Welcome to this ridiculously HOT edition of Thirsty Thursday! It’s the 26th straight day of 100+ degree heat here in Dallas/Fort Worth and, honestly, I’m thinking of wedging myself into my freezer to cool off. I just hope Tropical Storm Don can bring us some relief. Viva Don! Viva!
So, this past Mystery Monday, we talked about the mystery man who was arrested in Utah and refused to give his name to authorities. Consequently, he had been held in jail for three weeks. Well, the mystery has been solved. Was he a government spy? A member of the witness protection program? Hiding out from his wife? Nope. His name is Phillip Todd Beavers and it seems that he lost his job in New Mexico and had taken a bus to Salt Lake City. Some times a man just has to get outta town and be left the hell alone. But, it was fun to come up with the possibilities, wasn’t it? And alotta people did. The story spread all over the globe with everyone throwing in their two cents about who this guy was.
Speaking of popularity of news, stories, and the like, I have a mystery that is baffling me on this Thirsty Thursday: does anyone think the Skinny Girl Margaritas taste good? For those that don’t know, reality star Bethenny Frankel of the Housewives of NY fame, created the Skinny Girl cocktails which take 500+ calorie drinks, like Margaritas, and slim them down to around 100 calories. I think she also managed to squeeze the taste out of them as well. But that’s just me.
However, what Frankel managed to do along the way was parlay her celebrity into selling the Skinny Girl drink line for an estimated $120 million. Okay, I’ll shut my mouth right about now. But, while the verdict might be out on how these drinks taste, Frankel found a way to use her name to get an incredible deal. Her name is her logo. I bet if some Madison Avenue whiz compared her name against Skinny Girl to see which is the more powerful brand, her name would win hands down every time. Name as a brand? Hmmm, what other occupation does that sound like?
As writers, our name is our brand. We should hold it as dear as the Coke people hold their secret recipe. But, the $64,000 question is, how do you get that brand out there? Should we go with comedy, like the guy who does the debt rap? That’s a double edged sword. While people always like people who make them laugh, if you’re writing serious mysteries, would people be turned off by your nutty sense of humor? Should we use Facebook ads? People say that once they get on Facebook, they want to stay there, so they don’t pay attention the FB ads. Should we try to get on a reality show like Frankel did? Highly improbable unless you look as great as she does posing nearly naked on top of a NY skyscraper or your personal life is an absolute train wreck. What about creating a video trailer for our books? Maybe that’s the way to go. Now how can we find someone to make a truly compelling tralier that will get thousands or even millions of hits on Youtube for next to nothing. That might be the biggest mystery of all…
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Mark Fadden is a freelance writer and author whose latest, award-winning suspense thriller, The Brink, is now available as an eBook for Amazon.com Kindle and Barnes & Noble nook for only $2.99!
“The Brink is a hell of a read.” – Bestselling author Sandra Brown
“Mark Fadden is a masterful storyteller.” – Writer’s Digest
“Mark Fadden is the next Dan Brown.” – Triple C Ranch Book Club, Southlake, Texas
Check out The Brink and Mark’s other books at http://www.markfadden.com
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Bethenny Frankel, debt rap, frankel posing, mystery inmate, phillip todd beavers, raise the debt ceiling rap, skinny girl, tropical storm Don | Leave a comment »
Mystery Monday – The Prisoner Who Wouldn’t Reveal His Name
Call it the right to remain silent, to the extreme. A man who was arrested for trespassing in a Utah parking garage remains in jail three weeks later, all because he has refused to reveal his identity.
The full story is here, but I can almost hear the grinding noises of all those cogs in heads of writers out there. He’s part of the witness protection program. He’s some black ops government agent who had his fingerprints removed. He’s a serial killer who can be tied to 30+ murders in other states.
But those ideas of who this guy is aren’t the ones that came from writers, necessarily. These guesses are the ones posted on the MSNBC comment section about the story.
While this is a great premise for an exciting mystery or thriller, the serial killer/govt agent/witness protection thing has been so done before. At this point, it’s cliche. So let’s try to come up with a plausible, and exciting, reason why this guy won’t reveal who he is. Oh and by the way, let’s not do the alien thing either…Illegal or Extra-Terrestrial!
To the keyboards!
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Mark Fadden is a freelance writer and author whose latest, award-winning suspense thriller, The Brink, is now available as an eBook for Amazon.com Kindle and Barnes & Noble nook for only $2.99!
“The Brink is a hell of a read.” – Bestselling author Sandra Brown
“Mark Fadden is a masterful storyteller.” – Writer’s Digest
“Mark Fadden is the next Dan Brown.” – Triple C Ranch Book Club, Southlake, Texas
Check out The Brink and Mark’s other books at http://www.markfadden.com
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Mark Fadden, msnbc comment, mystery monday, no name prisoner, prisoner without a name, The Brink, Utah jail | Leave a comment »