If I had a nickel for every time someone said these five words, I’d have $17.65.
If you guessed, “Wow, you’ve got great hair!” — you’d be close.
Rather, I’m always told, “You should write a book!”
If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times.
Friends, Romans, and countrymen have relayed this nugget to me for the past 20 years. Alas, I always poo-poo’d the idea.
Then the pandemic hit five years ago and I found myself bored out of my gourd. Being homebound for months on end, I started a painfully rough draft and began to outline chapters. I decided the bulk of the book would be about all the famous celebs I had interviewed.
It would be clever, but not too clever. And snarky without being too snarky.
I approached it with a warts-and-all mentality — the good, the bad, and the Chris Kattan.
If there’s one thing I could do, it was write. And write. And write.
Only problem? I didn’t have a publisher. Or an editor. Or an agent. Or any knowledge of how the book industry worked whatsoever.
What I did have was moxie, charm, and charisma. Oh, and what I thought was one helluva sch-amazing book proposal.
I naturally assumed that if I was armed with those things, it would parlay into a book deal.
Uh, it did not.
In fact, between 2021 and 2022 I probably sent out three dozen submissions. (Each more unsolicited than the last.) No sooner did I hit send on the e-mail, than I would get a polite, but firm rejection. “Thanks, but no thanks,” each e-mail would read. “You’re new, untested, and unvetted. But good luck and Godspeed.”
I felt like literary arsenic.
So, I put the book — which was maybe 21 percent written — on ice.
Then, last year, I had middling success hosting my one-and-done PBS travel show, Get Lost! For a brief, shining moment, I was propelled back into the media spotlight. I even garnered an unexpected Emmy nod for Best Host. While the show burned brightly and flamed out quickly, it was enough to get me back on the radar of a few publishing houses.
Conversations ensued. Contracts were bandied about. And I finally found a publisher who coveted my quirky, pop culture-centric musings.
And then — as if on cue — I got smacked upside the head with a wicked case of writer’s block. I couldn’t put words together to save my life. It didn’t help that I was drowning in an unfulfilling sales job that left little to be desired.
Last year on Election Day, I quit. It was the most liberating thing I’ve ever done. And, yes, it was quite a leap of faith. I’ve never quit a job in 30+ years.
Then something funny happened during fun-employment; the clouds lifted and I spent the holidays furiously scribbling chapter after chapter. This year, in the month of February alone, I wrote one chapter every single day.
The universe kept showering me with good karma and even better juju. I scored exclusive Pitch interviews with Academy Award-winner Helen Hunt and Tony-winner Patti LuPone, to name a few. Those promptly went in the book.
Now, my musings You Have Four Minutes: The Story of An Unlikely Celebrity Interviewer has a release date of September 9th. (My energy practitioner picked the date … because, of course, she did.)
The book is a behind-the-scenes smattering of all my memorable celeb interactions, everything from a spontaneous breakfast with Lindsay Wagner to JLo inviting me to dinner. Not to brag (much), but it also includes snippets with eleven Academy Award-winners.
And, yes, there’s multiple chapters dedicated to my beloved B-52s. I somehow cajoled founding member Cindy Wilson into writing a heartfelt foreword. I’ll tell you about that in another blog post.
Intertwined and interspersed in the book are personal chapters about my struggle with sobriety, recovering from a death defying stroke, and how I somehow survived an entire year sans sugar. (It’s memoir-esque, if you will. Memoir-lite.)
I don’t want to give everything away, but I’m sure that when Dolly and Madonna read it, they’ll finally (finally!) acquiesce to an interview with me. They remain the only two holdouts on my to-do list.
I dedicated the book to my folks, who always taught me to persevere. This book is an ode to them. They always embraced my motto to avoid negativity at any cost. This book was the positive thing that came out of multiple negative situations.
Somewhere, they’re politely golf clapping from heaven. Because Lord knows when the going gets tough, the tough start writing.
If you want to pre-order a copy, go for it. If you want a signed copy, I’m all in. And if you could not possibly care less, so be it. (I’m talkin’ to you, Kattan.)