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In my early twenties, my plan for finding success in the publishing world was simple: write a book, get it published, go on all the talk shows, be hailed as a literary wunderkind, get rich and famous, quit my job. Unfortunately I ran into a little wrinkle after completing the first step, and even when I completed the second step years later, the tiny little online publishing site I ended up with didn't exactly have the pull to make any of the rest of the steps happen. Or even to ensure its own survival for the remainder of that fiscal year.

Looking back, it's probably just as well that my first time being published by a big house like Penguin didn't happen until I was in my thirties. I knew enough not to expect my first non-fiction book, A TV Guide to Life: How I Learned Everything I Needed to Know from Watching Television to make me instantly, fabulously, or even independently wealthy. And thus far, I have not been disappointed. And of course I haven't been on all the talk shows. So far I've only been on a few.

Two of my TV appearances have been on local network affiliates, on the kind of community-oriented show with a couple of genial hosts sitting on a living-room type set, chatting with folks like...well, me. Okay, one of the shows also had four kids ages two to five, a singing cowboy, and a guy dressed up like Teddy Roosevelt, but fortunately that show had a pretty big green room.