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Okay, seriously, how did you come up with these crazy questions and insane backstories? |
| They say authors write what they know. Well, many of these letters were inspired by real events in my life. In the Cat in the Hat Stuffed Animal letter I asked if it could easily light on fire after being doused with gasoline. In the years of our Lord 1987-1995 there was a New Years tradition where my friends and I would lather up a stuffed animal with gas, light it on fire, and pull it behind a sport utility vehicle. Video evidence does exist. I currently play catcher in a men's baseball league which led me to ask if the Vintage Bill Dicky glove was big enough to catch my son, Little Willy, as he's birthed into the world. My five-year-old nephew has a t-shirt from a sports camp he attended that listed ten "politically correct" camp rules. So, I asked the seller of a box of tennis balls how high they would bounce off a small child, since I had started my own youth sport camp in which we play a game called "Death Ball". And finally, as a real fifth-grade teacher (believe it or not I DO have a teaching credential!) I queried an eBay vendor who was selling a set of rubber stamps if she had a stamp with the word "loser" on it. I told her I was inspired by the book THE SCARLET LETTER and was going to brand poorly behaved children with an ink mark upon their forehead. Who says life doesn't imitate art? | |
| Did you encounter any obstacles along the way? | |
| Even before I landed a book agent I knew there would have to be some legal hoops to jump through if my book was to be legitimately published. After we sold the book I was hoping for an easy way to garner permissions from eBay sellers to reprint their auction listings and e-mails. But, much to my dismay, Warner informed me that I would need a legal form signed by each and every eBay member if I wanted to include their auction and response in the book. So basically the entire summer of 2006 was spent sending out address requests via eBay's message system (I didn't have any of their e-mail addresses), sending out the release forms, and then agonizingly wait by the mail box for the signed forms to return to me. All in all, 115 eBay vendors out of around 140 returned forms which included my favorite ones. I did have one lady accuse me of being a stalker though. I'm not kidding. | |
| Which letters and responses are your favorite? | |
| There are two that stand out to me because the responses are better than anything I could have dreamed up myself. I wrote this whole back story of how I was a professional bull rider and caught my girlfriend, Shelby-Rae, cheating on me with a carrot-topped rodeo clown named Sprinkles. The eBayer was selling an I Love You Locket and I wanted to know if a sledgehammer, crowbar, or a pick-ax would do the trick when I present it to Shelby-Rae and promptly smash it to smithereens. To begin her reply she stated that it would smash very well with a small sledgehammer and proceeded to tell me about her retired rodeo cowboy husband and her desire to run away with me "where rodeos and clowns don't exist." How's that for irony? | |
| Another eBay listing sported some beautiful Purple Satin Flower Appliqués. I stated that my wife and I were creating our daughter's prom dress from scratch and would love to purchase her Satin Appliqués but had a concern. I told her that as strict Presbyterians we were against Satin and his powers of evil didn't want anything having to do with Satin. A sweet reply came my way (after she looked up the word satin in the dictionary) as she clearly stated that she would never have evil in her auctions and growing up was told that Satan was not the one to put her trust in. I'm glad we cleared up that misunderstanding. | |
| Are you planning on writing any more LETTERS TO EBAY? | |
| One never knows when Paul Meadors will again transform into Art Farkas - the Jekyll and Hyde of eBay. |
