What's In Your Week?

I love the variety life has to offer. Paging through my daytimer (I'm one of the last hold outs against a Blackberry --I need to see my month-at-a-glance), I note that this morning I'm heading out to the largest tilapia producing farm in the nation which happens to be about 30 minutes from my front door. I'll interview the president, chit-chat about shrimp research and tilapia, snap a few photos, come home and write the piece up. Fish farm. Great way to kick off a Monday.

Then it's off to the vet where I must admit my cat-nabbing tendencies and have the micro-chip information changed from my name to my neighbors. (That ought to be good for 20 minutes worth of embarrassment. Did I mention the neighbor I stole the cat from is a cop?)

Tomorrow is a Greensboro Merchants Association new member breakfast, followed by a meeting with my website designer to go over last minute web site fluffs, then a noon social/work meeting with writer friends.

This week I'm working on an article about personal branding for an executive placement firm, a press release for a faux design studio, and--if I'm smart--starting work on a 35-minute keynote speech I'm delivering next Tuesday which I haven't looked at yet. I'm also trying to get an editor to respond to my e-mails. Last month I sent her a list of column ideas for 2007 and have heard nothing. So I've no idea if they love them and so see no urgent need to contact me as my writing on any of those topics will be fine, or if they are up late at night, thumbing through roladexes, desperate to find my replacement before the next column is due. Frankly, either one is fine, just let me know, okay?

 Yikes. Time for me to gather the tools of the journalistic trade (paper, pen, digital camera, back-up battery for digital camera, mapquest directions, cell phone, and of course, lipstick) and head out the door. The fishes are calling my name.

Chicken Soup for the American Idol Lover's Soul

Chicken Soup for the American Idol Lover's Soul.  It's coming and fingers crossed, I will be a part of it.

Ever since my stories went into Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul, I receive e-mail  notifications from the Chicken Soup people for each and every new book they're thinking about putting out: Chicken Soup for the Empty Nester's Soul, Chicken Soup for the Diabetic Soul, Chicken Soup for the Coffee Lover's Soul, Chicken Soup for the Healthy Living--Sleeplessness Soul.  Be warned: there is no end in sight.

Usually I just delete the e-mails, but the one about the American Idol Soul caught my eye. Yes, I watch American Idol, although it gets more painful each season. I don't like a network encouraging people who can't sing to come on TV strictly so the nation can have a collective laugh at them. But that's a tangent for a different day.  What happened when I got the e-mail was that it reminded me of an episode from when AI first came out.

Blair and I were fans of the show. It premiered during one of my random "It's time I learn how to cook" phases in life and I spent the weeks that the show was on setting dish after burned dish of tasteless morsels in front of Blair. FINALLY, one night I managed to pull a meal together. Nothing was smoking, everything appeared to be the proper color, and the cats weren't under the beds, hiding from the bad smells. I was hopeful.

I set the dish in front of Blair. He took a bite. And then my husband--God love him--possibly the whitest man in America, pulled a Randy Jackson on me and said,  "Yo, yo, yo! You did your thing, dawg, you did your thing. You worked this meal out. I'm proud of you dawg, proud of you."

He took another bite.

"Uh, excuse me," I said from across the table. "But did you just call me a dog?" 

"D-a-w-g," said Blair. "You're a dawg." 

"Right," I said. "I'll just be a moment looking for those annulment papers..." 

The story goes on from there but that's the gift of what I sent in. I received an e-mail the next day from the editor saying she liked my story and wanted to submit it to the next round of readers after some revisions.

Bragging rights to Chicken Soup for the American Idol Lover's Soul... that will be a hard career high to top.

Peace out.

www.denaharris.com

TA-DA! Today marks the formal unveiling of my revised website. Please visit www.denaharris.com and send me your comments or suggestions--either here or by e-mail. And send your praise to my web site designer, Melody Watson. Melody is the uber web site maven. As a testament to her patience with me, at one point she was e-mailing me messages that read, "Go to www.denaharris.com/test#77."  And she did it with a smile and no hint that I was most likely driving her to drink.

I had to lose my maniac kitty-cat logo on the site, but he'll still be hanging around on this blog.  The only thing not up and running on the site is the Press Kit area and that's because I've procrastinated on it beyond all reasonable time limits. That's part of this week's work--to bring that together.

If you find typos, PLEASE let me know. I've looked at the site so much I actually launched it with the word "Corporate" in the heading spelled as "Corpoate." Oops. 

I feel like I have a fresh start. Not only do I have a new website, I spent 5 (count 'em, 5) hours yesterday purging my file drawers. I hauled 3 1/2 hefty bags of trash to the curb, gathered over 1000 sheets of paper to be recycled (i.e., I'll use them to print on the blank side) and salvaged about 50 file folders. My office must be a good 20 pounds lighter and it feels awesome. (Although last night when Blair asked me how my day was and I triumphantly told him of my purging success, his response was "So you didn't do anything today that would actually earn money?" Party-pooper.)

No excuse not to work now. On the agenda: a press release, arranging time for an interview with the president of the largest tilapia-producing fish-farm in the nation (envy me), doing prep work for a 35-minute keynote speech I'm delivering to an ABWA dinner meeting next week, AND working on my press kit.

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A quick shout out to my friend Trisha who stayed up until 1 AM, completing a 1,000-piece puzzle she and her son started after Christmas. With eyes drooping and head pounding, she stayed at her post until the last piece was put together.  Trisha, darling...seek help.  

Hundreds of Thousands of Copies Sold!!!!!!

In the process of updating my website, I e-mailed my editor for the Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul book (where 2 of my humor essays appear) and asked her how many copies of the book had sold. Her response was that the exact number is proprietary info but that "a bunch had sold--over 100,000."

I  almost let that number blip  by me. But then I thought about it...Wow. Well over 100,000 people have potentially read my work, just from this one book! Sure, some of the books were probably given as gifts to people who never cracked the spine. But there's also a huge turnover in books like this with people passing it around to family and friends. Then there are library copies with large readerships. In all, I figure close to a quarter million people may have read my work.

That's stunning to me. And completely irrelevant in the overall scheme of life.  Maybe 3 out of that quarter million would know my name and that's probably a stretch. But that's not what this is about.  I'm just having a "happy moment" over how many people I may have made laugh (or okay, smile) with my writing.