Tag: BookBaby

Margerumalia – Out For A Spin

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – June 6, 2025

PHOTO CREDIT: http://www.swient.com/how-to-recognize-vertigo-in-children

I went to see my doctor to tell her I had vertigo. She said it was all in my head. [Rim-shot.] 

I always wanted to try stand-up comedy, but could never come up with any good material. Having seen the recent trend toward life-experience-as-stand-up I thought I might have something. 

I do. Or I did. I had vertigo.

Do you remember going on a ride at the playground where the whole point is to enjoy the dizzy? Where the spin is the fun? Vertigo feels like that, only it’s not intentional, nor fun.

About 3 AM I woke up to a shout. It was me. I stood up from the bed and the entire room was doing that spinning thing. I fell back into bed. Which didn’t help. At all.

I reverted to the earliest skills of childhood and grabbed onto furniture to toddle my way to the bathroom. I collapsed in front of the porcelain god and waited for the inevitable upheaval. It didn’t come.

I’ve learned a thing or two about my body over the years, and one is that it prepares for the old heave-ho with a few deep breaths, much like a pearl diver getting ready for the big the plunge. That night I spent over thirty minutes clutching onto the toilet bowl while hyperventilating. 

Let me be clear. There were two of us there in the middle of that whirlpool. Me, hugging the bowl. And my body, preparing for that dive.

For. Thirty. Minutes. 

I know because I wear my Apple Watch to bed so I can keep track of my sleep statistics. Turns out that Apple doesn’t clock vertigo. 

Last year I was teaching high school students how to fall safely on stage so they could do it over and over again in performances without getting hurt. THAT was when Siri checked in on me and offered to call 911. During a case of the spins? Not so much.

It was time. I needed help. I called out for my wife.

We sleep in separate bedrooms. I snore. She tosses and turns. We learned long ago that if we wanted to stay together we were going to have to split up. At night.  

I’d like to be able to say I called her name with a robust voice like Tarzan summoning Jane in the jungle. Instead I was more like a toad in the pond. 

“Debbie!” I croaked. “Come here, I need you.” 

I’m sure Alexander Graham Bell summoned Watson with much more panache on the world’s first phone call. 

Debbie, bless her heart, has baby monitor hearing and was at my bathroom door in three seconds flat. Well, I was flat. She was standing there asking me what was wrong, and should she call for an ambulance. 

Why did I do the stereotypical guy thing and say she didn’t need to call the ambulance? I mean, did I call out so she could wake up and enjoy the phenomenon of my total disorientation?

After ten more minutes of hyperventilation and I finally agreed to the ER Express. 

Somehow, even amidst the mind-storm of staggering to the bathroom, I had managed to slip into some sweat pants. Which was handy because one wants to be fully clothed when visitors come to call. I also dragged myself into the hall so the EMT’s didn’t need to extract me from the vomitorium.

In the ER they gave me the vertigo diagnosis, or labyrinthitis. Hey! Perfect for a guy who just released a middle grade novel about a family that has to find their way out of a museum through a maze! …or labyrinth.

I’ve got pills now, because, you know, the world revolves around pharmaceuticals. (Had enough with the revolving metaphors? Me, too.) At least the pills dull the nausea and the rotation sensation. (That was the last one, I promise.)

And I’ve had an MRI. Who knew a brain could be clinically described as “grossly unremarkable”? 

That phrase sounds like it should be from a play by Oscar Wilde: “She lacked poise, she lacked depth, she had a distinct paucity of charm, wit, and acumen. She was, in fact, grossly unremarkable.” 

The acupuncturist is the only doctor who has helped me get better. I hate needles, but that’s another story.

TTFN

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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles, is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles

Margerumalia – Hope Has Dirt On Her Face

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – March 14, 2025

“Hope has dirt on her face, blood on her knuckles, the grit of the cobblestones in her hair, and just spat out a tooth as she rises for another go.” (viral tweet from CrowsFault).

That quote is a gritty contrast to the gal in rose-colored glasses we’ve heard so much about. But it’s a picture worth carrying in our psychic wallets wherever we go, whatever we face. At a time when people are despairing of moving ahead, overcoming obstacles, or fighting for their right to exist, Hope is a fighter to have by our side.

I was struck to the core by a story on Podcastle—a fantasy podcast that produces weekly stories. The story is called “Kiki Hernandez Beats the Devil,” and was written by Samantha Mills, narrated by Sandra Espinoza. Mills offers up a kind of Mad Max post-apocalyptic vibe where rock and roll is the weapon that Kiki uses to defeat the devil (not Satan, but a supernatural creature that eats humans). Kiki digs deep to discover and employ her own dose of hope, but not without sacrifice.

You can find the story at podcastle.org, episode #880 (free of charge, they survive on voluntary donations). I highly recommend it.

As powerful as the story was, though, it was the commentary by host Matt Dovey that had me stopping in my tracks to say, “Yes, Yes.” Hope is not a pie-in-the-sky dreamscape populated by unicorns and rainbows. It is a fistfight, a sprint, and a muddy pit to climb out of—all at once. When someone tells you to put on your big girl pants and you feel taunted or ashamed, remember Hope spitting out her tooth to rise for another go. 

I realize, of course, that I’m talking to myself more than anyone else, but it’s only a solo fight if we make it so. Round up the rabble-rousers—the figurative and the literal—and count on Hope to fight the good fight. You’ll be glad you did. 

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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles, is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles

Margerumalia – Best 10-Minute Plays 2024

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – January 31, 2025

I was thrilled to open a package that arrived in the mail a couple days ago to discover my copy of The Best 10-Minute Plays 2024*. My short play “Just Book Club” was chosen for this publication among hundreds of submissions and I’m so proud to see it in book form.

Originally due to be released in October of 2024, the editor had to delay publication due to the death of her husband after a prolonged illness. I felt so bad for her I sent a letter of support and understanding. She didn’t need a bunch of selfish writers complaining about the delay. 

Life has priorities. 

On my website I offer this description of “Just Book Club” — Originally produced by the Greater Lafayette Civic Theatre in May 2023, this play shows a pivotal moment in the lives of four people who only know each other by the name of the author whose book they are carrying. Lives are at stake. Trust is hard to come by.

Intriguing, right?

I had performed in a 10-Minute Play the previous year and remember telling my wife that I could never write something that short and have it be any good. I’ve tried my hand at flash fiction, 500 words, and micro fiction, 100 words, without much success, but the challenge stayed with me until the concept hit me and I wrote this short play. 

It reminds me of Sean Connery, who played James Bond in the first six movies, when he told his wife he would never play 007 again. He still held the rights to Ian Fleming’s novel, Thunderball, Connery’s fourth film as Bond, and decided to make one more appearance as 007 with a new script based on the same plot. 

When he needed a title for that screenplay he chose his wife’s response when he told her he would be portraying James Bond one more time. Twelve years after the release of Diamonds Are Forever, Sean Connery could be seen in theatres once more as the British super spy in Never Say Never Again.

Say what you want about your limitations, complain as much as you need to, but never dismiss the possibilities of what you can accomplish. It seems that a little tickle of the neocortex can stimulate all kinds of creativity. Follow that inspiration—a word which literally means, to breathe, by the way—and get out of your own way. 

Maybe I’ll give flash fiction another try. How about you?

TTFN

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*The book contains fifty 10-Minute Plays. To order, you can go to: SmithAndKraus.com OR Amazon.com, and search for “The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2024.”

[I don’t earn money from the sale of this book, but I do hold the rights to performance of my play.]

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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles, is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles

Margerumalia – Christmas Lights and Dental Blights

Eric Margerum

Newsletter – Nov. 29,2024

Two days after draping Christmas lights across our front bushes we got the first snow of the season. I was patting myself on the back while taking this photo, but to give credit where credit is due, it was Debbie’s initiative to trim those bushes making it all possible. She’s a go-getter gardener while I’m a reluctant one.   

You know what else I’m reluctant about? Getting a tooth pulled. 

As I’ve explained to many dentists and their assistants, whatever you may be doing in my mouth, it’s far worse in my imagination. I hum tunelessly to distract myself from my own fears. Like a white noise machine, it disrupts the brainwaves that deliver images of a bloodbath like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 

So I’m lying back in the dentist chair, inhaling a mix of oxygen and nitrous oxide—laughing gas, hah, not in my experience—knowing that the dentist is running late because he got stuck in traffic. You know those stories of surgeons who accidentally amputate the wrong limb? I don’t want him to arrive in a frenzy, knowing that people are waiting. I don’t want him to be in a hurry to catch up with his schedule and pull out the wrong tooth! 

It’s not like he can put it back.

He arrives, introduces himself, and I immediately pat him on the shoulder and sympathize with the traffic situation. “I’ve lived in LA,” I tell him, “I know what it’s like. You’re gonna need a moment to take a few deep breaths.” And study the tooth chart.

There ya go, Eric, establish rapport. Let him talk about idling on the interstate, let him get it out of his system. We’re friends now. He’s not about to pull the wrong tooth out of a friend’s mouth. 

The assistant joins him and they compare plans for the weekend. She had planned to put up Christmas lights, but failed to get them out before the snowfall. 

“I did!” I slurred, the numbness starting to take a hold of my cheek. I pulled out my phone and shared the picture above which they admired. More rapport, more camaraderie. Pretty soon I’d be humming tunelessly, but at least I was a third person in the room, not just another mouth full of teeth. 

“This one will probably come out in pieces,” the dentist warned me. 

“Because it has a crown?” I asked. 

“Yes, and the root canal that was done many years ago.” 

That’s the right tooth! I was still fearful of the procedure, but at least I knew it would be the right one. 

I survived, of course, to write this harrowing account of Eric The Tuneless Hummer. 

TTFN!

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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles

Margerumalia – Mini-Games

Eric Margerum

Newsletter: September 20, 2024 

I had my first close encounter with a middle grade MAMLA reader recently. As I said last week, my wife and I were out of town seeing family and my book had been gifted to a 12-year-old family member I’d briefly met a year ago—let’s call him Max—and I could tell at the picnic that he wanted me to see him reading my book. Earlier I had watched him solving a Rubik’s Cube at warp speed and knew he was a pretty darn smart 12-year-old. I found my way over to Max and asked him if he had gotten to the section about the Circle Room yet. 

“You mean the big room with all the mini-games?” asked Max. 

I should have called them mini-games! That’s straight out of Mario Party. Thanks to our Gen-Z daughter, I’d played plenty of mini-games on her Game Cube. 

“Yes!” I said enthusiastically. “Which one was your favorite?”

“The one with the ball pit,” he answered immediately, “and then that maypole where you run around it and swing in a circle.” 

“I love that one, too” I agreed, sounding a bit like a 12-year-old myself.

Max and I agreed that Tornado Alley was a bit haunting. Creepy, I think he called it. Then he described how the people inside ran away and the tornado wiped out their town. Max totally understood why Ryan didn’t take the gold coin and said he wouldn’t have taken one either. It felt wrong.

Nailed it, I thought. He completely got it.

When we talked about Eveningwhere I showed him how the dog on the book cover just happened to match the photo of Angel on my phone. He thought that was really amazing. 

Currently Max was reading about how Maria and her mother were visiting the Cloud King, just having met the Cloud Carver. 

“Here’s something fun to know,” I told him. “I needed a name for the Cloud Carver and I thought of one of my favorite short story writers, Raymond Carver, so I gave him the name Raymond.” Max thought that was really cool.

Later, Max gave me a detailed demonstration of how to solve the Rubik’s Cube, having me hold the puzzle and patiently explaining how to determine what I was looking for and telling me what row or column to rotate and why. It’d probably take me the rest of my life to master that puzzle but he never made me feel dumb. What a gift! 

I felt like I could confide in Max about my plans to develop The Most Amazing Museum of Chicago, and he had several great suggestions based on his love of STEM in school. He quickly embraced my suggestion to adapt STEM to STEAM by including the arts and we were off and running with even more ideas for MAMCHI. (Get out your score cards, because I’m officially adding that word to my lexicon of new contributions to the English language.) 

Who knew talking about my book would be so much fun?

By the way, I’m in discussions with a school librarian in Crawfordsville to schedule a reading and discuss my writing process. My chat with Max was an excellent warm-up!

TTFN!

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The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles