It was just a bad fit. His method of pitching clients to radio shows was set in concrete. I had to write the pitch myself, and I had to keep in mind what's "trending."

See, the problem is that the book has been published. It doesn't matter what's trending, since I can't rewrite the book daily in order to reflect what's popular at any given second. Also, the publicist told me before I signed up with him that he could sell anything to anyone, and that he'd start me out in small markets. I thought small markets would like hearing about the ten insane years I spent in the music industry, as well as how I overcame across-the-board failure. He said he couldn't get anyone to bite. Not a single show anywhere in the entire nation was interested.

(Never mind that memoirs about overcoming failure are currently in vogue.)

To show me what he wanted, my former publicist sent sample pitches that he said were successful. They were ghastly. I simply can't believe that radio interviewers want to hear the seven funniest excuses given to get out of parking tickets, or what it means when a woman tosses her hair and crosses her ankles. Those sample pitches were pure torture to read. They bespoke of utter cultural collapse, a level of triviality that I found incomprehensible. Also, according to an article in Forbes, they broke all the rules of pitching. They were full of excess exclamation marks, boasting, unsubstantiated assertations, etc. The author of the Forbes piece was a publicist just as famous as mine. So who to believe? This famous publicist or that famous publicist? What it came down to was that my guy wanted to pitch me to Kim Kardashian's fans--people who don't read books, in other words--so I'm now in the market for a new publicist.

My former publicist could be right. I may already have been utterly bypassed by popular culture. It may be that I'm dead as a doornail but don't know it yet, like a chicken trying go about its business after the farmer hatcheted off its head. If so, I'll find out soon enough. Big deal. As I said before, writing is just a hobby.

One of the many pitches I wrote for my former publicist included some of the lessons I've learned in the past twenty-odd years. My favorite is "Lost lemurs should keep moving."

My former publicist said that was just an old cliché.

Really?

I'll give anybody $10,000 if they can find that exact sentence in five different books, articles, movies, or TV shows.

No fair including Ghosts and Ballyhoo.