LAUGH OR CRY

Most people think that once you get your book published, everything is great. Well, it is great for awhile, and for some, its great forever. But for most of us, bitter disappointments abound. Today, I experienced one of those days, where I felt as if someone had hurled me and every book I ever written into the ocean to be eaten by illiterate, evil creatures. I'm not getting any respect, know what I mean?

Tomorrow I'm going to sell my house and move into a tent, never to write again. Actually, a tent might be slightly too severe, even in California. I'll sell my house and move into a really tiny box of a house, with no room for a computer, in a very bad neighborhood. I even told this to my husband. You should have seen his face. I don't know why people believe me. I write fiction for a living.

But honestly, I'm going to sell my house and move into a house I hate in a not very nice neighborhood, where I can strap on my buck knife, because I might need to use it in self defense. I'm not really in that good of an area now, so I guess wherever I move will really be awful. No, really, I think I'll sell my house and move to Dallas so I can join my new body. (You have to read the rest of the blog to figure out what this means.) My neck problem is acting up, and I don't even consider my neck problem a real problem. That is, compared to the rest of my battered body. It got so bad a few years ago, I couldn't hold my head up. And no, I'm not going to have surgery on my neck. Well, at least not until I sell my house and ...

Maybe things will look better by the end of the week. I doubt that, as there's only a few days left and I won't hear anything about my book over the weekend. Now I'm really, I swear, speaking the truth. The real estate agents are coming tomorrow. I don't get along well with real estate agents. For some reason, every single time I've wanted to sell my house, real estate agents have insisted on coming inside. Writers don't let people into their homes. It upsets everything, scatters all that creative energy and disrupts the dust bunnies that can be amazingly inspirational if the light hits them just right. Real estate agents are not the same breed as people like me. They talk and call, drive around everywhere in nice cars, and do all kinds of complex things that writers just don't know much about. When I talk to them, I can't figure out what they are saying. I'm like a person who's hard of hearing. I keep saying, "What? What? What?"

This is a terrible thing to say when I love real estate agents so much. My writing career is so disappointing right now that I think I'm going to become a real estate agent. Since I'm not a right brain person, I'll probably have to cheat on the math, but that's okay. I can get away with it. I'm an angel, remember? We can get away with just about anything.

Here's an uplifting story. I wrote a book called CALIFORNIA ANGEL, in case I didn't tell you ten times already, and mention that you can buy it from my website. My writing professor at UCLA, Leonardo Bercovici, a literary genius I adored and would have married if I hadn't already been married and he hadn't been close to ninety, also wrote something about an angel. He wrote the screenplay for the classic movie "The Bishop's Wife," which starred Cary Grant and Loretta Young. Cary Grant played the angel. He was funny, and the movie was delightful. If you can't find it to rent, buy it on Amazon. People said this little company would go under. Pretty funny. I hear they sell new bodies now. And someone told me they sold them a planet.

Leonardo died years before I wrote CALIFORNIA ANGEL, and I didn't even know he'd written about an angel. I knew he'd written the screenplay for the Robert Nathan book entitled THE BISHOP'S WIFE, but I didn't respect him enough to even rent the movie, and it was nominated for an Academy Award. Of course, I have a thing about screen writers as well as real estate agents. I'm kidding, but really, why do they get Academy Awards for writing what's basically an outline from the characters and plotline someone else spent years to create in a novel? Most of the time when they accept the award, they don't even mention the person who wrote the novel. All they do is thank Stephen Speilberg, even if he had nothing to do with the movie. Hey, there's always the next one. Shame on them.

I love real estate agents because they're not screenwriters. A lot of screenwriters steal, too. They steal your work. I've met them buying my books in stores and then saw my story on the screen in their original screenplay. Ask any novelist and they'll tell you I'm not lying. It happens all the time. Last year, they stole a TV series from me. That's nothing, right? Just a very sucessful, Emmy nominated TV series. Have you ever seen the movie "Dogma"? I think I'm a muse instead of an angel. That could explain why I don't get credit for my work.

I'm just feeling underappreciated. Does anyone know what happened to Saint Christopher? Remember how people who'd never stepped foot into a church would wear St. Christopher medals around their neck. Not long ago, the church decided he wasn't that important and demoted him. Now he's not a saint anymore. Since he was the patron saint of traveling, and we've had some very bad things happen to people in airplanes, the church should maybe rethink their position on Saint Christopher.


I have children who've only read one or possibly two of my books at best, when I've been very, very generous with money I no longer have. And my husband has only read one book, which he forgot. Oh, boy, here we go again.

I'm going to sell my house and move to an igloo. My son actually told me about this igloo he saw in the hills above Santa Barbara that he thought would be perfect for a writer. Hint, hint! Stick old Mom in the igloo without a phone or Internet, then forget about her. Shoot, if I died, they wouldn't even have to bury me. They could just kick dirt at the igloo and wait until it rained.

If I sold my house and moved to an IGLOO, even my children, grandchildren, step-children, and adopted children, along with my sisters and other family members would have to feel sorry for me, which no one seems to do at the moment. Think about it? A woman who has written TWELVE NOVELS, six on the New York Times Bestseller list, had major back surgery, serious accidents, one where they sawed off her leg and screwed it back on, a heart condition (heart attack, little one,) is forced to live in an IGLOO in the barren and hostile mountains of Santa Barbara! As my sister would say, "Horrors!" (She invited that genre, by the way. I remember her whispering it in the ear if this guy named Bram Stocker a few years back.)

Would that be anything like Brooke Astor, the 104 year old philanthropist and zillionarie, who was found living in her apartment in urine soaked clothing and sleeping on a urine stained sofa, while the caregiver fed her porrage or something? Isn't it a fact of life that everyone who lives past a hundred wets their pants. I even wet my pants occasionally, and I'm nowhere near 104! (It's mostly when I laugh. All those babies, you know.)

When I lived in Tuxedo Park in upstate New York and my house was for sale because of my dastardedly bankrupting divorce, the real estate lady called me "Poor Nancy" as I cowered behind a bush (it wasn't burning) while gangs of strangers and tiny people the real estate agent claimed were children gleefully invaded my home. This was, of course, the plot to the movie "The Others" starring Nicole Kidman, which I loved and lived, but most people thought was almost as exciting as her other movie, "Birth." I liked that one as well, even though I left the theater blasting on about how obscene it was for her to act as if she was in the bathrub with a little boy, who was obviously wearing a bathing suit and was probably thirty years old. With plastic surgery, you never know. I was told Nicole Kidman was my grandmother, the reason I keep watching all her movies instead of reading great books.

Does anyone ever get old anymore? Did you see the pictures of Charlie's Angels, the three actresses from the original TV series? I'm not going to say their faces looked a little swollen. No, I'm not going to say that at all. What happened here? What is beauty these days?

Oh, regarding the Poor Nancy comment, I later found out that the "Poors" used to live in Tuxedo Park. These are the people who put together this little thing called the Standard and Poors Stock Exchange. I checked to see if I was related, but I guess I'm not. Do you ever think you're related to really famous and rich people when your bank account starts getting low? I swear my son looks exactly like Prince Charles, just younger. His father looked like Prince Charles as well, and he was English. Could he have been Prince Charles? Oh, my, and my middle name is Camille. I didn't say Camilla, silly. Don't you believe in coincidences? There was a guy named James Redfield who made millions off a book called the CELESTINE PROPHECY . The point of the book was that all these coincidences gave you insights and there were ten insights and then you knew everything and were like God or something and could see other people's energy fields. You read the book, only to discover that the tenth, big and most important insight, was held back for the sequel. Then they had CELESTINE PROPHECY study guides, and people formed groups so they could practice the wisdom in what was written as a "fictional novel". I'm just mad that I didn't write it, so I wouldn't have to live in an igloo.

I hope you're laughing. I'm going out to run with my knife and my cool headlight that has a flash feature for emergencies, and see if I can muster up some tears now before I move into my IGLOO! It will probably be so cold in the frigid mountains above Santa Barbara that my tears will cause me to have frostbite and I'll have to have my cheeks amputated. This can't go on. I'm beginning to laugh, and I don't want to laugh. I want to cry and feel sorry for myself for at least ten years, or until I die, or until I get .... As Gild Radner used to say on "Saturday Night Live", "Nevermind."

I'll write soon from my IGLOO. Is that the way you spell it, by the way? I'm trying to sell books, not igloos. People talk like that today. Have you heard them? Its like they but all this emphasis on one word, something like Microsoft, or Amazon, or Google., or Nancy Taylor Rosenberg. That's why I stay to myself. My dogs talk more than my husband, so he's just about perfect.And most of the time, he's so smart, he has no idea what I'm saying. I hope you don't, either.

Nancy