58 Seconds of CuriAwesomeness
with Anthony Horowitz
So there’s the fact that I was simply excited about speaking to Anthony Horowitz, that he agreed to give me three minutes of his busy day to answer one of my zany Twitter queries.
If the three Rice Krispies gnomes got ahold of your manuscript, who would enjoy reading it most: Snap, Crackle, or Pop?
There’s the more important part that is hoping you understand the power of getting Anthony Horowitz to spend three minutes with me, because if you can understand the whole process from request to “Yes.” You can sell as many copies of your book as you want and more.
Your book can become as ubiquitous as Oscar Meyer Bologna.
A Possible Fiction & Disclaimer
To the best of my knowledge this story is true, though I can’t find evidence online, and I can’t get a comment from Oscar Meyer—though I haven’t tried.
A Story of Oscar Meyer
Story goes, Oscar wanted to sell presliced, prepackaged, deli meat in corporate grocery stores, but no one had ever done it before.
He tried deli ham. Store owners laughed him out the door. He made smoked turkey. Clerks tossed him in the alley on his butt. He stooped to olive loaf, only to get his metaphorical bell rung by a hyperglycemic butcher.
Where most people would’ve quit, Oscar tried five hundred varieties of presliced, prepackaged meats before his breakthrough.
You see, Oscar’s boss—yeah, Oscar had a day job—his boss was so tired of people sending cease and desist telegrams to him asking him to prevent Oscar from stopping by with his nasty sliced meats that Oscar’s boss put Oscar on a freighter headed to the South Pacific chain of islands.
Oscar, being Oscar, continued to persist, allegedly even trapping and meatifying rats and fish heads. But until the freighter let Oscar off in Honolulu for the business appointment Oscar’s boss had sent him to conduct, no one was interested in Oscar’s product.
The Bologna Miracle
Oscar met a man off the boat named Howard Stands on Drift Wood in Big Water. Oscar didn’t know this man was numbered among the homeless or that the man spent his days at the beach trying and failing to catch a wave while standing on a large piece of driftwood.
All Oscar knew is that Howard Stands on Drift Wood in Big Water asked what Oscar had in the wax-paper bundle and when Howard Stands on Drift Wood in Big Water at a bite of Oscars presliced meat Howard Stands on Drift Wood in Big Water exclaimed, “Buhlowni! That’s delicious.”
Oscar also didn’t know Buhlowni was the local name for the meat of the island’s local, wild chickens, instead assuming the word had Italian roots. He liked the sound and agreed with Howard Stands on Drift Wood in Big Water. Bologna was delicious.
Encouraged at last that someone found value in presliced meat, instead of attending the scheduled business meeting, Oscar followed Howard Stands on Drift Wood in Big Water to grocery shacks all across the island providing samples of his meats and taking orders to sell it.
The locals loved Bologna, though they said Oscar was big bold for killing, and selling a protected species. Oscar wondered why the islanders venerated the rat, and perhaps the miscommunication would have been clarified if Sheriff Marcus hadn’t been called to arrest Oscar for killing the protected island chickens.
A Fugitive From the Law
Oscar, confused by the developments, did what any man at his tether’s end would do. He fled Sheriff Marcus. If the family mythos is to be believed, Howard Stands on Drift Wood in Big Water aided in Oscar’s escape by flinging Bologna in the Sheriff’s face.
A sudden rain storm made pursuit of Oscar difficult, and he managed to hide in the thick jungles outside the city for several days where—irony of ironies—he was forced to kill and prepare one of the chickens for nourishment.
Eating it raw for fear of being caught if he made a fire (but really because building a fire without matches was not a skill he’d acquired), Oscar became sick with a bacterial infection.
In delirium, Oscar was visited by The God of All Deli Meats: Past, Present and Future, from whom he learned an FDA-approved bologna recipe.
The God of All Deli Meats: Past, Present and Future also told Oscar of a boat setting sail for the mainland and by divine intervention helped Oscar find and board the boat.
Oscar sweated out his bacterial fever in a fasted state for ten days and ten nights. The boat docked in San Diego and Oscar stumbled into a bar nearby. He managed to eat three shelled peanuts before the bar owner gave him the metaphorical boot for smelling like the Devil’s nethers and for looking homeless.
Oscar, revived by the peanuts to a basic mental function, bathed in a public fountain, dried under the sun, and found a deli where he spoke to the butcher. They struck an agreement, and moved forward with Oscar retaining 51% owner of the new business the two men would create.
Meyer Fintzlebucketromg would package and distribute and Oscar Shleptocsmanx would procure, process and produce the Bologna.
The rest, as they say, is history.
How Bologna Helps You Sell Novels
I imagine you felt for a moment, if nothing else, entertained by my Oscar Meyer origin story.
If I did my job correctly, you found yourself distracted from reading and immersed in humor and a smidge of suspense.
If I accomplished my goal, you unconsciously already have the key map and process for selling you book at the highest level, without me unpacking the points of the allegory.
I can share a few insights from the story though, since it can’t hurt.
Your story isn’t good until you’ve tried everything.
Your story is only good when it’s a product of alchemy, transforming rats and fish heads into culinary goodness.
Good stories sell.
Let’s linger there. Good stories sell.
Effort, energy, and repetition fail, until someone champions your work.
Champions come in unlikely places (and might not look like you expect).
The true equation for luck really is PREPARATION + TIMING x (OPPORTUNITY).
Asking everyone will hurt like hell, but if you shy from the vision, you might end up far from home…
You’re only a genius after the fact. If people call your marketing ideas stupid, you just might have a bolt of brilliance on you hands.