For those of you looking to stand on a street corner and handsell your book, I must recommend Hollywood Blvd. in Los Angeles, a couple blocks east of Highland Ave. While I’m not promising you a stunning success rate, I do believe you’ll have some fun, at least so long as you have a sense of humor.  And even if you don’t enjoy yourself, you certainly will have some stories to tell.

This past weekend, I spent time pounding the Hollywood pavement, dressed in my presidential best, handing out fliers to promote my book.  Perhaps the fact that I had a camera crew filming my every move lent me an air of credibility; perhaps it was the suit; probably it was both.  One highlight was when I found myself pitching the book to a girl who was trying to pitch me. She was handing out cards for Psychiatry: An Industry of Death.  This is a museum in Hollywood founded by Scientologists that, needless to say, has a rather negative impression of the psychiatry profession.  When we mentioned to this girl that our documentary was ultimately going to be on YouTube, she mentioned that she was planning on eating a cockroach on YouTube.  Only in LA …

Exciting news. On Friday, The Scandal Plan got a rave mention on one of my favorite radio shows, KCRW’s Left, Right & Center.  Host Matt Miller called the book “a great fun summer political read,” and called me “a big new talent.”  Not too shabby, eh?  Click here to listen (the plug comes at the end of the show, at the 27 minute mark).

The paperback release is coming at a crazy time for me.  The school year is ending and I’m busy preparing for some courses I’ll be teaching this summer.  I’ve also reached a finishing point with my new screenplay (tentatively titled: If You Love Somebody).  I’m very excited about the script, and I think it’s finally ready for the world.  Over the next few weeks, I plan to start soliciting representation out here in LA (if you have any leads, drop me a line).  It’s time to get this screenwriting career rolling.  And I’m hoping to do it all at once for maximum effect.  I definitely want my script going out to agents while my book is still in stores (whichever stores those may be).

I’ll try to blog as these events unfold.  More to come …

The paperback will be coming out on June 2, 2009.  You can pre-order now on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

* It comes fully charged
* Costs less than a bottle of champagne (the real stuff)
* You can buy at least 10 hardcover books for the price of one iPhone
* Costs less than a movie (with popcorn)
* Around the same price as a DVD, but the experience lasts much longer
* It can change someone’s life
* It can make someone laugh
* Batteries are not required
* It’s a thoughtful gift
* A personal gift
* One-stop shopping-your bookstore has the right gift for everyone on your list
* It weighs much less than a fruitcake
* It’s more original than a tie or a sweater
* It’s a gift of escape, fun, romance, adventure
* It’s easy to find
* It’s easy to wrap
* And you can never have too many

(one slight disclaimer to any of my relatives who might be reading this: I will be in hot water with my wife if I try to bring any more books into our over-crowded apartment, so perhaps this isn’t the best gift for me this year. For other people, however, it’s a perfect gift. I certainly plan on giving a few book gifts myself this year.)

If you happen to be reading my blog and have not yet read my book (a small demographic, I’m sure), you may suspect the book to be quite the polemic–particularly given my last two posts. Rest assured, this is not the case.  I take great pains to avoid beating anyone over the head with a political agenda in my fiction.  The book is meant to be enjoyable for readers of all political persuasions, and my goal as a satirist is to raise questions rather than answer them.  So please forgive me if I get a bit heated in my blog posts these days. We’ve reached that all-too-familiar moment in the political season where I start to fear the rest of the country is living in a different reality than I am, one in which facts are subjective, where up is down and down is up and who wears lipstick is more important than who lives or dies.  It’s crazy season.

I’ve included the text here:

I’ve been waiting for a good sex scandal all summer long. No, I’m not a voyeur or a pervert or a committed schadenfreudist—at least not any more than is socially acceptable—but I am a political satirist with a novel to sell, and as such, the financial and humanitarian sectors of my brain are frequently in conflict.

The Scandal Plan, or: How to Win the Presidency by Cheating On Your Wife, is—not surprisingly—about a sex scandal. A fake one. It’s the story of Senator Ben Phillips, a straight-laced, over-qualified, under-exciting Democratic presidential candidate in the tradition of Al Gore and John Kerry. He’s got great ideas, but you wouldn’t want to have a beer with him—and that’s why he’s getting killed in the polls. His campaign’s brilliant solution is to invent a sex scandal. Not a big one. Just a long-ago indiscretion that can be discovered: something the senator will have learned from, something he can bounce back from, something that can humanize him, something that might make him the tiniest bit cooler. Needless to say, nothing goes as planned.

To write a political satire is to be constantly looking over your shoulder. Is my story still relevant? What if Candidate X wins? What about Candidate Y? How does today’s news affect my story? Jon Stewart has it easy. He takes yesterday’s headlines and skewers them on tonight’s show. Guaranteed freshness. With my book, it took four and a half years for the original idea to travel from conception to publication – the satirical equivalent of firing a bullet into a time machine and crossing your fingers. I don’t recommend it.

The slow motion birth of this novel has often filled me with conflicting emotions, most notably in the wake of the 2004 election. I was crushed (crushed!) by John Kerry’s loss. But not completely. While I was convinced that another four years of George W. Bush would be devastating for the country (and the world), while this depressed me like nobody’s business, I couldn’t ignore that tiny guilty voice in my head that whispered: “This is really good for your book! This is confirmation of every argument you make! This means you have a real chance of being published!”

Such is the satirist’s dilemma: what’s good for business is usually bad for humanity.

Throughout this process, I’ve found comfort by telling myself that the underlying themes of my novel (our need to relate to our elected officials, our craving for redemption narratives, our preference for style over substance, the compromises we make in the name of ambition) are all fairly timeless. I also remind myself that this book is a fast-paced comic adventure first, and a satire second. The characters—a pubescent political reporter working for a teenybopper magazine, the campaign manager who has regular conversations with God, the over-sexed middle-aged bombshell who can’t find Mr. Right, the presidential candidate still hung up on high school, and the linguistically challenged Mexican chauffeur who thinks he’s James Bond—their appeal is not affected by the whims of the current news cycle.

Still, my eyes are glued to CNN. And when Hillary’s tears remind voters how important it is for a candidate to be perceived as “human,” or when John McCain is suspiciously linked to a female lobbyist on the front page of the New York Times, I view these events through the lens of my book.

That’s why I’ve been waiting for a sex scandal, and now I’ve finally got one. I was sad that it had to be John Edwards at the center of this particular spectacle because I had always liked him and his wife. But a sex scandal was a sex scandal, and attention had to be paid.

Was the Edwards situation a precise echo of the premise of my book? No. There were eerie parallels, to be sure, but differences as well. Never mind that; sometimes you must go to press with the scandal you have, not the scandal you want. That’s why, as soon as the John Edwards story hit the news, I e-mailed my publicist: “What can we do with this? Can this help us?” I frantically wrote an article for the Huffington Post relating the scandal to my book and offering pointers for future politicians on how to make the most of their own sex scandals.

Do I feel bad about trying to use the Edwards family’s embarrassment to try to shine a light on my book? Yes. Would I have done anything differently? No. Because even with a major publisher and great reviews, a political satire by a first-time novelist like myself does not have the luxury of an advertising budget. Such books are considered—surprise, surprise—too big a risk. That’s why I must take every opportunity I can get.

It remains to be seen whether the escapades of John Edwards will actually influence my book sales or whether any pundits or bloggers will pick up on the parallels and decide to give the subject their attention. Either way, I will remain absorbed by political news for the remainder of the 2008 election and beyond. Because I care passionately about the state of our country and our world. Because, above all else, I want what is best for humanity. And because the paperback version of The Scandal Plan comes out next June, and I want a bigger apartment.

Elizabeth Edwards as Melissa Phillips:
“Elizabeth Edwards says her husband told her about the affair in 2006 and they worked through it. “This was our private matter,” she writes.”

Rielle Hunter as Tina James:
“Jay McInerney reveals that Hunter was the basis for Alison Poole, the main character of his book, Story of My Life. “It was narrated in the first person,” McInerney writes in the intro to the interview, “from the point of view of an ostensibly jaded, cocaine-addled, sexually voracious 20-year old who was, shall we say, inspired by Lisa [aka Rielle].”

John Edwards as Ben Phillips:
“I made a serious error in judgment and conducted myself in a way that was disloyal to my family and to my core beliefs. I recognized my mistake and I told my wife that I had a liaison with another woman, and I asked for her forgiveness. Although I was honest in every painful detail with my family, I did not tell the public.”

Crazy, no?

Of course, it’s a pity. I liked John Edwards. I liked his message. I liked his wife. And, yes, it’s sad to see this happen. But, in my own self-absorbed way, I can’t help but wonder how this will impact the fortunes of my little book. That’s the crazy thing about trafficking in political satire. What is good for business is usually bad for someone else.

I stayed up late last night crafting my official response to the scandal, and you will be able to read that soon. Until then, enjoy the media frenzy. Let the self-righteous indignation commence …

“I’m shocked! Shocked, I say!”

It should be a fun time.  Tune in.