Writing for Beer

There are no novelists in beer commercials. While watching the beer commercials during shark week, you don't see authors. I sure wish that after a hard day of writing, I could play beach volleyball with my fellow southwestern literary darkly comic legal thriller writers and then chug a couple of Miller 64s. Heinekin is now making commercials that are mini-movies, but no one is ever shown writing or reading.

There was an Algonquin Round Table, where authors drank to excess back in the day, but I doubt that Dorothy Parker and her vicious circle drank Coors Lite, unless they did so ironically. Toulouse Lautrec drank absinthe alone, or with the courtesans of the 23rd arrondissment not Michelob Ultra with mes amis.

Reading is also an act one does in the privacy of your home, or during the lunch hour at work if you want to avoid your co-workers. While there are book groups, the reader is not reading the book over Budweisers at the pub.

Both Novel writing and reading are solitary practices

Or are they?

Many of my best friends are novelists and they are far more sociable than you might imagine.  There have been  joint signings which become friendly competitions. Selling a book to a stranger might as well be getting digits from a beautiful babe with Vince Vaughn at a Hollywood party.

I did see the Rock Bottom Remainders, an alleged rock band which featured Stephen King and Amy Tan, at the LA Times Festival of the Book. Stephen King does rock and he sometimes does it with other people. Stephen King doesn't drink anymore of course, but he was certainly sociable.

And book signings themselves can be a good way to meet readers. What you do after you meet your readers is a story for another blog.

So Bud Lite, Miller 64, Michelob Ultra and especially Heinekin, please make a beer commercial for authors. Just no dancing and no volleyball...