Bangkok, Oriental setting

Oh, hey. Sorry I'm late posting this week. I'm in Bangkok today on yet another one of my many sales calls. Yesterday I was in Atlanta and the day before that Morocco. It's just one thing after another in the exciting life of a salesman! I tell you, if I had a dollar for everytime someone made a joke about ketchup popsicles, I'd be a millionaire!

However, while I've been hopping from airport to airport, I've been thinking about how sales can be likened unto writing. I've listed eight reasons:

1. Les Brown once said about sales: "You gotta be hungry." I'll tell you one thing, when I was in Atlanta eating waffles, I was no longer hungry. But now that I'm in Bangkok, not so much. As the song says "One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster. The bars are temples, but the pearls ain't free." I can't say that I have any idea what that means, but I think my pad thai had fried rat in it.

2. Og Mandino, author of The Greatest Salesman in the World, said "Love doesn't sit there like a stone, it has to be made, like bread: remade all the time, made new." I think this makes a lot of sense, because you know how you always have to remake your bread, so it's new? Like, you make it once, but then you have to remake it? What the crap, Og Mandino? What the crap?

3. There's an old joke: How can you tell when a salesman is lying? His lips are moving! But that's not always the case, because sometimes we salespeople type things, too. Granted, my lips move when I type (and I drool a bit), but when you're reading my blogs how do you know? Answer: when it comes to the new X-36 TransGenerator Couplings, I never lie. They're the best, and I can get you a great deal. But when it comes to writing, it's mostly lies. (You remember that zinger about no self-addressed stamped envelope?)

4. Og Mandino (Uncle Og, I like to call him) also said "Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight." How does that relate to writing? I don't know, but I do know this: I tried this picture-everyone-dead-by-midnight stuff, and you know what? My wife is having me see a therapist. And now I write horror novels. Thanks for nothing, Uncle Og.

5. Famous sales manager Michael Scott once said "There are four kinds of business: tourism, food service, railroads and sales (and hospitals/manufacturing . . . and air travel)." I think this one explains itself.

6. A comic strip about dinosaurs recently included the aphorism "Customers know what they want, but they want what they know." I think the same is true of readers. Hah. Readers are such sheep, always wanting what they know. That's why I write a series.

7. Siam's gonna be the witness to the ultimate test of cerebral fitness. This grips me more than would a muddy old river or reclining Buddha.

8. I can't think of an eighth, so I'm just going to post some excerpt from my upcoming book. I call this one "Shanda Coverington and the Diamonds of Ghosts at Night in the Dark."

It was a dark and stormy night...