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April 5, 2005

Locked out of the house

Alesia, older and wiser . . .

My darling daughter’s new favorite trick is to lock doors. Preferably, locking and closing doors when nobody is in the room. This morning, she locked the door between the garage and the kitchen, which never gets locked, which [long, boring details left out] led me to being LOCKED OUT OF MY HOUSE.

For three and a half hours.

With the dog.

Which leads to how I evidently stink at self-promotion . . .

So, like a moron, I kept trying to call Navy Guy (who was flying, of course, all important news and crises happen when he’s several thousand feet up in the air) and then called a locksmith, who promised to call me right back and never did. Luckily for me, I live in sunny, beautiful Florida, and not, for example, ANTARCTICA, but still. I tried to pick the lock, but I’d make a terrible burglar. I contemplated breaking a window but couldn’t bring myself to do it. Worn out, I took a nap with my puppy on my lap in the rocking chair on my back porch.

Finally, in a burst of genius (aka ‘why didn’t I do this earlier?’) I went to my neighbor’s house and borrowed the phone book, called a locksmith, and was in my house 30 minutes later (albeit $85 poorer). I made it inside just in time for my conference call with my new publicists, the Goddesses of Author Publicity, Tina, Shannon, and Karen. [Details of their fabulous new business will be launched at the RT convention in St. Louis later this month . . .] They were kind, delightful, and professional and didn’t even call me a Failure at Self-Promotion Weenie when I confessed my horror of asking people to write reviews for me at amazon or barnesandnoble.com.

Good news: They did, however, ever-so-graciously, offer to take these kinds of things off my hands.

Bad News: However, I had homework.

So here goes : For those of you who read and loved (ok, enjoyed works, too!) AMERICAN IDLE (which I'm supposed to call double-Rita finalist AMERICAN IDLE, but I think wearing the pins on my PJs is really going far enough), and would be interested in being a select pre-reader of Jules’s best friend Kirby’s book, NICE GIRLS FINISH FIRST, send me an e-mail at alesia@alesiaholliday.com telling me 1) you liked AI, and 2) why you can’t wait for Kirby’s story, and 3) that you are willing – if you like it – to write a review for me at either of the online sites, I will select the first 5 to receive a special sneak preview ARC (that’s Advance Reader Copy) for you.

Whew. Lessons learned: 1) I can work on overcoming my weenieness, and 2) always hide a spare key in the garage.

Hugs,
Alesia

Posted by Alesia at 7:39 PM