Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, July 17, 1990                   TAG: 9007170012
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IT'LL TAKE MORE THAN CLEAVAGE AND A KAZOO

You will remember Roxanne. She posed nude in Playboy and reportedly did some really weird things - including sleeping with a trumpet.

The trumpet and the Playboy poses will come up every time Roxanne is interviewed about her book - the title of which I forget.

Roxanne denies she slept with a trumpet, but this bit of kinky nonsense is now implanted in the public's mind and it is good for book sales.

There are many prospective novelists who have never appeared naked in Playboy or given the slightest thought to sleeping with a musical instrument of any kind.

When you behave like that, nobody is going to be very interested in your novel.

Let us say you are a female and have written this towering novel about passion and pain called "The Passion and the Pain."

You get as far as talking to a literary agent on the phone.

"Yeah, sounds good," the agent says. "Might be a miniseries one of these days.

"But I gotta ask you if you ever appeared naked in a magazine. I mean, you know, in the skin."

"Well," you say, "there was a picture of me in the high school annual wearing a swimsuit. I remember my mother complaining there was too much cleavage."

"I see," the agent says. "We are not talking centerfold stuff here are we? I don't know what you writers expect of us. You got to get naked every once in a while if you want to get any attention.

"OK. Let me ask you this: Did you ever sleep with a musical instrument of any kind? Say, you know, maybe, a saxophone?"

"I should say not," you say. "My mother didn't raise loose children, I can tell you that. Our family motto is: "We Don't Smoke and We don't Chew/And We don't Go with Girls Who Do.

"Once, though, my brother left his kazoo in my bed by mistake and I slept with that."

"You know how that would sound on a talk show, peaches?" the agent says. "My God, they'd think you were a pervert or something.

"I think you'd better get yourself another agent, gorgeous."

I don't know where you go from here, honey bunch.

But I have to say that's what you get for being good and dull all your life.

You're disgusting. You know that?

Who'd want to read a book by a dullard like you?

Cleavage and a kazoo won't cut it in this market, sugar.