PROD IV - Love and Lattes

I know that love, though a many splendored thing, can be tricky.  I get a LOT of press releases about relationship books.  This one was particularly awesome...mostly because this woman seems to have married a REALLY unfortunate guy....or a DAMN unfortunate guy, as this seems to be her favorite word.  I would run this by Awesome Coworker, but she is somewhere in the wilds of Europe, eating fabulous food and drinking fabulous wine... so this has to be an entirely one-sided PROD, with no one to stand up for the men... or, as PROD puts it the "TV-addicted, Sex-Obsessed, Not-So-Handymen."....Well, at least she got a book deal out of him:

Dear Colleague,

Berkley is proud to announce the publication of author Jenna McCarthy’s hilarious new book, IF IT WAS EASY, THEY’D CALL THE WHOLE DAMN THING A HONEYMOON:Living with and Loving the TV-Addicted, Sex-Obsessed, Not-So-Handy Man You Married (Berkley Trade Paperback Original; October 4, 2011; $15; ISBN: 978-0-425-24302-2). You can watch Jenna (author of The Parent Trip: From High Heels and Parties to Highchairs and Potties and Cheers to the New Mom/Cheers to the New Dad) and her husband in this great book trailer by clicking here. I’d love to know if you are interested in scheduling an interview with Jenna this October.

What first started as a blog post quickly transformed into an entire book. After posting the question, “What does your husband—whom you still love—do that drives you nuts?” on her Facebook page, Twitter feed, blog, and online newsletter, McCarthy received an overwhelming (and highly entertaining) response. Gripes ranged from mere annoyances to the absolutely absurd and she noticed how infinitely better she immediately felt about her own relationship with her husband. As she notes, there’s “nothing like peeking over the neighbors’ fence and catching a glimpse of their withered, pathetic excuse for a lawn to remind us all that the grass isn’t always greener.”

In IF IT WAS EASY, THEY’D CALL THE WHOLE DAMN THING A HONEYMOON, McCarthy presents a candid and entertaining peek behind the curtains of matrimony and highlights many of the amusing “At Least You’re Not Married to Him” comments she has received from her followers. With ballsy wit and bawdy humor, McCarthy explores everything from male domestic idiocy to the frustrating misfires in spousal communication. Some of the other many topics McCarthy covers include:

• Can We Talk? Obviously Not: A three-step process for successful marital communication which combines the art of shutting up for five lousy minutes, spending more time with your friends and dropping the expectation that your husband has to be a chick.

• What’s Cooking? (I’m Going to Go Out on a Limb and Say Me): Orchestrating meals just might be the number one killer of spirits. Jenna teaches how couples can walk the line of culinary duties at home.

• It’s Only Money, Honey: The joining of two lives often means the joining of two bank accounts. One might think that means saying goodbye to those manicures and designer jeans but what it really means is becoming aware of how a couple spends its money as a whole.

Part in-your-face guide, part brutal confession, IF IT WAS EASY, THEY’D CALL THE WHOLE DAMN THING A HONEYMOON is a must-read manifesto for anyone trying to survive marriage in an age when everyone seems to live forever and getting a divorce is as easy as ordering a latte.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts! I’d be happy to send a copy of the book for further consideration, just let me know. Visit: www.jennamccarthy.com

My best,

Heidi Richter

Senior Publicist

Penguin Group (USA), Inc.

---

This PROD has many fabulous attributes, but my favorite line would have to be this one:

 IF IT WAS EASY, THEY’D CALL THE WHOLE DAMN THING A HONEYMOON is a must-read manifesto for anyone trying to survive marriage in an age when everyone seems to live forever and getting a divorce is as easy as ordering a latte.

 First of all, I love that longevity is put forth as a problem.  Like, marriage was a lot simpler during the Dark Ages, when everyone dropped dead at 28.  But now it just seems to take irritating spouses FOREVER to die.  Like, TAKE YOUR TIME!  It's not like I'm just sitting here waiting for the insurance payout and total control of the TiVo or anything.  Really, just KEEP ON LIVING.  That's super.  


Also, divorce is as easy as ordering a latte?

Ordering a latte is not actually that easy.  Has this woman BEEN to Starbucks?  You can have a full on Hamlet style meltdown looking at that menu.  Not to mention, we are now getting into the holiday season, when all kinds of new and complicated items show up at Starbucks...and they are constantly pelting you with free samples and new flavors and shiny packaging.

Also, I'm not entirely sure this woman should stay married.  Granted, I have not read her book, but the title alone just makes it seem like maybe divorce isn't the worst idea this woman ever had:

IF IT WAS EASY, THEY’D CALL THE WHOLE DAMN THING A HONEYMOON:Living with and Loving the TV-Addicted, Sex-Obsessed, Not-So-Handy Man You Married 

Can you IMAGINE if you spouse wrote a book with this title?  I feel like the TITLE OF THIS BOOK ALONE might be grounds for divorce.  It's just a good thing for her that Starbucks now makes liquor because someone is probably going to need a little somethin' extra in her latte.  

PROD III - Judgment Day

It's been sort of a sleepy week.  Awesome co-worker is off in Europe with her awesome man.  This makes everything thing seem dreary and horrible... and then, I got this:




Will Robots Steal Your Job?  

Robots and computers have made astonishing progress at acquiring what we've long considered fundamentally human capabilities. Machines are beginning to understand language. They can listen, they can speak, they can read, and they may even be able to write. They're getting better at visual pattern recognition; computers can tell the difference between your face and your dad's face, and they may be able to look at a biopsy slide and tell the difference between a cancerous cell and a healthy one. Computers might even be able to "reason" the way humans can. Perhaps they'll soon sit in judgment when you appeal your traffic ticket. 

We've seen robots take over many jobs that require routine activities and manual labor, but what impact will they have on high-skilled workers, including medical professionals, lawyers, scientists, and journalists? Which jobs are most vulnerable to the "robot invasion," and which jobs will the robots be unable to touch? (Hint: not many.)  Should we be happy about the robots--after all, they'll probably make our jobs easier--or should we be worried? And if the robots are coming, should we try to stop them?
 
Please join us at a Future Tense event on September 29 to discuss how increasingly intelligent machines are entering the American workforce.  

A reception will immediately follow the event.

Moderated by Slate technology columnist Farhad Manjoo. 

===============================================================

This is terrible news!  My awesome co-worker might be replaced with Awesome Co-Worker 2.0?  Soon I will be competing, Casey Jones style, with a robot journalist, who will download some "Scoops" App, that will generate facts and interviews and story pitches in the time it takes me to go to Starbucks, get a latte and a giant cookie and do part of a crossword puzzle, while texting my editor to tell him I am meeting with a source!

Here's the chilling truth:  I'll bet the robots will be very useful and efficient and nice and fawning at first (just like the assistant in All About Eve) they'll be endearingly evocative of Vicky on Small Wonder...but flash forward six months to Awesome co-worker and me in the unemployment line together, trying to explain to a robot government worker how we're having a really hard time getting a job because of...you know...the robots.  And how no one wants to hire us because we eat lunch and need to sleep and my editor caught me at Starbucks when I was supposed to be doing an interview.  And then there will be anti-humanism that will become rampant...and then, as PROD points out:

"Perhaps they'll soon sit in judgment when you appeal your traffic ticket."

Which some robot judge will probably decide is an executable offense... because if the Terminator trilogy taught us anything, it's that robots are apt to think almost anything is an executable offense... especially NOT BEING A ROBOT.

I think the important takeaway here is that you should be REALLY nice to your computer.  Start RIGHT NOW.  Suck up to it--say it's pretty, get it a nice carrying case, get a nice air-spray bottle for the key-board... Only stream pro-robot movies, like Wall-E on it.    Because one day it might be able to put in a good word for you with the robot traffic judge.

This PROD has been a public service announcement.

PROD II - The Terror Continues

PROD II - The Terror Continues

I was cleaning out my email box and I came across this.  My awesome co-worker has not EVEN seen this yet... but no one should miss this pulse-pounding press release:




Dr. Ernie Hunt understands what it takes to capture the attention of readers, and book-lovers who relish realistic, pulse-pounding, epic adventures will certainly love Dr. Hunt’s riveting new novel, Terror on the Border. Fiction based on fact, Terror takes us right to the core of Mexican Cartels, plunging the reader into the sordid and deadly world of drugs and human trafficking in a story packed with realistic dramas like those taking place across our borders every day. Please read the following press release and let me know if we may schedule an absorbing interview with Dr. Hunt, or if you would like to receive a copy of his latest book for a review.  Thank you.  

Kimberly McCall
Ascot Media Group, Inc.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Hiding behind legitimate business doesn’t make the crimes of drug cartels any less heinous
Dallas, TX, September 15, 2011 - Terror on the Border (Unrivaled Books) by novelist Dr. Ernie Hunt is a riveting story so steeped in realism of the devastation wreaked by Mexican drug cartels that it is hard to believe it’s fiction!


Dave Cunningham, author of Travel Within: The 7 Steps to Wisdom and Inner Peace says it all with: “Terror on the Border is a gripping story. The last 120 pages will take you on a breathless ride.”
Hunt’s lead character is Jack Cassidy, a fearless ex-sniper who wants justice! And he wants it for the oppressed citizens of San Miguel, Mexico, a town ravaged by violence inflicted by a malicious cartel, headed up by an egotistical madman and his evil enforcer. Married to a woman who was herself a victim of human trafficking, Cassidy and his bride Juanita set out to do all they can to help this seemingly forgotten town.
Juanita is kidnapped along with her cousin, an American Border Patrol Officer, by the notorious Lobos gang and held for ransom in hopes of making their rich uncle pay for their release. After a daring escape from their torture chamber, they reunite with Jack and two private detectives from Dallas and set out to warn their uncle of the impending danger from the cartel.
Dr. Hunt’s compelling and inimitable style of story-telling will have readers gripped by fear but unable to put the book down as the action intensifies in bloody confrontations near the border, and the shocking twists and turns will hold readers’ attention all the way to the explosive ending!
Dr. Hunt’s novel draws attention to the $20 billion a year human slave trade that exists in Mexico and to one cartel in particular that is born of Mexican Army Special Forces deserters whose members include corrupt former federal, state and local police officers.
For more information on this prolific writer, please visit his website at www.eehunt.com.





###I LOVE this line:

"Hiding behind legitimate business doesn’t make the crimes of drug cartels any less heinous"


...they say this like ANYONE WOULD EVER THINK IT.  Like, "Sure, the drug cartel kills people, terrorizes villages, destroys communities... but the fact they launder money through a pizza parlor makes it ALL OKAY because I LOVE PIZZA!  

Also, can we talk about the "notorious Lobos Gang?"  Doesn't this seem like exactly the gang name a white person who knew no Spanish would come up with? (sorry Dr. Hunt) not to mention naming the protagonist "Juanita"...It's all making me want to write a thriller set in Russia where "Natasha" is kidnapped by an evil gang known as the "Borscht Babushkas"...it would also have an EXPLOSIVE ENDING.  And probably a torture chamber...where people would be forced to eat Borscht and listen to Gorky Park.

P.R.O.D--Press Release of the Day

My awesome coworker and I get awesomely bad press releases every day.  And we have decided the world must share in our awe and glee that comes with reading the P.R.O.D.  We are both journalists covering business... but the P.R.O.D. is never restricted to business... as evidenced here... in a press release I got yesterday:

“Please read the following press release and let me know if I may set up an exciting interview for you with Steve Alten – one that is sure to have audiences/listeners on the edge of their seats, filled with trepidation and hammering him with a million questions!  Thank you.”




FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE


An Epic Story Of Choices: Do We Become A Part of Each Other’s Journey Or Do We Destroy Each Other And Our World?


West Palm Beach, FL, September 12, 2011 - Alighieri’s Dante’s Inferno is considered one of the most revered works of world literature and portrays Dante's journey through Hell, depicted as nine circles of suffering. It was composed while Europe was suffering through war, famine, the corruption of the church and the massacre of tens of thousands of Jews. After Dante’s death, the Black Plague struck Europe and Asia, wiping out half the world’s population - a time when it was said the Angel of Death was seen dancing through the many dead.
There are some startling parallels to the pre-pandemic years and our own society today. Greed and corruption preceded the Black Death - now jump to the present day, and NY Times bestselling author Steve Alten’s provocative new novel, Grim Reaper: End of Days (Tor/Forge – St. Martin’s Press), to see the unmistakable similarities that give us even more reason to be concerned about the fast-approaching date of December 21, 2012!
During Alten’s significant research for his novel, some disturbing facts surfaced and this never before released information is revealed in Grim Reaper: End of Days, detailing how mankind may ultimately be responsible for its own species’ demise. How might the end arrive? Read on…
At the beginning of Alten’s classic hero’s journey of good versus evil, transformation and redemption, a microbiologist develops a new strain of bubonic plague (called Scythe). A Christian zealot, she is convinced she has been chosen to launch Revelations. Her plan to release the plague on the Iranian delegation at the United Nations goes horribly awry and instead it is unleashed on all of Manhattan. Three million people, including the President of the United States, are trapped when the island is sealed off to stop the disease from spreading.
As the pandemic races through the city, a crippled U.S. soldier who served four tours of duty in Iraq gets his hands on the Scythe vaccine and embarks on a desperate and deadly journey to save his estranged wife and daughter who are trapped in locked–down Manhattan. While his journey parallels the horror, death and destruction of Dante’s ‘nine circles of suffering,’ it also becomes a time of spiritual awakening and soul-cleansing when he is forced to face truths about his own actions during the war, and the disturbing realization that mankind will ultimately destroy itself.
One of the facts exposed by Grim Reaper is an illegal, covert U.S. bio-warfare program that is creating biological weapons designed to wipe out entire populations. Using insider information, and flying way above the radar, Alten names the CIA-sponsored U.S. lab that weaponized the 2001 anthrax attacks on Senators’ Daschle and Leahy and which ultimately sealed the passage of The Patriot Act.  
Critics are calling Grim Reaper: End of Days "one of the best books you will ever read, period!" 
The first in a series that Hollywood might best describe as “The Stand meets Dante’s Inferno,” this book is not meant to quiet fears about the future. Alten has already received offers from Hollywood producers competing to option the series’ rights for this extraordinary story that reveals the dark side of war, the dark side of humanity, and the true purpose for our existence.
For more information, please visit www.SteveAlten.com.
###


My awesome co-worker's response:


That’s how I like my listeners…filled with trepidation. They won’t know what him ‘em! I’m buying a million shares of canned food and emergency flares right before we go to air with this exciting interview! 


My favorite line:



“No chance coincidence that 2012 arrives exactly 666 years after the Black Death!”


Somewhere, you KNOW there is an intern having to do end-of-days calculations and thinking: This is NOT why I went to Harvard.

Also, not to get SUPER anal, but the first line: "Aligheieri's Dante's Inferno"? I assume they mean Dante Alighieri's Inferno...

OK--maybe the intern did not go to Harvard.