Act As If

Readers of Living Vicuriously will hear it first: my new book is almost finished.

This is a bit of a lie, it's not like I wrote the whole thing this summer. That wouldn't be a good book, not from me, because it takes me time to get it right. If I tell you I wrote something last week and I'd like you to read it, just smile and say, "Sorry, I have some emergency knitting to do."

But this book took time. It's based on a series of columns I wrote from 2004-2008, called "Act As If." "Act As If" appeared (and still does, occasionally), in the ActorsInk enewsletter from NowCasting.com. It's directed at actors, as if you haven't figured that out yet.

Comedy and tragedy are closely linked. Really, you can take the same situation and look at it from either angle and be right. "Act As If" was a humor column, and I've put the best columns in the book, edited them and brought them up to date. It's short, light reading, but don't read it while you're waiting for an audition.

I wrote mostly funny stories about my acting career, which wasn't exactly tragic but wasn't exactly triumphant either. The same things happen to all actors - bad auditions, forgotten lines, museum-quality parking ticket collections -  and we'd better learn to laugh about them or waiters and baristas everywhere will be sobbing into your iced latte. The last time I saw a statistic, only 2% of the actors in Hollywood were actually making a living. That doesn't mean they were stars. And that was only union members, back when the economy was good.

I hope to have the book ready later this fall. We're working on a cover. Plus I'll need some blurbs. Do you have Jim Carrey's number? How about David Mamet? Harrison Ford? Jennifer Aniston?

I know. You have some knitting to do.