Early to Rise, as Long as I Can Open My Eyes! by Jenny Gardiner

This morning I was up at 4:45. A.M. I'm normally an early riser anyhow, because I like to get to the gym before the birds are up. But not that early. Not many things will force me out of bed at such an ungodly hour. Having to catch a flight to somewhere exotic? Most definitely. Of course a sick child in the middle of the night does the trick as well, like it or not.

But today, I got to arise well before dawn so that I could appear on a morning TV show. And I couldn't have been happier. Even if I couldn't exactly open my eyes for the first hour.

You see, I have discovered I love being on TV shows. Not because I want to see my sorry mug broadcast all over the place, but because I have so much fun talking about my book (SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER).

Now, I did actually work in TV news when I was in college. My blonde ambition was to be an anchorwoman. At a really big station in a huge market in a great city. Where I could sit behind a desk and talk a lot. Laughable? No doubt. But this was the 80's. Helmet hair, happy talk and all. Shortly after graduation I abandoned my grand dream because I didn't want to have to spend years living in small towns working my way up to those larger markets and bigger cities (plus I'd have had to work nights and weekends and the pay was so far below poverty level I would have had to live in a box beneath a bridge span which would have really meant not getting enough sleep). Besides, when I worked in TV news back then, I was dreadfully nervous whenever I was on-camera. I fumbled and hemmed and hawed and felt like an idiot. I was fine when working from a script, recording a report I'd written and edited, but the on-camera stuff? Eek! Trust me, no one will ever see my audition tape in which I interview a 6-foot tall man in a furry rabbit costume delivering bunny-grams. And not because the rabbit-man was so ghastly, but because I was.

I used to always joke that I'd be a terrific salesperson, as long as I believed in what I was selling. I'd fail miserably at selling ball-bearings, weapons of mass destruction, or any boxed set of Lawrence Welk shows, for instance. I just couldn't drum up the enthusiasm for them. But if was something I loved, then I could sell it to just about anyone. I used to sell these adorable Folkmanis handpuppets I'd discovered at a giftware trade show I'd attended with my husband. When my kids were little, I was the neighborhood puppet pusher, showing up in the parking lot at pre-school, selling those crazy puppets to my friends from the trunk of my car. I could've just worn a trench coat and opened it up to the discerning client to view my wares, for as seamy a sales gig as I had. My goal wasn't to make money---rather I just wanted to get lots of discounted puppets for my kids, so I was willing to sell them to my friends at cost in order to meet the minimum order requirement. I did the same thing with this really funky jewelry made in strange third-world islands in the South Pacific I'd discovered a few years earlier. For a while I was the go-to gal for wild Ooga Booga earrings in my neighborhood and amongst family and friends. But you can only wear so much of that stuff before growing weary of it.

These days my sale is way easier, since I'm selling my humorous women's fiction novel SLEEPING WITH WARD CLEAVER instead of bizarre jewelry or weapons of mass destruction. First of all because it's way cheaper than a Folkmanis puppet. And far more stylish than the tacky earrings from Bali. Plus, I really believe that women out there will "get" this book and have a fun time reading it. The circumstances of my protagonist, Claire, are universal, and letters I get from readers every day affirm this. So many women are happy to find this character whose life so closely resembles their own. So the selling is simple. And sometimes you just can't get me to shut up about it. Because, you see, the other thing about me is I am a serial chatterbox. Back in elementary school, I was constantly getting into trouble for flapping my jaw. The teachers would move desks around to keep me from talking. I got red check marks on my report card for gabbing when I should've been doing long division or splitting infinitives or something equally boring. I must've been a social animal before my time. If only there was a career path that involved chatting, I'd have been at the top of that professional heap by now.

But now I realize I've finally figured out how to combine my past loves/bad habits all together in one. First off, I'm writing for a living. How lucky is that? And while as a writer one has to sell their product a lot, hey, lucky me that I'm selling something I love and really believe in. And I get to do it while chit-chatting--something I still tend to do an awful lot anyway (my family is always having to drag me away from a conversation in order to get somewhere on time). To top it off, I'm back on television, albeit many pounds later, alas. I guess I should be happy it's not on nights and weekends.

So if you happen to run into me and I'm blabbering on about my book, understand that I just can't help it. My teachers couldn't shut me up all those many years ago, I can't always find a cozy little TV morning show on which to freely gab. Sometimes I just have to get it all out of my system. Even if I have to get up in the middle of the night to do it.

Jenny
http://www.jennygardiner.net/