MY WIFE…and other oddities

 

Sharon is away. She has gone to Los Angeles to the LA Times Bookfair for things involving her very excellent memoir, Apparently There Were Complaints. At this juncture, Simon & Schuster is about the only one that will benefit from this financially and yet their contribution to airfare, hotel, per-diem, and the like is… as usual…nothing.

The publishing house produced a beautiful book. Their editorial staff was excellent, but their ability to promote or “sell” a book is all but non-existent. The response to a call to upper management where I complained about the placement (or the lack of same) of the memoir in prominent positions in bookstores, as well as the fact that none of the book kiosks in airports have her book at all was:

“Barney, Simon & Schuster does not own the book stores. We have no control over where… or if… the book store owners place our books.”

My retort was swift: “Y’know… The Campbell Soup Company doesn’t own Safeway, or any other super market, but they don’t seem to have any problem getting their soup cans on shelves… and at eye level! It is called ‘sales.’”

It was all to no avail. All that great publicity (done by my wife’s publicists and paid for by her), all the good will she has built over the years, and her personal appearances for a book with excellent reviews… and the Simon & Schuster folks could not even take out an ad. Not one.

Blood under the bridge. From the LA Times Bookfair, Sharon is off to New Orleans and a small, but very juicy part in a new movie starring Pierce Brosnan and James Caan. Good for her.

I, of course, remain on our Island paradise.

My best friend’s oldest daughter is getting married next week. She is also the extremely helpful proof reader of these tomes, so if you see typos or other mistakes, where none were visible in the past, now you know the reason.

My kids are all in California, occupied with their mother’s illness, their stepfather’s transition to full retirement, and my grandson’s college tour. Without a wife in town, a best friend occupied, and the kid’s not visiting, I am alone on Fisher Island.

I love it.

Turns out, I am a lonely man, who revels in his loneliness. To do what I want when I want. To eat… or not… to eat. To sleep, perchance to… well, you get the idea.

Not that signs of Sharon are absent: phone calls from various doctors’ offices wanting to schedule appointments with my always travelling somewhere spouse permeate my day. Theatre tickets to be arranged for our upcoming May sojourn to New York City are COVID problematic and therefore ever changing.

There is the signage my wife left all over our golf cart. The tags say We Will NOT Go Back, forcing me to explain to the neighbors that, in fact, the cart really does have a reverse gear that works. And then there are the neighbors, stopping by from time to time, hoping to have their copy of Apparently There Were Complaints autographed.

Funny, I don’t recall them ever asking for an autographed copy of Cagney & Lacey… and Me.

 

Barney Rosenzweig