Coming soon to a bookstore near you...
© David Volk

It’s weird.

I work on article after article, year in, year out. Some of them serious, some of them funny and still others offering “just the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.” And I never have any idea of how these pieces are received. I could write a weighty profile of a gubernatorial candidate as I did for this month’s Seattle Magazine, a serious piece about impending road closures or a silly story about bubble tea and no one says anything. But if I write a fluff piece for a shopper section about a woman who makes teddy bears with jointed arms, I’ll be damned if my phone doesn’t ring off the hook.

Still, in all the years I’ve been ranting, I’ve never gotten a feel for whether or not there was a larger market for my brand of humor.

All that will change next year, when my first book hits the stores.

Yep, you read it right. The book’s title is “Snake Eats the Rat” and it uses quotes from television programs like “Survivor,” “The Amazing Race” and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” to show the everyday life lessons people can learn from reality television.

In it, you will discover the importance of being considerate, especially to people who have what you want, as Top Model’s Elyse did when she said, “I’m not willing to alienate Giselle because she’s the only one with a straightening iron.”

You’ll discover how unfair life can be as a waiter at “The Restaurant” did when he talked about not getting the right table: “Dude, how does the gay guy get the table with seven girls? I don’t understand that. I can’t believe they gave you that table.”

You’ll also realize what not liking reality TV says about you. As a member of the Big Brother II cast put it, “If you don’t like what happened, then you don’t like reality based TV shows. And if you don’t like reality, you don’t like who you are. That’s not my fault.”

Well, at least these people still believe in personal responsibility, which is more than we can say about Rush Limbaugh, the Walter Winchell for our era, who returned to the airwaves today, but that’s another story for another time.

Oh, there’s one other piece of good news. I’ve finally sent out a book proposal on my as-yet unpublished book, “Fresh American Bananas: Memoirs of an Itinerant Fool.” It only took me two years to get around to it, even though I had finished the book a year before that. So, that means my proposal has been three years in the making. Which is almost as long as it took to write the book. The proposal and agent letter went out late last week and should be hitting the agent’s desk about the time you read this.

So, cross your fingers, say a prayer, wish a wish and maybe the first person to read my sample chapters will love it so much, they’ll find a buyer right away. If not, well, it will just take a little while longer to get it printed.

If you want to get a head start on the rest of the public, check out some of the sample chapters on my web site at www.davidvolk.com (it’s under the Fresh American Bananas pull down menu). And don’t miss the chapter in which I get a piece of chicken stuck in my esophagus for eight hours in rural Indonesia. It’s good clean family fun.

And a good time was had….by some.

In the mean time, keep your eyes open for The Snake Eats the Rat, coming soon to a bookstore near you.

Once I finish it, that is.

Yours (and everybody else’s),

David Volk

P.S. If you like what you read, don’t be afraid to tell friends, relatives and agents about it. It’s a serious tale told by an extremely silly man.