Dying is easy. Comedy is hard

This from a letter I sent to my brilliant son, Drew, as he started doing standup comedy in New York:

"As a kid, people always told me I was funny. In fact, I competed with my across-the-street neighbor, Bruce, to see who was funniest. We each had an audience of one. One time when I was about 9, my sister was sick and I did a little spontaneous comedy routine to make her laugh and feel better. I wanted to make people laugh for as long as I can remember. 

When I moved to LA, it took me nine years to break into TV. I made a lot of people laugh along the way, and I'd sold columns and the like, but I'd never really been a paid comedy writer until then.

So, finally, I was on staff at a sitcom. It was a big deal, and it was a blast.

Besides writing,  the primary activity of a sitcom writing staffs is eating. 

One day, we all went to a deli. Everyone was standing around the counter waiting to order, and we were all making jokes. Finally, our number comes up and we're still riffing on whatever was making us laugh that day. The guy behind the counter looks balefully at us as yet another joke is made--probably about the food. "Everyone's a comedian!" he said. 

I thought, "Yes! We really are!" It was so exciting for me to be able to own that.  

So, all of this is a long-winded way to say--as you've probably detected--that I really respect humor and the ability to make people laugh. Comedy is a weird profession: at once, it's not well-respected (there's no Academy Award for Best Comedy). However, the ability to make others laugh is one of the most desired attributes that a person can have. To be able to do it professionally is really an accomplishment, and I think that you are eminently capable of doing it, lad. I hope you're as proud of all the work you're putting into it as I am." 

It's All There

I've been taking an improv class in San Francisco, with Doug Kassel. We're working on objects. "Objects?" you say.
Here's how a typical exercise worked. We held our hands in a shape, imagining we held some object. Then, we move our hands to different positions--it becomes dancelike after a while--and let another object appear.
It probably looks strange to a bystander. But in the experience--at least for me--it verged on hallucinatory. It wasn't as though I actually saw the objects... but then again, I did. That is, outside of their lack of actual physical form, they were there.
To any artist, I don't think this seems so strange. If you're going to do a painting, it is entirely in your imagination. Or, as Michaelangelo is alleged to have said about sculpture, the form was already present in the stone; he was only chipping away the parts that were not the sculpture.
The stone, in the case of improv, is space, of course. I heard a recent Radiolab bit about the Chicago improv artists known as TJ and Dave. They do a 50-minute-long improv, five nights a week, entirely developing the characters, the story, the themes, and everything fresh. Their idea is, like Michaelangelo's, that the people and the stories are already there. As artists, they intersect with them for this brief time (though a 50-minute improv would be HARD!) and bring it to life.
I have had this experience doing improv on occasion, and working with objects added (excuse the literalness) a new dimension to this experience. The objects are already in the space. And it isn't an intellectual experience to find them. In fact, if you start to think about it, they disappear. Improv of this sort is experiential, and more than a little mysterious. As for the objects already being in the space, it got me to thinking about Dark Matter, which composes 30-something percent of the universe. The visible universe comprises only 4 percent of the universe. Dark Matter can neither be seen, nor can it be measured outside of the effects it has on things that we can see and measure: radio waves, gravitational fields, light, etc.
So, working in space, identifying and manipulating "objects" that are found there, feels a little other-worldly, as though one has entered that realm of Dark Matter. It becomes fleetingly visible when you need it, and then it recedes into whatever dimension it resides.
What does any of this have to do with writing? Quite a lot, in fact. Of course, writing fiction begins, like all art, in the imagination. A novel begins on a blank page. Like improv, you "make it up as you go along" (thank you David Byrne for putting that phrase to music in Naive Melody) but I would argue that you don't really make it up. When I'm engaged in the process of writing, it feels more like I'm watching and listening to and feeling the emotions of the characters and just writing down what happened. On a larger scale--the scale of a novel--the whole story, the interplay of the characters, and the multitude of moving parts that make up a good and compelling story, are already there, just as the objects that one uses in improv are already there, or the form of a sculpture.

Reading Scheduled!

Dear Faithful Followers:

The Marketing Department at Bagnoose Media International has done it again! They've set up a reading of The Spy Who Loathed Me near the BMI Northern California Headquarters in Montclair, California.
When: June 28, 7 p.m.
Where: A Great Good Place for Books, 6120 La Salle Avenue, Oakland, CA 94611. Tel: 510.339.8210.
What will happen? Chris Westphal will read selections from the book, the audience will revel in hilarity, and after everyone catches their breath, he will answer questions and give brief shoulder massages, if necessary.
Please come! Please tell everyone you've ever met to come!
Thanks,
Bagnoose Media International Public Relations Department

What's in a name?

Shakespeare said it best, and I quote: "Echo Valley would still be the same hilarious book if it had a different title."
Well, that may not be an exact quote, but the bard's point is well taken. At least in terms of sales, the title Echo Valley is about as exciting as the title A Book.  (In fact, for my money, A Book might be a pretty good title. "What're you getting your wife for her birthday?" "Oh, I don't know. I think I'll get her A Book." But I digress)
What is all this talk of titles and sales? Well, as a part of the vast marketing push on behalf of The Spy Who Loathed Me, our intrepid leader, Chris Westphal, found time in his busy schedule to put in an appearance at Ojai's Word Fest writing conference. He did a well-received reading from the book, ran a humor-writing workshop, and then participated in the book fair. It wasn't really a fair, to be honest. Fairs have rides, and cotton candy, and fat people eating corn dogs. This was basically just a bunch of tables covered with books for sale.
In any case, the event went pretty well. Many people stopped by the Bagnoose Media International table, which displayed copies of The Spy Who Loathed Me, and of Echo Valley. Visitors would chuckle at the title The Spy Who Loathed Me, and they'd read the jacket copy, and they'd laugh at that. Many bought the book. Then, they'd look at Echo Valley, and shrug.
After the book fair, Bagnoose Media International's Board convened at Ojai Coffee Roasting Company to discuss the event. Now, the BMI board is a stuffy, conservative lot. If you could smoke cigars at Ojai Coffee Roasting, you can bet that all of them would have lit up.
The chairman stirred his black coffee contemplatively, then looked up. "The inventory was there," he said. "The visitors came by. Yet not a single copy of Echo Valley sold." Then, he bored into Chris Westphal with icy blue eyes. "Why not?" If he'd had a moustach, he would have twisted it. Instead, he just pinched his upper lip a little.
Well, Chris Westphal does not like to be accused--even implicitly--of not making his best effort. "Oh, I touted the book, you can count on that," he said. "But the fact is this: Echo Valley is a lousy title."
The Chairman harrumphed as only a portly chairman can do. The Secretary spewed his lemonade all over the table. The Treasurer said, "This is an outrage!"
But Westphal stood his ground. "Echo Valley doesn't say anything. What's an Echo Valley? And the cover art is a disaster too, by the way."
"But what about people who've already read the book?" asked The Secretary. "If they want to refer a friend to it, well, it will no longer exist!"
Much grumbling ensued. Westphal, ever self-effacing, said, "It's not Gone with the Wind," by which he meant to indicate that sales had not been so robust that a vast fan base would be forsaken. The Board seemed to understand.
Well, that was only the beginning. Of course, over the ensuing weeks, the Marketing Department, the Sales Department, and of course the Legal Department had to get involved, each of them contributing their part to the discussion. Ultimately, consensus was reached: Echo Valley will be retitled In Huttle We Trust, and will be redesigned for a new paperback, in a style complementary to The Spy Who Loathed Me. In the annals of publishing overall, this is of course a minor development, but for a fledgling company such as Bagnoose Media International to embark on such a bold course of action bodes well for its future success.
Keep an eye out for In Huttle We Trust, and also for its sequel, at this point tentatively titled What We Talk About When We Talk About Huttle, but there is a powerful faction within the BMI Power Apparatus that is lobbying for Huttle to the Rescue.
As always, Bagnoose Media International is open to suggestions from loyal followers.

Adventures in Self Promotion

I wrote this email to the editor of the Ventura County Star:

Hi, Mr. Moore,
I'm an Ojai writer, and have been published a couple of times in the VC Star, first a Christmas essay about Santa needing a federal bailout. A year or so ago in the travel section, writing about a horseback ride into Lesotho. Now I've published a novel, and I am hoping that you'd be interested in either doing a review of the book, or an interview with me. Here's a link to the book: This is my fifth novel.http://www.amazon.com/The-Spy-Who-Loathed-Me/dp/0615767672/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362628107&sr=8-1&keywords=the+spy+who+loathed+me.
This is my fifth novel. They're all on Amazon. I'm also a television comedy writer, with credits on Murphy Brown and Baby Talk.
I would really appreciate the coverage, and I give good interview!
Telephone, if that's faster: (I put my phone number here. I'm not going to put it in the blog.)
Thanks for your consideration.
Chris Westphal

A couple of days later I got a call from Amy Bentley, a reporter for the Star, asking me if I'd be willing to do a phone interview. Absolutely. So, Amy interviewed me for an hour and a half on Monday, and the story should appear sometime before April 6, ahead of the Ojai Word Fest, in which I'm also participating. More on that below. 

What, you may ask, is the common thread of these two momentous events? It is this: I put myself out there. Now, certainly, I could have sat at home and waited for people to call me and invite me to do readings and be the subject of newspaper interviews. I have tried that strategy in the past. It isn't very effective. In fact, it doesn't work at all. 

My participation in Word Fest worked much the same way. I saw an ad for it in the Ojai Quarterly. I thought, "You know, I could probably do a reading or something for them." I called them a few minutes later, and one thing led to another. Now I'm scheduled to do a reading on April 6, from 2:30 to 3 at the library. I'll lead a humor writing workshop from 1 to 3 on Monday the 8th, also at the library. 

Today, up in the Bay area, I stopped into a bookstore to set up a reading. I've been here a week, and they haven't tracked me down on their own, so I figured I had nothing to lose. And they do seem interested. 

I have a collection of letters to prominent authors that I'll be sending out with the book in the next couple of weeks, asking them to blurb on the book in upcoming editions. It may work. It may not. Like most things, some of it will probably work, some of it won't, and some of it will transmogrify into something else entirely. It's very rewarding when one casts one's line and hooks something, but after a while the anticipation that something may bite is an exhilarating experience in itself. You never know what you might reel in. 

Exciting Multimedia News!

The exhaustive resources of Bagnoose Media International have been unleashed to create a media onslaught to promote The Spy Who Loathed Me.
Click here http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7S59A and you will be taken to my Amazon Author page. There, marvel at the The Spy Who Loathed Me puppet rap, the Bikini Kickboxer, and, yes, the talking Hostess Fruit Pie.  You can also order The Spy Who Loathed Me in paperback, or on Kindle.

The Spy Who Loathed Me can be ordered Monday, February 24 on Amazon, and through major chains! The Kindle version will also be available on that day. If you were a kickstarter backer, I am working on sending you the Kindle download code.

If you read the book, PLEASE review it on Amazon! This is one of the most important ways for it to get noticed. I will be setting up readings in the Bay Area, as well as in Southern California, in the coming weeks.

Thanks again for your support.

More news & information later.