Renée Harrell's Blog, page 13

This guy is named Ercilio and...

...as it happens, he needs a new boat. Oh, sure, you've noticed that he already has a boat and you're right. Working 10 hours a day, he's built a boat transportation service but now he needs a newer, better boat. "In this way, he will be able to transport his customers in a very safe manner and will be able to improve his income and continue fighting to make his greatest dream come true: to be able to provide his children with a profession and for them to be very proud of him."
 
That's according to Kiva.org. The good people at Kiva are going to take our tiny $25 donation, add it to enough other donations to total $575, then turn it over to Caja Rural in Peru -- and Ercilio gets his boat.
 
In time, we'll get our money back -- probably. There's roughly a 99% repayment rate. This is our seventh Kiva loan and, so far, we haven't been stiffed yet. If you're at all interested in doing such a thing, this is a good time to do it. The philanthropic Omidyar Network has offered to donate $100,000 if the Kiva community loans $1.5 million out by June 30th. Weirdly, if you're new to Kiva and this kind of thing, they'll even provide you a free $25 loan to offer someone like Ercilio. We don't know how it works but free + helping others = not a bad thing.

Plus, Ercilio could really used a new boat.
 
* * *
So how did our eReaderIQ ad work out? We're not glad you asked. The morning of the ad, we checked the Amazon rating for Aly's Luck: #446,249. We should have checked the number the night before, we'd forgotten to do so -- again, we're lousy at the promotion game -- but it seemed vaguely in the ballpark. An hour later, we checked again: #446,943. Yes, we were actually LOSING sales as the ad continued. (We weren't really; it just felt that way. Other books were selling, our title wasn't, and our rating reflected this.) So we did what every right-thinking person would do. We quit checking the numbers.
 
By the following morning, we were willing to look at the sales ranking again. Our number had improved to #137,954, its highest rating ever but still leaving us with a loss on the cost of the ad. That could change if one of the buyers gives the story a rave, tells his millions of Twitter-ites, and a flood of buyers swarm the Amazon site...but, really, what are the odds?
 
This isn't just a hypothetical question. We wondered: What are the odds that Aly's Luck will become a smash hit? We went to the toy section at the local store, shook up their Magic 8 Ball and asked. The response: Better not tell you now.
 
You know what we wanted it to say?

For fifty bucks, we'll test your IQ...

…or, rather, we’re spending a fast $50 to test our IQ. Our eReaderIQ, that is.

As family and friends (that would be you) know, we do a not-terrific job of promoting our books.  We'd be better if it wasn't such a struggle. Bloggers and book reviewers have been burned by so many bad self-published books, they don’t want to see ‘em. The handful of folks focusing on the indie/self-pub world are overwhelmed by submissions begging emails and can barely begin to carve into the humongous pile of offerings placed in front of them.

As writers, we want to trust in Dean Wesley Smith’s philosophy: Don’t spend your time trying to sell your work, just write the next book. Given enough time, every writer will find an audience. The problem with this theory? Some of us have to make a living while the audience dawdles, occupying itself with Fifty Shades of Grey.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

While Fifty Shades was busily collecting tens of thousands of readers, we saw a lovely, talented writer abandon her craft for the world of retail. She’s busy folding sweaters because her four novels and two novellas collected good reviews at minor sites and were rarely purchased. And this writer busted butt to sell her stuff, doing readings and store signings, and knocking on doors both real and virtual. If effort was all that mattered, she’d be golden.

Us? Based on our lackadaisical promotional  activities, we’d be scrap iron. It’s not that we don’t want to promote our books…no, wait, that’s exactly it. We don’t want to promote our books.  We’d rather keep scribbling while the Magic Promotion Genie comes along and gives our books a big shove. So far, the Magic Promotion Genie is a disappointment. Turns out, the MPG is reading Fifty Shades of Grey, too.

So we thought we’d try something different. When the corporations at B&N/Smashwords/Amazon combined to send us a chunk o’ change in April, we thought we’d use a piece of it to buy a bit of attention for one of our books. We did this even after a fellow writer told us that internet ads for books don’t work. Because what if, just once, things worked out differently?

We contacted a nice man at eReaderIQ and he quoted us a livable ad price (or, at least, less than our April royalties): Fifty smackeroos. We like eReaderIQ, go there at least once a day, and we occasionally notice the ads at the top of the screen. Usually don’t notice ‘em but, y’know, sometimes.  Once, we even bought a book from an advertisement. But, you’ll notice, we go there. Daily. We bought a book. Once. If our response is typical, the average advertiser is totally screwed.

What are our odds of success? A writer friend (and one who advertised on eReader ) thinks we’ll struggle to see any results. He suggested we pick our most popular novel; we picked our newest, Aly’s Luck, instead. He told us to price it at free if we wanted to attract readers. We priced it at $2.99. (Hey, we put our heart into this book.) He said we wouldn’t have a good return on our investment. We told him we appreciated his advice. He told us, “You’re doing it all wrong.”

Which actually worked for us. So far, doing it all wrong seems to be our entire life strategy.

If you’d like to see the crash as it happens, the ad runs on Saturday, 06/23/12. Our Amazon 'paid' sales ranking for Aly’s Luck as this post goes on line is 401,844 -- and will likely be tens of thousands higher by the weekend.  As you can assume, a smaller sales number = a more successful pitch. A higher sales number = we’re totally screwed.

The betting line in Vegas? Not good.

Finding the right person isn't easy

…whether it’s in life, in love, or while hunting for a narrator for your YA audio book.  As you’ve probably forgotten, we were searching for the perfect person to be the voice of Ann Lippens, Girl Detective. In the past couple of posts, we've mentioned how we’d come close (but no cigar).
 
We thought theprocess would be easier than it was. We were disheartened. Not yet willing to give up, we reached out to a couple of additional vocal actors, we received their audio auditions, and we sat down to listen.

These auditions were the best yet, by far. Smooth, professional, nice stuff. Even though they didn’t quite catch the sound of a 17 year-old teenager, the actresses were almost perfect….

And that’s the rub, isn’t it? Is it better to take nearly-what-you-want or should you hold out for exactly-what-you-want? More importantly, is exactly-what-you-want even available – especially on a 50/50 royalty basis?
 
We weren’t sure that perfection was achievable but we knew it wasn’t right to say “maybe” to any of these good people. We’ve been writers long enough to know that maybe sucks. Some time ago, one of our stories in After Things Went Bad dropped onto the ‘maybe’ list of a hardcover science fiction anthology being edited by a big name science fiction author. The story lingered in limbo for months…and we didn’t know it because the editor didn’t drop a hint that we were still under consideration. After we withdrew the story, he told us he'd been holding it for possible inclusion in the tome (the implication being, of course, that we were close but -- what if something better came along?).  At that point, we didn’t care. We were tired of being a maybe. You either love the work or you don't.

Since we liked the auditions but didn't love 'em, we knew what we needed to do. We emailed the pair of narrators, told them quite honestly that they were great but not right for the role, and considered shelving the whole thing. Then one last audition arrived, the version promised by our last possible actress, the one who promised an audition in two weeks.
 
From the very first sentence, she was perfect. (Not that Renée was surprised. Renée thought her audio samples rocked and she'd mentioned it a few times. But a sample doesn’t = a finished product so he refused to be impressed. He is now.) We were delighted to offer the contract, our actress was delighted, and we’re working together. Per ACX rules, we were given a listen to the first fifteen minutes of the thing – and the tiny bit that didn’t work was played with, changed, and plays very nicely now.
 
So, yep, we're pleased. Because, when it comes to listening to audiobooks, we're satisfied whenever a vocal actor manages to bring a book's characters to life. We're happy if somehow the reader makes the book sound even better spoken than written.

We’re happy.

"A three letter word ending in X...

…and it’s better than S-E-X,” according to our friend, Nan. 
 
She’s speaking of ACX, the Audiobook Creation Exchange outfit. Having just heard the audio version of her self-published thriller, Nan was more than a little excited when she called. When she spoke with us, she was probably indulging in a little hyperbole – or her husband, Chuck (not his real name) (his real name is Warren), is just not as much fun in bed as you might think.

The point is, Nan is quite pleased with her oral experience so far.  She stumbled across ACX; made her novel available for taping; provided a short segment for narrators to audition; sent messages to five different voice actors, receiving three auditions; selected her reader; and, now, she’s only a piece of cover art away from making the product available for sale. Easy peasy.

Fun fact: According to the Urban Dictionary – the term “easy peasy” comes from an ancient television commercial for Lemon Squeezy dish detergent. No, we'd never heard of Lemon Squeezy dish detergent, either, but now we want to own a bottle.

At this point, Nan doesn’t know if there’s money to be made in audiobooks or not. But there is the potential of a few more bucks in the bank account and that’s good enough for her. Good enough for us, too. After all, if it wasn’t for the potential of earning enough jack to buy a cup o' joe at Method Coffee, self-publishing would wither and die.

So we thought we’d jump into the game. Because our lovely young niece listens to books no matter where she goes, we thought we’d start with a novel intended for MG readers -- Something Wicked. Despite good reviews and the occasional fan letter, the book's e-sales are lagging (despite the higher price, paperback sales pretty much match the e-numbers) and we hoped an audio version might find a receptive audience.

Preparing an audition script from the opening of SW – easy peasy – we signed up for ACX and posted the book on the ACX site for any interested narrators. Like Nan, we sat back and waited for the auditions to fill our inbox. Like Nan, all we heard was...

*crickets*

We’d been too optimistic, hoping the world would rush to our door. So we pulled ourselves together and started listening to audio samples, trying to find the just-right person to make our book come to life. Since SW is the story Ann Lippens, girl detective, we focused on actresses and found some terrific talent. Since Nan had found five potential narrators, we did the same, sending each of them our pitch.

Not much later, we’d heard from the first actress. She was traveling out of the country, wouldn’t be able to provide an audition tape until later. Maybe much later. So we were one down.

The next day, we received two auditions and had the promise of a third in another couple of weeks. Two days later, the last narrator contacted us, providing her take on our work. Hey, with three auditions in hand, we felt pretty good about the process. If things worked out, we might not need to hear the two-weeks-from-now audition, much less the effort from the woman going to Spain.

Finding a quiet place, we sat down to listen to the talent.

Our first actress definitely had possibilities. Her voice was light, pleasant – “This is a voice you could listen to all day,” one of us remarked – and clearly professional. If there was any concern, it was almost a weird one: the voice was so smooth, there was never any sense of drama. Even as our story's first victim fell from a cliff, doomed, she sounded more bemused than frightened.

Not perfect for our needs but this was definitely a good start. Still, bottom line, we had strike one.

Our second actress was good, too, but we suspected she would be. Her credits as listed on ACX list was impressive and, if true, she clearly had chops. She zipped through our pages easily, quickly...and maybe too quickly, providing a 3-and-a-half minute version of our 5-minute audition. She also made an interesting acting choice, sounding pissed throughout the audition. This time, as our victim fell to her death, she sounded like she couldn't wait to knock the crap out of the rocks below.

Again, not perfect, but interesting. However, strike two.

Our third narrator had the kind of husky, dark voice that was immediately attractive. Breathy, her words oozed sexuality. If Ann Lippens had been a teenaged bar slut, she’d have been golden. (One of us liked her voice so much that he wanted us to immediately write a story about a sexy teenaged bar slut who maybe liked the guys on the football team a little too much. The other one of us disagreed.)

Do you even have to ask? Strike three.

Worried that we'd only begun and already struck out, we approached another pair of narrators. But, again, we've rambled a bit too much for today. More next time.

Are you talkin' to ME?...

...because, seriously, almost no one ever does. Not at Mars Needs Writers, anyway. The whole "comments" thing down below? No one uses it. We get emails instead of comments but no one ever tells us why. You aren't going to use the comment thingie, either, so don't pretend you are. This has nothing to do with today's post but it suddenly came to mind and we blurped it out.
 
Today we're supposed to be talking about our audio book adventures and we will soon, promise. Instead, we thought we'd take a quick station break to let you know that Cynthia Vespia recently did a long interview with us and it made its appearance on her website yesterday. We talk about all kinds of things, including our personal slogans, our greatest fears, our favorite deadly sins, and our sexiest turn-ons.
 
Before you judge us, know that we didn't come up with ANY of these questions. Cyn is a nosy creature and she asked many, many, many personal questions. It was part of an interview swap and when C.V. does an interview, b' God, she's thorough.
 
When we sent her our interview questions for her part of the swap, we asked maybe six things and two of the questions were jokes. Because we're lousy interviewers, that's why, but Cyn managed to make it an interesting piece, anyway. It will post in June. She didn't tell us her sexiest turn-ons, damn it, but we're hopeful that she'll mention them in the comments box below. No, she won't. You know it and we know it.
 
Meanwhile, her Demon Hunter: Saga is part of a Goodreads giveaway that ends on 06/01/12. If you'd like a free double novel of what is possibly her most popular work, now is the time to toss in an entry.
 
Thanks!

Can you hear us NOW?...

…and, how silly, of course you can’t. But the times, they are a’changin’.

Maybe. But let's start from the beginning:

A couple of weeks ago, we heard from an excited writer friend. Her self-published thriller was getting made into an audio book! She’d already heard a chunk of the thing, the narrator was doing a great job and –

Hold on, we interrupted. We like Nan, we like her a lot, but we know the woman isn't exactly rolling in the dough. She doesn’t have the extra scratch to pay for studio time or a sound engineer, much less the use of a professional narrator. (Unless, of course, things had changed and she’d won the Powerball. If Nan had won the Powerball, this was a good time to remind her of our longstanding friendship and the time we bought her that Grande DeCaf and she said she’d pay us back someday.)

Sadly for all of us, she hadn’t won the lottery. What she’d done was discover the Audiobook Creation Exchange. At ACX, authors and narrators are encouraged to find one another, link up, and make an audio book. Authors can either pay the standard rate – $200-300 per hour seems to be the going price – or they can ask the voice talent if they’d like to split royalties 50/50.
 
ACX is apparently owned and operated by the folks at Amazon, by the way. Although we like Amazon for providing us an outlet for our writing, not everyone feels the same way. Fair warning.

Nan likes Amazon, she liked ACX, and she decided to throw her hat in the ring. She created an account, provided an audition script, made it know on site that her project was available to would-be voice actors, and waited for her inbox to fill up.

*crickets*

When a week passed without a single response, she decided to be a bit more proactive. The site makes it easy for narrators to find new projects but it also makes it easy for writers to contact vocal talent. Audio samples are provided, broken down by genre, accent, sex, whether this is for cash or royalty, etc. etc., and Nan listened until she found a few potential audio partners. She contacted five would-be actors, asking them to consider her audition script, and three of ‘em agreed to give the story a try.

And why not? Her book is the first of a four book series, it’s action-packed and exciting, but it isn't a particularly challenging novel to record. (Nan agrees with us.) The hero is a manly man, the story is told in first person, and the hero’s primary interactions are with other, often evil, manly men. Find someone with a deep voice and a little verbal swagger, you’ve got a potential narrator. Nan’s audition script ran about five minutes, give or take some vocal inflections, and it wasn’t long before she had three different takes to consider. She liked all three. Of the three, there was one narrator she loved.
 
“He did the character perfectly,” she told us. She immediately emailed the guy. He (almost) immediately emailed back. He wanted the job. He also wanted $700.

Which is when Nan discovered that many of the ACX narrators would prefer cash in hand to a cut of the royalties.  It’s understandable. Less than ten percent of all novels become audio books – some people in the industry place the percentage as low as five percent -- and, of that number, several struggle to find an audience. Add the challenge of finding buyers for an unknown audio book by an unknown writer and you can see why some people might wonder if prospects are a little iffy.

Iffy isn’t the same as nonexistent, though, and Nan charmed her actor with the possibilities to follow. Since then, he's accepted the assignment, provided a 15-minute reading of the book’s opening for Nan to review, and the project is in full flight. The narrator has a commitment to finish the thing in the next three weeks, and our friend is pleased.

After haunting the ACX site for a few hours, here’s what we thought: Maybe we should try it, too.
So, a few days ago, we jumped into the pool, too.
 
Our experience?  More than a little different than Nan's account. But this post has already run on and on. Let’s talk next week.

There is such a thing as TOO MUCH success...

…or so we’ve heard. Frankly, it’s not been a problem in our neck o’ the woods but other people, they talk.

Joel Murray, for example. The younger brother of actor Bill Murray (who knew Bill had a younger brother?), Joel said this about his sibling’s success:  “I have a famous brother” — he told the L.A. Times a couple of days ago — “and I see what his life’s like. He can stay places 15 minutes and then he’s got to leave. So I’ve seen what it’s like to be famous.”

Joel said he liked being largely unknown. As much as we like Bill Murray – well, one of us likes him: once upon a time, back before he was merely kinda famous instead of super famous, he planted a smooch upon Renee’s cheek -- offering no such love to Harrell, by the way…but we’d hate to be so popular that we couldn’t stop at IHOP without a crowd gathering. We like to linger over our chocolate chip pancakes. 

This comes to mind today because we’ve just returned from Las Vegas. We were in town for the Big Writers Convention – either that, or we were just hanging out at the buffets and losing money at the nickel slots – and we decided to go see the Penn & Teller show at the Rio. We’d seen their act years and years ago, we’d loved it, and we wondered if anything at changed in the almost eleven years since we last dropped by.

Yep, there were changes.

The tickets were more expensive than before but we found a deal (take ten minutes and you’ll find a deal, too), and off we went.  In the showroom’s outside lobby, there was a bar and a souvenir stand, loaded with P & T-oriented goodies. The showroom, by the way, was now the Penn & Teller Theater. It was gorgeous and much bigger than their first Rio showroom.  The seats were plush and the back of each chair was branded with a partial ampersand, the P & T trademark. A jazz pianist played as the crowd filled in – and a very big crowd, it was.

The show ran about 90 minutes. It was great and the magicians rocked. We loved it. After their performance, P & T hurried to the outside lobby. We thought they might, since they did the same thing a decade ago: They met their audience at the door, shook hands, signed autographs, posed for photos.  At the turn of the millennium, we’d chatted with them both and thought they were delightful.

But Penn & Teller are much more famous now.

As a result, the crowd waiting to meet them was much bigger. There were souvenirs to be signed; many, many souvenirs to be signed. Hundreds of pictures to be taken, since everyone seems to have a camera-capable cell phone. Lines of people waiting to press the flesh. Everyone wanted a piece of their time.

It showed in our celebrities’ faces. They smiled for photos, signed everything offered, tried to be pleasant.  But Teller said very few words. (We know he’s supposed to be the silent partner but he verbalized happily the last time we saw him.) Penn called everyone, ‘Boss.’ As in, ‘Thanks, Boss,”, “Appreciated, Boss,” “You’re welcome, Boss.”  He doesn’t have the time to learn each audience member's name – no one could – and he appeared so terribly, terribly bored by the process. So, naturally, Renee decided she needed to thank him for a great show.

When she made it through the line, offering her hand and her thanks, Penn seemed lost. This woman didn’t want an autograph, didn’t need a photo, so why the heck was she there? Finally, he understood. He blinked a few times, shook her hand, then responded warmly, “That’s what it’s all about. Boss.”

Seconds later, the autograph/photo/go thing resumed. Penn's eyes went dead. Honestly, we felt sorry for him.

Too often, fame and success distances the fortunate from the world around them. Which sucks. So, the next time you check our novels sales figures, don’t think, Way to go, Turners! You score!

Absolutely. Don't for a second think about making us successful.

When we heard about a free custom book cover...

…we assumed one of two things were at play here: (1) ‘free’ wasn’t exactly free, if you know what we mean; or (2) suckiest book cover ever.
 
Our suspicions arose when we saw a posting on a writers’ board: Free Custom Cover with Original Digital Painting, read the post. The offer came from Gale Haut and we’d seen his name on the boards before. Months earlier, a writer, Meira Pentermann, had raved about the cover she’d received for her novel, Nine-Tenths. Her cover artist: Gale Haut. So we knew GH had some pretty decent chops but we remained suspicious about his offer. The last time we’d received something ‘free’, we had to sit through a two hour sales pitch. In Las Vegas. During the summer.
 
Apparently we weren’t the only suspicious people in the house. After the offer was made, exactly ONE person responded. (When we asked him about this, he told us, “I assume some people have seen what I’ve done in the past and probably decided my work wasn’t what they’re looking for.” Poor, sweet, innocent artist.) So, imagine our surprise when the customer cover turned out to be (1) entirely free; and (2) worlds beyond all levels of suck. So we contacted GH, just to see what was happening here.
The first thing we learned? 'Gale Haut' is a pseudonym for Elliot Turner. Immediately, we wanted to like the guy. After all, we use a pseudonym, too. And our last name is really Turner. If Elliot were rich, we'd insist we were related.
 
(We asked author Merri Hiatt what she thought about the cover: "I loved the cover art he created," she told us. "Elliot created a cover that was not only beautiful, but hauntingly so. He has a gift and a honed talent. I'd work with him again in a heartbeat.")

But Elliot's not rich and unlikely to become so if he keeps giving his work away. So we started at that point: where’s the profit in FREE?  “I don’t mean to sound pithy or anything,” he told us, “but I really love the dynamic of working with an author. I thought it would be fun.”
 
Which is almost stunning in and of itself. Do something just for the fun of it? The last thing we did for fun was Frankenstein, P.I. – and you know how well that worked out. With a little further prodding, we learned that Elliot is a professional graphic designer, with a degree in English Literature. “The thing about graphic design is, no one will take you seriously until you’ve had professional work experience or you have a fancy degree in art or design. I had neither, so I took a nontraditional route. I’m a little proud that I’ve made it this far because of how competitive the field is.”
 
So this is one for the portfolio, is it? It's such a striking piece  – “Honestly, my cover work isn’t exceptional when compared to other professional artists who are established in the field,” Elliot interrupts. “Maybe it’s better than the standard self-published cover or small press cover but I have a ways to go before I’m as polished as I’d like to be.”
 
Okay, we get it, the Society of Illustrators isn’t quite ready to inscribe your plaque, but you’re almost there. Verrrrrry close. Right?
 
You know what? He won’t even give us that much. “I don’t know the definition of a professional cover artist but I’m willing to bet it’s not me,” Elliot insists. “The cover art industry is incredibly competitive, and I don’t feel that I’m entitled to succeed in it. But I’ll certainly do my best if the opportunity arises.”
 
We asked a few more questions, received some lovely answers, and quickly grew tired of the guy. Talented, modest, probably movie star handsome (but refusing to admit it, even to himself), Elliot Turner is just a little too good to be true. After all, we’re NOT movie star handsome and, yet, we refuse to be modest.
 
So what happened after his latest cover was posted for all to see? Well, as you might expect, a number of writers lined up, hoping to get his next cover. We think his talent is obvious, his design philosophy is solid – “Simplicity works. Just as you don’t want to over flower your prose when you write, avoid overworking an image. Keep it clean and get to the point before you lose your way and your audience” – and we’re positive he’ll be charging big bucks for his work in the future.
 
In the meantime, we're waiting for him to fill his ego tank and decide that, maybe, he really is too good to hang out at the Blog-O-Rama…and then we’ll invite him back. He’ll refuse to answer our increasingly strident emails and we’ll know, at last, he’s one of us.
 
Fingers crossed, Gale. Fingers crossed.

"Frenchie LaRou and Mighty Joe Schlong," we said...

…when she asked our stripper names. Until that very moment, we didn’t even know we needed stripper names. Imagine our surprise.
 
Y’see, we’d agreed to do an interview swap in an effort to spur sales for Aly’s Luck. Luck is our latest opus and not nearly enough people are sampling the thing.  (If you have a Kindle or a Nook or...whatever, then you know that e-reader fans frequently sample a story before buying it. We like it when people sample our work. Sales for After Things Went Bad climbed after the number of samples started to rise.) Unless folks discover the story, they’ll never know if they want to sample the thing, much less pick up a copy.
 
So, the interview swap. It works like this: We do an interview with an author, the author does an interview with us, we both hype our work, maybe a few dozen samples are downloaded.  That's the theory, anyway. So we zapped out five or six of the our basic getting-to-know-an-author interview questions to our cohort’s gmail addy, and receive a set of interview questions in return.
 
The return questions-- the questions being asked to us -- weren’t the standard questions at all. These were questions about music and heroes villains and life slogans. Also, if we stripped for a living, what would our professional names be?
 
Caught off-guard, we went with Frenchie and Mighty Joe. Shortly thereafter, when we recounted the story, a relative told us we’d gotten our stripper names all wrong. Apparently, there's a protocol for this kind of thing. You don't just pick a stripper name. Life has to have created a stripper name for you – or you can go upscale and use a fancy-dancy Random Generator.
 
Harrell went the traditional route (the name of your first pet; the street name of your first house). Next time you tuck a dollar into his tightie-whities, refer to him as Captain Comstock.
 
Renée wanted to spin the wheel, so to speak, so she went to a Random Generator. There’s more than one but she chose the win at the
After providing the stripper name, the GoTo crew also offered this helpful bit of info about Bambi:  You have a strange smell coming from your crotch, but those breasts distract most of your customers. You’re frail like a fawn but weird, like the name Turburble.

Next time, Renée uses the traditional method.

Chalk outlines can be a bad thing...

…but not for us. Not this past weekend, anyway.
 
Every year, our mountain town features a two day Chalk Art exhibition. A local bank donates the use of its parking lot and a handful of volunteers tape off various squares of space for people to use as a drawing space. The artists can do a small drawing, x-inches by x-inches, or go big – and we mean BIG, several feet high by several feet across. Just by filling out a fairly generic application form (name, mailing address), anyone can participate. Sponsors have been lined up, and they provide the money for free boxes of chalk, a few cash prizes, and lots and lots of popcorn. Gotta love free bags of popcorn.
 
This year, like last year, hundreds of people came onto the asphalt, playing with chalk. We talked with a few of the artists; when you see someone drawing the Little Mermaid on a parking lot, the person seems very approachable.  We enjoyed a brief conversation with a pleasant stranger but realized, later, that we'd be mentioning him in the B-O-Rama.
 
(The guy above? Not the Pleasant Stranger. We have pictures of the stranger, we know his name, we even know where he lives -- but, since we didn't ask if we could tell all in the blog, we're keeping some of those details to ourselves.)
 
Pleasant Stranger had dreams of being a fine artist, once upon a time. As he made his way through life, finding the girl of his dreams, his priorities shifted. Two children later and a mortgage to pay, PS realized he wasn't meeting the bills with the use of his oil paints. Putting away his brushes, he found a regular job…but he still had an itch to do art. He discovered chalk art festivals and street art. So, when time and opportunity permits, he packs his supplies, jumps in the car, and heads for the next available asphalt easel.
 
 When we met him, he’d already put eleven hours into his drawing – he was doing one of the BIG squares – and believed he had another eight to ten hours of work before he’d finish.  There was a chance he’d win a little money (the People’s Choice award was a tempting prize but far from guaranteed) but a greater chance that he’d go home out-of-pocket.
 
“If this was about the money,” he said, “I’d make more pulling the day shift at Burger King.”  We knew it wasn’t about making a ‘name’, either, because the maintenance crew would be out in the parking lot tomorrow, washing away everyone’s work. So why does PS do what he does?
 
“To have fun, to be artistic. To connect with other people, I guess.“ Then he paused. “For the joy,” he said. "Not everyone understands that. Not for the money, for the joy."
 
We understood, we said. We’re writers. And he nodded.