I Cope With Fish of Shame

My cousin Robert brought some friends down from Kentucky last week, and my father and I spent most of the last five days entertaining them. They wanted to fish, but October is a bad month for fishing in Miami. We managed to take them out on Friday and again last night, and we put them on a couple of reefs, where we caught almost nothing but grunts.

Grunts have a strange reputation. The common grunt is a small fish similar to a snapper, and I guess they go up to about three pounds, although almost all of them are smaller. They have thin filets and lots of bones, but they taste fantastic. Because they're small, people down here generally throw them back, and they make fun of folks who keep them.

I usually throw them back, too. After all, there are so many big fish here, you really don't need to hold onto a one-pound fish with four ounces of meat on it.

I figured Robert and his friends wouldn't mind having grunts in the freezer, because they live in a place where a one-pound fish is a fine catch. We ended up keeping a bunch of the ones we caught.

Then they surprised me by leaving the grunts here when they left. On the one hand, that was very nice of them. On the other, now I have a refrigerator full of grunts. Which is not really where I expected to be at this point in my life.

I guess I'm going to smoke them. If I throw them out, they'll stink up the whole neighborhood before the truck comes, and the coons will break into the trash and spread them all over the yard. Smoking seems like the better option.

Grunts are perfect for smoking. You salt them down and get them smoked good, and then for weeks you can have smoked grunt sauteed in butter with your breakfast eggs. I have a chunk of live oak in the garage. I plan to saw it in slices and soak them, and then into the Hoginator the grunts will go.

Robert and company stayed on my dad's boat, at the marina. While they were staying there, I told them an embarrassing secret. That marina is the best place in Miami to fish. The whole place is full of mangrove snapper over a foot long. And here's a list of the other fish you can catch there: snook, tarpon, sharks, stingrays, jacks, barracuda, and tripletail. The jacks and tarpon are barely edible, but you can feed pretty well on the others.

I don't fish in the marina, because the dockmaster hates it. But I told Robert to go ahead if he wanted. The dockmaster hunted deer on land my family owns, in Kentucky. I feel that gives Robert the right to catch anything he wants in the marina. So he and his pals loaded up on snapper, and they also caught a nurse shark, which they unfortunately released instead of steaking.

It was great to see Robert, but I'm embarrassed that the fishing was so lame. Maybe we'll be able to do better for him next year.

In other news, that stupid pirate book may be dead. My agent loved the sample material so much, he decided to shop it around instead of giving it to the publisher that asked me to write it. He had another publishing house in mind, and they surprised him by turning it down. Then he went back to the original publisher, and they said they had changed their mind. Now he's running around looking for a new home for it.

I hate to think I worked on that for months for nothing, but that could be the situation.

The deal on the cookbook may be in trouble, too. I thought it was in the can, but we hesitated. Turns out it's a tough sell because publishers will think of it as an actual cookbook instead of a humor book, and as a cookbook, it's pretty thin. The recipes are great, but there will only be maybe 30 in the published version.

For anyone who's listening out there, hoping to become a published writer, I think there are some lessons to be learned here. First, you really need to know what publishers want, before you write. It's fine to write something because you're inspired and then shop it around, but if it isn't what they want this week, they'll send it back to you. If you know what they're looking for before you write, you're much better off.

Second, be hands-on. Contact everyone at least twice a week and make sure no surprises have popped up. If I had done that instead of settling for once a week, I wouldn't be in this pickle.

Third, don't overestimate the ease of selling books to publishers. If you have a string of bestsellers, you can afford to turn down offers. If you're just getting started, think long and hard before turning any offer down.

I'm going to put all those lessons to work. I really need to have another book in the pipeline, in case the Nigerian book tanks. I can't afford to sit on my hands, hoping business will take care of itself.

It also looks like I'm going to have to learn about promotion. I assumed my publisher would take care of that. I figured it was the whole reason for using a publisher, instead of going with IUniverse. The royalty picture is about the same either way, and an IUniverse book looks just as good as a Simon & Schuster book. The only advantage of using a publisher is that they can get you reviews and interviews and bookstore orders that you can't get on your own.

I'm told that I'm pretty low on the list of books my publisher wants to promote. They're actually hoping I'll do it myself, using this pathetic blog or a site devoted to the book. The problem with that is that it puts the cart before the horse. It's impossible to generate website traffic these days unless you have phenomenal luck or corporate backing. I think the marketing people at publishing houses are still under the impression that you can put up a website and have 100,000 visits the next day. If it worked that way, I'd be blogging for a living.

I'm going to put up a site for the Nigerian book, but I told my editor it was virtually certain to fail. That's not defeatism; that's realism. As much as I dread it, I'm going to have to get in touch with the PR people personally and badger them to give me contacts I can work. The Internet is completely useless. The things that work are radio, TV, and periodicals. I'm going to have to find a way to get myself exposure in those media.

Of course, I tried that with the POD cookbook, and I couldn't even get emails returned.

I'm considering calling a PR consultant. But that will be hideously expensive. You can only pay 15% to so many people before you end up getting nothing.

One tool I may use is Youtube. At least until it gets sued into oblivion. Podcasting is a total waste of time and money; no one listens to podcasts. But a bad Youtube video automatically gets a thousand views. I don't know how long that will be true, but I'm going to try to take advantage, if I can figure out what to put in the videos.

Anyway, if you're a writer and you're starting to have some success, learn from my mistakes. No one is going to take care of you in this world. At least not until you prove you can make them money every time. Talent means nothing. Connections mean everything. Except for blogger connections, which are virtually worthless. So handle your business yourself.