The deal with writing a book is that it’s always something. If you’re not trying to figure out how to write a book, you’re trying to figure out how to make a book. If you’re not trying to figure out how to make a book, you’re trying to figure out how to sell a book. And if you’re not trying to figure out how to sell a book, then all the time you spent writing a book and all the money you spent making a book just feels sort of stupid.
It’s not that I have strong reservations about feeling stupid, I’m a bit used to it, but I’d rather not if I had the option. Which means that in an attempt to sell a book, and thus not feel stupid, you start looking for opportunities. You look at your friends and think, “maybe him?” And you realize that not only does your friend not want to buy your book, he doesn’t want to read your book, because he doesn’t want to read any books, because your friend doesn’t even like books. And you start doubting who your friends really are because in this moment you see how little you have in common with any of them. And they don’t even want to give you a sympathy book purchase.
But they will, if you insist. Which makes you feel really stupid.
And you’re back to where you began and you still have boxes of books in your basement.
Most of my friends and family were enthusiastically supportive of my book, but a handful acted as though I recruited them to join a multi-level marketing scheme. When a prominent “bookstagrammer” I knew didn’t reply to my message about using some free copies for one of her bookstagrammer giveaways, I felt like I had just been turned down as her homecoming date. And then there was the podcaster I knew who was happy to give me advice, but fell just short of actually offering any sort of public endorsement to all of his podcaster friends.
It’s just a really weird thing to try to sell a book.
Since the internet had yet to do all the work for me, I decided to start buying lottery tickets. I bought a VIP package to meet the emo band Emery prior to their Omaha show. When the date came, I gave the lead singer five copies of my book for their six band members. I had miscounted, but one of the guys barely does shit in the band anyways, so he doesn’t need one. My angle was to take advantage of their $500 “LET EMERY WRITE YOU A SONG” promotion, and the lead singer guy was really nice about: taking the stack of five books, saying he would take my $500, saying he would indeed write me a song, and would definitely be looking for my e-mail later on the subject matter. I sent them that e-mail, and the $500, and an excited message with lots of exclamation points. In return, I received a reply from one of the girlfriends saying the members of the band—a band I idolized, listened to fervently, loved interacting in person with—got together and decided they didn’t want to write a song about my book. The guy in the band who doesn’t really play an instrument must have been pissed I didn’t bring a copy for him.
I got my $500 refunded, along with the knowledge that the members of one of my favorite bands talked about me behind my back.
They later re-did their website and clarified that the whole “LET EMERY WRITE YOU A SONG” thing was really meant for dudes with jobs to buy as a gift for their emo girlfriend. I guess that makes sense. But it doesn’t help me sell any books.
Despite the fact that Emery now had five copies of Loser*: A Survival Guide to High School Popularity in their possession, I had no proof of it. And now that I couldn’t even pay them to write a song to promote my book like their website said I could, I decided I needed to buy a different lottery ticket.
When “Weird Al” Yankovic and Penn & Teller had meet and greets of their own, I brought copies to give them, and posed for a selfie with the book before forcing them into their hands. They were confused, but nice about it. I repeated the process with Todd Packer and Ryan Howard from The Office, but Chevy Chase never lifted a single appendage the entire time fans of Christmas
Vacation posed for photos with him after a festive movie screening. I was convinced they had replaced the real Chevy Chase with a wax figure glued to a bar stool until my wife said, “thanks for coming to Omaha,” and the animatronic replica of the former SNL Weekend Update host replied with, “of course.”
https://www.csbeaty.com/loser
So Chevy didn’t get a copy of my book and he certainly didn’t tell his agent about me. But I did get a selfie with him. And a Chevy Chase trading card handed out by a member of his entourage.
●●●
It’s not that I expected any of these celebrities to make me famous, but I mean, they could if they wanted to, right? And how would they know if they wanted to unless they had a copy of my book? David Sedaris mentioned on his Masterclass that whenever someone tells him they want to be a writer, he invites them to open for him on tour before one of his readings. So I mean, it could happen, right?
Right?
I decided to find out. I gave David Sedaris a copy of my book when he did a pre-show signing in Des Moines, Iowa and I made it very clear that I was the person who wrote it.
Wrong.
Sedaris was super nice though. We talked about a plastic fetus he received the night before from a pro-life advocate, and I wrote an entire essay about the fun I had that evening at his show. And maybe, you know, he just didn’t think about it? Maybe he regretted not inviting me onto the stage once he realized he didn’t have an opener for his Des Moines tour date? Maybe he was kicking himself for the lost opportunity?
So once the show was over, I went through the book signing line again.
And Sedaris recognized me.
And he was super nice, again, even apologetic that I had to go through the long wait a second time.
And he gave me a very nice signature and inscription to my children.
And sent me on my way back to Omaha, Nebraska.
Well shit.
But it’s hard to blame the guy. His bedside manner with each autograph seeker was truly commendable but he was also eating a steak and potato dinner during the post-show signing and likely not auditioning fans to be his opening act. There was probably some protocol or process for that, but hell if I knew what that was. I didn’t even know the process for getting a woman I had known for sixteen years to give away free copies of my book on her Instagram page.
I started looking for clues.
●●●
Having lived my entire life in a State that is rarely talked about, any mention of where I’m from, no matter how frivolous, jumps out from the page and latches onto my face like those things from the movie Alien. Having recently met Sedaris, I started reading his book Calypso, and once I made it a page-and-a-half into the title essay, I had an alien latched onto my face—pumping alien eggs into my stomach cavity that resembled civic pride and ideas about this mysterious world of becoming an author who sells books and doesn’t feel stupid.
“In most of the cities on my tour I didn’t know anyone, but here and there I caught up with people. In Winston-Salem it was my sister Lisa. A week later in Omaha I saw an old friend Janet and her twenty-five-year-old son, Jimmy.”1
Omaha. There it was. I live in Omaha. My dreams felt closer to home as I discovered this loose thread to tug on.
Back when we met in the late 1980s, Janet was highlighting the grain in rectangular sheets of plywood. That was her artwork. Now she just leaves the rectangles as they are and has founded something called the Wood Interpretation Society.
“Jimmy,” she said, standing in the living room that doubles as her studio, “fetch me my stick.” Her son handed her a length of bamboo, and she used it to point to her most recent piece.
“Alright, can you see the snowman?” I saw nothing, so she gestured to two knots. “His eyes. You can’t see his eyes?”
“Well, OK,” I said. “Sure…a little.”
“And now can you see that he’s talking to an owl?”
“Owls are a dime a dozen in wood grain,” Jimmy explained.
“That’s true,” his mother said, and she moved to her next piece of plywood, in which a turtle considered a mountain.
“And this is all just found!” she told me. “I honestly haven’t altered a thing!”2
The essay naturally goes on to describe Sedaris getting a fatty tumor cut out of him by an autograph seeker who then mailed the biological waste to his beach home so he could use it to feed a snapping turtle. The essay’s title “Calypso” is taken from a passing reference to someone giving your cat a secret name behind your back. But Sedaris wasn’t quite through with Janet.
My sister Gretchen picked me up at the airport, and by sunset we were with Hugh and my entire family at the house on Emerald Isle. I like having a place that theoretically belongs to everyone but technically belongs to me. It’s neutral ground but not quite, meaning that if someone hangs a picture I don’t care for, I get to take it down, saying, “let’s rethink this.” I, on the other hand, can hang whatever I like.
“Why would anyone frame a piece of plywood?” my father asked the night before Thanksgiving. He was frowning at the artwork Janet had given me during my visit to Omaha.
“It’s a one-eyed raccoon looking in a mirror,” I told him. He took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes.
“Like hell it is.”3
I googled “janet wood interpretation society” and came up with what appeared to be a reputable e-mail address. So I used it. I asked her if we could meet up somewhere in Omaha so she could sign my copy of Sedaris’s Calypso. It felt particularly appropriate since the book cover for this volume of essays was a plank of wood with a smiley face.
Now this request may seem a little bold, but honestly, I send emails like this weekly and anticipate most of them never to receive a reply. I’ve sent celebrity ethics professor Michael Sandel a copy of a college paper I wrote about one of his books and an essay about locker room nudity to stand-up comedian Demetri Martin. I’ve asked Paul Scheer how to locate a DVD copy of season 2 of his sketch comedy troupe with Aziz Ansari Human Giant and asked ex-Christian singer Derek Webb to play at a concert in my basement. Basically if someone I vaguely admire has an accessible e-mail posted somewhere on the Internet, I look for an excuse to send them a message. The majority never reply, and honestly they probably shouldn’t, but as a result of this low hit-rate, you can imagine my thrill when I received the following message fourteen hours later in my inbox:
Hi Chris I would be willing to sign your book but I can’t sign your book for two reasons. I moved to Richmond, Virginia and David would not like it if I signed your book. Only David signs his books. I am now following you on Instagram! You are such a high energy person that it makes me tired to look at all your posts.4
And that, my friend, was the most exciting thing to happen since the time Jason “Wee Man” Acuña from Jackass mailed me an autographed hockey puck, baseball card, thank-you note, and an assortment of skateboard stickers.
Sensing an opening, I tried to keep the communication going. I really didn’t have an angle. Now that I wouldn’t be getting her signature next to the doodle of a naked woman Sedaris had hand drawn for Devon on the inside cover of one of my three copies of Calypso, all I wanted was to learn as much as I could about this fascinating woman. I asked about her son mentioned in the essay and she said that he was a writer. She sent me a link to a humorous essay he wrote about Papal election procedures. As it turns out, Janet’s son was Sedaris’s opening act the last time he did a reading in Omaha and Jimmy also joined him on a couple of recent tour stops.
So I guess the trick to getting invited to open for Sedaris is to have a mother who has been featured in one of his essays and has also supplied him with a framed sheet of plywood for his beach house.
This might be tricky.
Particularly since my mother has no idea who David Sedaris is and tends to avoid reading anything with curse words in it unless it’s something I wrote. She feels obligated to read those.
She also has a slightly different background than Janet:
I met David through my Chicago gallery in 1987. I was at a dinner party with him and he was the funniest person I had ever met. And then he moved to New York City and told me that he was going to be an elf at Macy’s and the rest is history.5
But even with the advantage of going to dinner parties with the world’s-greatest living humorist, Janet was empathetic to the struggle of finding your creative voice in a crowded room.
I think you’ll find it interesting that David is very critical of (her son) Jimmy’s writing. I guess that’s his way of mentoring him. He’s a tough audience. You have picked the most difficult profession in the world...My husband and I were just talking about our folders of rejection letters. We didn’t realize that we had each saved all of them. He taught sculpture at the University of Nebraska-Omaha for 30 years and never quit submitting proposals for shows. It paid off no more than 10% of his time. He finally for a show at Kaneko before retiring. I’m telling you all of this so that you won’t give up. David Sedaris believes that if you want something enough that it will materialize. I’m not so sure.6
●●●
I had my Omaha book release and celebrated Christmas Day from an urgent care waiting room with other carriers of the influenza-A virus. Once the New Year had arrived, I convinced my family to discard the $50 ping-pong table we had bought from Facebook marketplace so I could turn that cavernous waste of basement floor space into a library and writing study. I paid a buddy to install a fake copper ceiling and stretched the rest of my construction budget by building bookshelves out of hastily stained 2 x 4s. It really did look nice in the end, and the natural wood grain of my new library added a neat character and aesthetic. I hung a few pictures of my favorite authors, but my shelf of Sedaris books felt a bit empty.
I sent my new friend a message to help solve that:
Hi Janet!
I’m redoing my basement library and I thought it would be fun to have some wood artwork in honor of the calypso essay. Is there somewhere I can order a piece signed by you?7
One day later, she replied to my text:
send me your address8
Three weeks later, a package arrived.
I just finished making a piece for a friend who wanted a Chihuahua. I made an extra one… it could also be a raccoon or whatever you want it to be.9
If I look closely, I can see the Chihuahua. Or the raccoon. Or whatever I want it to be.
Or, if you look at it just right and for long enough—it could be a snapping turtle who just finished eating the tumor of a best-selling author, looking around for more before disappearing, like the ingrate that he is, back into his foul and riled depths.
Calypso by David Sedaris, pg. 108
Ibid. pg. 109
Ibid. pg. 116
Personal email , 12/7/25
Ibid, 12/9/25
Test message, 1/7/26 and Personal email, 3/13/26
Text message, 1/24/26
Ibid. 1/25/26
Ibid.