Nice People Should Finish First, the Dolly Parton Edition

Sometimes it's nice just to be ... nice.

 Being nice has gone out of favor. Our heroes these days are anti-heroes, maybe even a step over, to ... well, let's call it anti-villains. I'll come up with a better term. We like our heroes in fiction and in real life to be tough, type-A personalities who hit first and ask questions later. One of my favorite characters is Mal Reynolds from the TV show Firefly and movie Serenity. Mal is many things. More good than bad, but few would call him "nice".

We like them to be funny, but how often do we hear a G rated comedian? We like caustic, put-down humor, where one person may laugh but the next person is enraged, and the one after that embarrassed. We like to laugh "at" just as much as "with". I do it myself.

Here's an example, from my unpublished novel We Love Trouble:

 

Prescott stammered for a moment, giving Travis enough time to break in. “Are you capable of spelling the word ‘service’, Mr. Ascot?”

“Prescott. I, um—might I ask your business here, Agent Booth?”

“Consultant Booth. As my title might indicate, I am consulting on a case.” 

“Your case requires a service dog—why?”

“For service. Do keep up, Mr. Asshat.”

“Prescott.”

 

Travis, the good guy, is deliberately messing with a hotel manager. Granted, the manager isn't a good guy, but at this moment Travis is pretending to work for the FBI, and riling the manager up mostly for the fun of it. Also, Wulfgar isn't a service dog, and Travis' last name isn't Booth. That's not very nice.

 I guess that snippet of a scene is a bad example. In fiction, conflict is required: If you have a bunch of nice people being nice to each other, you don't have much of a story.

 But in real life we spend way too much time suffering not so nice people, and not being nice ourselves. No one is perfect. Even Mr. Rogers wasn't perfect, I assume, but nobody can deny he was nice. Imagine if everyone made an effort to be nice, more often than not? It would be a very different, better world. 

 Then maybe we'd all spend less time being offended, and less time trying to to offend right back.

I've met people in my life who earned the title "nice". I know it's possible. I try to do it myself, although I don't succeed often enough to be another Judge Robert Probst. (My former father-in-law, and the very epitome of Nice Guy, despite being a lawyer.) Few people do.

That's even more true with celebrities, who tend to be jumbles of bad habits and bad attitudes no matter how they seem in real life. It's hard to find one who does good things more often than bad things. In other words, they're just people. Taylor Swift poops; Sadie Sink gets a runny nose, now and then.

I've never actually seen either of those, mind you, but I think it's a good assumption. 

But it happens. Sometimes people are so darned nice it's hard to throw mud at them that sticks, no matter how hard a few malcontents try. We should celebrate and honor those people, especially when they do nice things they don't have to, that no one would expect them to.

It's the nice thing to do. 

 

 

Although not everyone in our books is nice, we still try to give you a nice read.

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Remember: Dolly would want you to be reading.

 

Celebrity Death Knell

Orson Bean, Robert Conrad, Kirk Douglas, Mary Higgens Clark, Freddie Silverman, Kobe Bryant, Jim Lehrer, Terry Jones, Edd Byrnes, Buck Henry, Gene Reynolds ... *pauses to catch a breath* ... and we're only in the second month of 2020.

Sounds like it's going to be another of those celebrity death years--in fact, I wonder if I should wait to see who else is going, before I post this. One of the many things they don't tell you about getting older is that the people you loved to watch, read, or listen to will start going, one by one. And it always seems like the new generation of celebrities is comparatively dull and uninteresting.

Or maybe it's because I've just gotten less interested in celebrity.

https://ew.com/celebrity/stars-we-lost-2020-celebrity-deaths/

It's not easy to tell what kind of a person a celebrity really is--being talented doesn't make you a nice guy. But I heard Orson Bean interviewed on Dennis Miller's podcast several times in recent years, and Orson seemed like an honestly good man.
 

The value of navel lint, or: Girl Scouts cause an e-book breakout

I had a business plan all ready to go when we published The No-Campfire Girls, and it was, if I do say so myself, fool-proof:

First, we tell everyone half the proceeds to go a good and worthy cause, and that much of the other half go toward advertising that good and worthy cause.

Second, we set the e-book price at only 99 cents and, even better, the print book at just five dollars. Hey, you can find 99 cents in your navel lint collection. (It's up to you to dig it out.) Not only that, but these days 99 cents worth of navel lint is worth five bucks, so there you go.

Third, we spread the word among Girl Scouts, since that good cause was to support a Girl Scout camp. There are about two and a half million Girl Scouts in America today. So the Scouts of Camp Latonka would spread the word about this cool new young adult novel to other Scouts in Missouri, who get the word out through the Midwest, and before you know it I'm on Oprah's book list. No, I have no idea of Oprah was a Girl Scout, but she would know a fun read when she sees one.

I do sneak in a book cover, every now and then.

But speaking of Oprah, the next step would be to have The No-Campfire Girls endorsed by famous Girl Scouts. I may only remember a few Taylor Swift songs, but I know a former Scout when I see one.

By which I mean, I looked it up.

 So pretty soon Swift, Gwyneth Paltrow, Susan Lucci, Abigail Breslin, Dionne Warwick, Katie Couric, Martha Stewart, Mariah Carey ... let me take a breath ... Celine Dion, Dakota Fanning, Barbara Walters, Venus Williams, and my favorite, Sheryl Crow, are all telling their fans, "Buy a book and save a camp!" (trademark pending) ... "Oh, and enjoy reading!"

According to my math, these steps would result in 8,914,976 sales. If every one of those buyers likes the book, that in turn will result in approximately 475 book reviews. Since online publicity depends so much on book reviews these days, that many should result in at least another ten billion sales.

I confess, my calculator app froze up a few steps earlier, so that's some quick and dirty napkin calculations that I had to read off my face in the mirror, after an unfortunate chocolate mishap. But I think it's a fair approximation.

So, Girl Scout Camp Latonka is saved, and I see a book series in my future!

Well, I did. The plan stalled along the way, possibly during the "going viral" stage. Or maybe I should have led with, "It's a fun, story--really it is". But I'm working on it.

And, just in case, I've already got a sequel planned out ... maybe I'll put in a cute puppy.



(Oh yeah, I almost forgot, which defeats the purpose: Find The No-Campfire Girls and our other books at www.markrhunter.com or https://www.amazon.com/Mark-R-Hunter/e/B0058CL6OO.)

Erin Moran and the Holiday Inn

I got a bit of a weird feeling when I heard actress Erin Moran once stayed in (and got kicked out of) a Holiday Inn Express in Corydon, Indiana. A little research confirmed it was the same Holiday Inn that Emily and I stayed in while researching Hoosier Hysterical a couple of years ago. Corydon was the original state capital of Indiana, so naturally we spent some time in the area.

We weren't there at the same time as she was, of course. Well, not that I know of, although apparently she lived in the area then. I suppose it could have been the same room.


On the one hand, I was a little offended at the way the news media covered her move to Indiana, as if Moran had been banned to the seventh circle of Hell. (Apparently she and her husband moved here to take care of his mother, after her acting jobs dried up and they lost their California property.) I'd take southern Indiana over southern California any day.

On the other hand, I suspect I'd choose wealthy in California over impoverished in Indiana. She'd hit on very hard times, and didn't make the move for the scenery; those of us trying to work our way up can't begin to imagine what it's like to be a TV star at fourteen, and considered a has-been by thirty. Her happy days were far behind her, and it sounds like she spent the last years of her life trying to drown her sorrows in alcohol. I remember the fresh faced kid on "Happy Days", and can't help thinking she was only two years older than me. It could have been any of us; and it's very sad any way you look at it.

Mary Tyler Moore

I’m not sure why Mary Tyler Moore’s death hit me so hard. I never saw her in a show I didn’t like, but there were lots of shows I liked. Maybe it’s because I never pictured her as being old; the last time I remember watching her on TV was “Mary” in 1985. (Over thirty years ago!)

I’m also not sure younger people realize what a big deal she was: Mary Tyler Moore invented the modern woman on TV. She was mod, and hip, and all that stuff, on “The Dick Van Dyke Show”. Then she got her own show, as a single woman making her own way in life, and blew everybody right out of the water.

There’ll never be another Mary.

https://www.yahoo.com/tv/mary-tyler-moore-dies-died-appreciation-195649482.html