this coming week.  T____ is also
doing two other marketing mailings (to book stores in a couple of
categories that might be lkely to stock the book).  Ben overheard
me on the phone with Pinchbeck yesterday, and said afterwards, “He
should be sending you flowers!  you’ve really gone above and
beyond…”  I don’t know if I’ve gone above and beyond, but I do
know I’ve done the author and the imprint the favor of taking this book
very seriously and believing in it.  T____ has some books that are
dogs and no matter what you do for them, they won’t perform. 
(Helen Reddy.)  Maybe some of it is knowing what books are
potential performers and putting in the work on them.  I have two
more in my sights:  The Power of Kindness, my little inspiration book (Town and Country is considering serial rights), and This Time I Dance!, my
new age-y career-change book.  (David Lynch’s book, I think, will
be less hands-on, since he already has a PR team and has approval of
every bit of material we send out.  David Lynch’s book’s success
will depend more on *his* Team Lynch, and his using his fame and his
book to push TM may be its undoing — the book, not  TM.)

Black Like You is getting
decent reviews and some nice radio interviews, but the cover turns
people off.  I think it’ll go down as a well-thought-of book, but
not a big seller.  I think Ben is stepping back from it a bit,
letting me set up interviews (when Ben is bonded with a book, he
handles everything personally), and moving on to his next possible
performers.  His next couple of books don’t look to me to be big
sellers:  one on how the religious right is targeting gays (which
looks to be a good book but probably a weak seller), and one slightly
snarky memoir by a straight guy with AIDS called My Pet Virus,
which I think is kind of a weak book, tho the author is a popular
campus speaker and may do well with college kids.  I have some
dogs coming up, too:  a reprint of some freemasonry stuff by a
noted kook, a reprint by the Church of Religious Science guy, a
philosophy book somewhere between pop & scholarly called Why Can’t We Be Good (which I think is a quality book that won’t sell). 

Yesterday morning in the weekly breakfast meeting, which is T______ and another imprint with all of these company sales and production people (the closest thing we have to “suits”), I was talking about 2012.  It’s still the closest thing we have to a hit, and I’ve been called on to talk about it for the past few weeks.  I was talking about an appearance the author is making this weekend, and I said something along the lines of, “Daniel is talking at the Gaia Mind Festival in Pennsylvania this weekend.  I didn’t learn about it in time to set up any book-selling, but it’s a great place for him.  It’s one of those…it’s absolutely his crowd, they all smell like patchouli.”  I got a huge laugh.  After the fact, I was amazed that I’d been confident enough to just throw that in without much thought, and that it was so well-received.  I’m amazed every day that I’m something of a phenomenon around here.  I came out of nowhere to be The World’s Oldest Assistant and all of a sudden am pushing this weird book up, up and away.  I have two other books in the pipeline which I think can also be sleeper hits.

Joe was surprisingly low-key in the couple of e-mails I got from him yesterday, not too chatty.  We’ve already exchanged a couple this morning because Ben asked me to try to set up a radio interview for him.  Joe always expresses gratitude for my help, but I’m not feeling the warm vibe any more.  Wonder what’s up.

I adore the writer so I think we should call him Joe.  He’s going
to need a name.  The truth is, I’ll be real happy to be friends
with him, and I think we’ll have that at minimum.  He came in to
do a podcast today, and he’s just as loose and friendly in-person as in
his e-mails.  He wanted me to stay with him when he did the
podcast, & he sure didn’t have to twist my arm.  The podcast
interviewer very obviously liked the book and liked what he had to
say.  After he recorded about half an hour’s worth of podcast, the
three of us just sat and talked for another twenty minutes.  It
was all about race and culture and history and New York and that kind
of thing, some talk about political correctness which may be the topic
of his next book (he already has a wonderful title picked out).  I
said I really liked that idea for the next book and encouraged him to
move ahead with it (he said, “I haven’t even told Ben about this yet,”
which I found rather flattering since Ben is his editor and
publicist). 

I offered some comments in the conversation, some views on certain
social issues of my own creation which I’ve repeated numerous times to
numerous people:  why I disagree with Americans who are against
immigration (and how the local animosity toward Russians is just a
rerun of the old story about how tough it is for the newest group to
melt into the pot), what I think of anti-”porn” feminists (“I am first
and foremost against any form of censorship”), some observations about
race and music, etc.  I don’t usually get great reactions to some
or all of my opinions, but Joe really got it, and we riffed a bit about
the whole too-PC thing.  It was a mighty intelligent chat and we
really got each other and he didn’t take it over my head; some men do
use intelligence as a weapon, and will wreck a nice chat by
complicating it until one is over one’s head.  (The other thing I
really, really liked was that Joe’s attitude toward me did not change
one bit once he saw me; he was just as warm and friendly.  Some
guys really withdraw when they learn you’re not a typical beauty.)

Joe forgot to bring the copies of a couple of his earlier books.  He’ll have to send them or see me again. 

Today was pretty eventful at work even without that.  Whitley
Strieber wants to interview Pinchbeck on his radio show. 
Pinchbeck’s sales went up a little click last week.  The
new-age-career-change woman’s galleys arrived today and they’re the
first with my name printed on the back cover as publicist. 
Started considering some ads for my little inspiration book; the author
is not a native English speaker (the book is in translation), and his
English may not be good enough for a US tour, so we may have the whole
publicity budget to spend on actual advertising.  And a big
luxury, upper-class-type magazine was fishing about first serial rights
to that book.  I overheard Ben on the phone saying some rather
positive about the way I handled the Pinchbeck campaign.  And I
think there is or was other stuff.  Oh, someone from one of the
big imprints came and asked for a copy of 2012. 
That was really cool.  There are some hardcover imprints in the
company that are very prestigious and some that sell great popular
books and some that do both.  They don’t really pay much mind to
little oddball, low-earning imprints like ours.  So it’s rare to
have one of them ask us for a book, which of course also permitted me
to meet a publicist from there, and also to pick a title from their
yummy book room.  (A Basquiat bio was the prize.)

Oh yeah…I’d e-mailed a music journo I knew both thru Whitefish stuff
*and* thru blues stuff.  We were an item very briefly; also, he
liked my writing enough to offer what was a pretty important little job
for me, at least as far as prestige.  He was editor of one of two
blues guides to which I was a contributor, my first book credit. 
Anyway, he’s been based mostly in New Orleans for several years, and
still mostly works out of there, tho he’s in New York for the summer,
and is working on a book about the role of musicians in post-Katrina
NO.  It has a good title.  And he’s a good writer. 
Unfortunately, he’s also a bit of a drunk, and tells me he just has
notes now.  What I asked for, of course, was an outline and sample
chapter.  I want to see how soon he can come up with that. 
He took a REALLY long time with the book I contributed to; in fact, an
editor of a magazine I wrote for at the time asked me to contribute a
number of articles for a similar book after
the NO guy did, and I submitted them, the editor did his work, and the
book was out before the NO guy’s was.  (BTW, I will refer to the
NO guy as “Plunger Boy.”  This refers to a costume I saw him wear
on one occasion, and that’s how I referred to him in correspondences at
the time of our lightning-fast “relationship,” which is now over ten
years ago.)  It would be kind of funny if I ended up being Plunger
Boy’s editor.  He was also interested in seeing some of the books
I’ve been working on; he might be able to review one or more somewhere,
and it would of course be great if I got some reviews out of it.

I had dinner with Laurel after all that (and there was more going on
and more to handle today), which was pretty pleasant.  I still
find her to be rather unhealthily obsessed with her own outward
appearance…this seems to be getting worse as she gets older.  It
used to just be clothes and accessories.  For over a year now,
it’s included dieting and then exercise (not, as I’m sure I’ve said,
for any health benefits, but solely for the sake of her
appearance).  Then two botox treatments.  Then a
colonic.  AND the clothes and accessories.  She’s been upset
about a slight belly bulge that won’t go away even with crunches,
cutting out foods she believed were bloating her, and the colonic, and
I just know she’s working her way toward liposuction.  Which
scares me, because that can actually be dangerous and the recovery is
tough.  The botox was really crossing a line.  She’s almost
45.  She’s gonna have a little wrinkle or two between her eyes and
on her forehead.  She might have a little tummy since she has
borne a child; but she’s a size 6, for godssake! (she was a 4, until
apparently the exercise built up her butt into a size 6). 

Pardon me for kvetching. 
I adore Laurel and I feel weird about her doing some things I don’t
have the discipline to do and should be doing, but for the “wrong”
reasons.  There are times I just want to say, “you really need
some kind of therapy because your insecurity and low self-esteem are
doing you harm and have made you miserable for years.”  I am
constantly hearing her talk, for instance, about something she wants
her husband to do but “can’t” ask him, he has to somehow read her mind
or want to do it on his own, and guess what?  she’s almost always
disappointed! 

Things are generally good in my life.  Leo is a little
lower-energy and unhappy than I’d like; I’m feeling kind of ambivalent
about Will; I’m very wrapped up in work.  Bought a BIG air
conditioner for the living room on Friday, which leaves us a mite
broke, but properly cool.

I’ve been having a bit of a flirt with one of our authors, someone Ben handles.  I’ve been helping out some because I adore the book, and the author and I have been quipping back and forth over e-mail.  He’s right around Leo’s age, about 54, not bad-looking in the photos I’ve seen, and has primarily been a music journo, tho that’s not the topic of the new book.  He’s reading tonight, and I was going to hang out in the city after the half-day of work and go…except it’s supposed to be in the 90s this weekend and what I should probably do is go back to Brooklyn and buy an air conditioner for the living room.  I *may* be able to do that and get back to the city for the 7 PM reading.  He’s also coming into the office next week to do a podcast.

Leo and I ate last night at the venerable Joe’s of Avenue U.  This is a serious old-school Sicilian joint right near where we live, where you can eat-in or take out.  We ate there a couple of times after we first moved in, and recently, we’ve been taking out from there on Thursday nights (Leo gets paid on Thursdays).  They have some very good fish dishes, Leo loves their calamari salad, and we’re thoroughly addicted to their stuffed artichokes.  Last night we decided to eat in, and I figured it was time to try one of their serious regional specialties, pasta con sarde — pasta with fresh sardines, wild fennel, raisins, pine nuts, bread crumbs, etc.  I gotta say — this might be one of the best things I’ve ever eaten in my life.  I made sure to tell the owner so.  I don’t think I’ve ever had fresh sardines before and they are beyond luscious.

As is Eric Bana, so buy yrself a copy of Munich. 

I was really out of steam by the end of the week, which was both hard
work and drama.  Apparently everyone is very excited about what
2012 is doing, including the president of P______.  We got a hit
of money to help push it further, and Ben decided the way to go was
hire a media service which guarantees 25 radio interviews.  San
Francisco Chronicle piece ran this week.  Author is happy. 

At breakfast meeting on Thursday, which is our weekly meeting with
another imprint and the sales and marketing and operations people, 2012
was the big story.  The marketing people are going to kick in some
money to get table displays at book stores (something I just learned –
that kind of placement costs the publisher money).  This is now
our imprint’s biggest book.  I don’t know whether to say “the
success of this book was mostly my doing” or “they seem to think I did
a good job here.”  We know that some of the placements and such
were due to the author’s personal connections:  High Times,
Rolling Stone (still not out), New York Magazine and the publication
party were not my doing.  The NYC, LA, SF, Portland and Seattle
readings, I didn’t get.  But pretty much the rest of it was
me.  I developed the original mailing list, wrote the press
release, did all follow-up e-mails on the mailing…and placements
happened, and keep happening.  He did Marc Maron’s show on Air
America.

We had planning meeting later on Thursday, just our imprint with some
of the same company people as breakfast meeting; this was to talk about
the winter books.  My major winter book, the Lynch, was tabled, to
my disappointment.  There’s some shit going on with that book,
some difficulty, and no one’s telling me.  But I learned a lot
about the rest of the winter books.  One of the things that
happens in this meeting, for books that won’t pub until after
Christmas, is that the sales and marketing people give us feedback on
the current status of cover, title, etc, and ideas are thrown
around.  I hesitated at first to put my two cents in, but then
decided, “fuck this playing-with-the-big-kids mentality,” and spoke
up.  I *am* a big kid now; everyone there knew that I had pushed a
weirdo book to an exciting place.  (This thing keeps happening
where one of the big guys in my department looks me in the eye, takes a
deep breath, and says, “we need a hit, we really need a hit.” 
This means, “it is fuckin’ awesome what you’ve done with this book,
this could get importantly big for us and we are so psyched and just
keep doing what you’re doing.”  They also say straight-out stuff
like, “I am *so* glad that you’re working here!”)  So, you know, I
suggested a few replacement subtitles (saw the editor write one down)
and cover designs.  Ben said to me later, “good suggestions in
there.” 

Friday, Ben and I set about the business of taking 2012 to the next
level.  One of the other tasks I had to deal with was writing a
bang-up letter to re-pitch NPR stations.  Because this is now so
important to our imprint, he stepped in for a couple of very discreet
tasks, but mostly let me do my thing.  He said he wanted to read
the NPR e-mail before I sent it, which to me was mostly a signal to
write it really well; he would doubtless have me send my first
take.  And he negotiated with the radio media service, since I’d
never used it before and he wanted to hondle
a bit.  (That’s the Yiddish word for Ben talking the guy into 25
rather than 20 interviews for the agreed-on fee.  Ben is not
Jewish, but I read the e-mails, and he hondled.) 
Once he negotiated, he turned the guy over to me, so he could tell me
what info he needed, how many copies of the book, and I had to give him
the author’s contact info.

And, before starting to draw up the NPR list, I booked four more
readings for Daniel.  Yes, that’s what I said:  I booked four
more readings on Friday morning.  DC, Philly, Boston, Durham, NC.
This made Ben happy, made the executive editor (who is editor of 2012)
happy, made the publisher happy. 

At one point, I went into Ben’s office, and said, “I don’t know what
the protocol is here… but there are some of the winter books I’d like
to express an interest in handling.”  And he said, “What about
Laurie?” and I said, “I thought X, Y and Z would be good for Laurie,
and she could work on Q with you.”  I mean, part of me was just
trying to get to the books I wanted first, pure and simple.  But
also, it was really logical:  I got to do the stuff I was really
passionate about, and the ones Laurie’s getting are very much in line
with what she’s been doing.  I don’t know if she’s really
particularly passionate about any books.  But the way it’s been
going, I do more of the new age/spiritual/pop culture, and she had more
of the chick books and political books.  So I basically came up
with the winter book assignments, because Ben agreed with me
exactly. 

I’m starting to realize just how much I really enjoy working with Ben;
we’re a pretty excellent team in a lot of ways.  I learn so much
from him, and yet he lets me do almost everything myself.

He let me in on his grand scheme yesterday: he eventually wants to just
edit, and get me promoted up so that Laurie and I can do all the
publicity, get a new assistant, and he and I would still be working
together. 

Oh, and yeah, if that wasn’t enough, I got to meet Lorraine Bracco
yesterday and got her book personally autographed.  It was a good
thing I had just finished reading her book, too, because she cited
Julia’s most famous book as an influence, so I brought her a copy of
the new one.  She’s really nice, her book dishes the dirt on
Harvey, and yes Charlie, she looks wonderful.  She’s Molly’s
author, the woman I used to temp for, and Molly watches me very
carefully.  I wasn’t really the right person to be Molly’s
assistant, but I think she’s starting to get the idea that I just might
become a kick-ass publicist, even tho I’m sure she sneers at
T_______.  But T_________ is a place where you can build and show
skills.  It’s way harder to sell Julia Cameron than to sell
Patricia Cornwell or Robert Parker.

I thought I was going to learn a lot from the Lynch book, but I’m just
starting to see how much I’m learning from the Pinchbeck book. 
I’ve started to build my contacts at book stores and all manner of
newspapers and magazines and radio stations.  (Even TV — a guy
who’s doing a show for the History Channel about prophecies and
predictions wants to have Pinchbeck for his show.)  I’ve learned
how to handle a difficult author and a psychotic outside
publicist.  It’s really been my first campaign and I’ve learned a
lot of self-confidence.  (Also learned how insecure I am, but I’m
not letting that stop me.)

Will is in there somewhere…I’m just not as interested in him this
time around.  All of a sudden, I have a life — I have a
successful and interesting career starting up — and I don’t need to
live through and for him as much.  I did agree to go to one of his
events at the end of this month:  a screening of the documentary
at the Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center, and some kind of
afterparty where he will be playing, maybe solo, and maybe with Sam
Shepard’s kid Walker, who has been part of Will’s ensemble of
late.  (Sam will be away.)  Will wanted to have an
unscheduled schtup on Friday afternoon, but I said I had to be the
voice of reason and that it was too soon.  We made a date for two
weeks off.  But he had come in late and was working into the
afternoon, and when I said I was going home, he asked if he could give
me “a talking to.”  That’s what he calls the phone sex things we
used to do on a lot of Friday afternoons when I was home and he was at
the office alone.  I agreed to it, which was a little weak of me;
I’m trying to impress upon him that we need to let go of the sex thing
for chunks of time rather than feed any obsessiveness.  I hate to
say it, but he does seem to get addictive about the sex.  I’m not
any more, if I ever was; I suspect I may have been more emotionally
addicted.  I’ll always love Will but I don’t feel that in-love
with him at this point, and the sex is fun, but not necessary and too
much hassle for more than once a month.

But the phone sex thing was fun, and I really do like it since it feels
all about me; he sometimes describes fantasies that are all about him,
but I’m still the only one who gets to come.

Here’s something else I found out on Friday:  Janis Ian is writing
her memoirs and we’ve got them.  She hasn’t written them yet, but
I’m already her publicist.  Ben didn’t know about me and music
stuff, but he will.

John Strausbaugh is probably coming in this week to do a podcast for
our website (Julia’s also coming in this week, and Daniel’s is already
up), and I’m really looking forward to meeting him.  Ben’s
struggling with the book tho the Wall Street Journal did a nice piece
on Monday.  John’s in the middle of a Boston-Philly-DC tour and
will read at Barnes and Noble in NY (Astor Place) on Friday
night.  I’m helping some with the book because I really like it,
but it’s a hard sell. 

Our imprint seems to make a lot of mistakes with titles and
covers.  There are titles and covers that just don’t give the
right impression of the book.  (2012, luckily, has a beautiful
cover.)  Black Like You’s cover is audacious and not
inappropriate, but hard to sell. 

I may have forgotten something, but that was most of my week. 

Yesterday was my first half-day Friday (we have them all summer,
working later the other four days and leaving Friday at 12:30), and
after I left, I went and bought us an air conditioner for the
bedroom.  The price on the a/c was good, but the delivery and
installation pretty much doubled the purchase price.  But it’s in,
and working.  So at least the bedroom is cool. It cost about every
loose cent I have, tho, so I’ll miss having a little extra green until
I get paid again.

I did also get two new pair of sneakers that I won on eBay:  red
Nikes, and blue Keds with a circle design.  Both very cute, and
cheap, around 20 each with the shipping.

Work is still good.  As I’d suspected, Pinchbeck is getting a lot
of good press on the west coast.  Or rather, I got him a lot of
good press.  He’s a happy lad.  Floor Sample
broke big on the San Francisco Chronicle’s best seller list, so Julia’s
good.  And I’m still very excited about the David Lynch book, tho
we don’t even have the ms. yet.

I was too busy to think much about Will last week; we recapped the
weekend on Tuesday, and then he called me yesterday.  I was too
busy to talk much.  I still get the sense that he’s trying to
please me.  I just find myself a lot less involved.