You May Need a Bucket

The title of my book is going to be The Good, the Spam, and the Ugly. It's too late to change it. I just cannot vomit enough. I had absolutely no say in the matter, and the only worse title I can think of is "THIS BOOK IS TAINTED WITH ANTHRAX."

I had no idea this was coming. I found out last week, after several weeks of being pretty sure the title was A Fistful of Spam. Everyone else knew weeks ago.

To make matters worse, I am told they are trying to fix my name, which is MISSPELLED ON THE COVER.

Isn't that great? Now no one will be able to find me using a search engine. They'll search for "Steve Graham" and get nine million wrong hits. Wait. I'll give you the exact number.

Okay, it's 196,000. By some cruel miracle, I'm in the top ten because the Barnes & Noble listing for Eat What You Want and Die Like a Man comes up. Oh, you think that's a GOOD thing? Wrong, Boolean operator breath. That book is going to be pulled off the market, and that link is going to be gone. And it won't take you to my other books anyway.

On the other hand, "Steve H. Graham" generates 226 hits, and they're ALL about me. That's fantastic. I couldn't ask for a better Google handle.

Imagine being in my shoes. You get your first book contract, and they print the book, and then they send you out in your suit and tie to do promotions, and the book has AN UNBELIEVABLY STUPID TITLE AND YOUR NAME IS SPELLED WRONG ON THE COVER.

No, that is not acceptable. I always knew they might stick me with a stupid title, because they were asking committees and cleaning women and vagrants for suggestions. But I never agreed to let them publish me under the wrong name. This will ruin my Amazon and Barnes and Noble links. It will confuse the public. It can't be allowed to happen.

In other news, that damn storm path keeps correcting, getting closer and closer to me. They've finally got it so I'm right under the black line labeled "projected path." I feel like driving to the National Hurricane Center and kicking someone in the ass.

It's impossible to get gas. It's impossible to get food. And I'm low on Scotch. On the up side, there was no line at the Wendy's drive-thru.

If we get a Category 1 or even a tropical storm, expect to hear nothing from me for three days. And here's the best part: my father is having the generator on his boat replaced, so if this thing hits, I can forget about going to the boat for air conditioning and hot water.

I guess my fish will die. I didn't even think about that. Damn it. That will cost me like forty bucks.

I figure ten days from now, life will be more or less normal. It's too bad I can't have an anaesthesiologist put me under until then.

I know you'll all want to make fun of me over the book cover, so here you go:

You can't say anything about it that's worse than what I'm thinking.