Laura finally has an idea for a new book.

She’s going to write about failure. Only this time Laura’s book is not going to be a novel. It’s going to be non-fiction: Laura’s true story of her long-term serial-monogomistic love-hate relationship with failure. The title?

FAILURE: A Love Story.

Laura came to this idea (you know how she feels about giving credit where credit is due) after talking a new friend’s ear off about her fascination with failure at the same time that she was talking this new friend’s ear off about needing to figure out an idea for another book. But not another novel. So the new friend put two and two together (while Laura was still way behind, trying to do the math) and told her she should write a non-fiction book about failure.

Laura loved the idea! Even more than she loved failure itself! She loved it so much that she told another friend about it who led Laura to think about how her relationship with Failure (note how failure has now become “Failure,” a proper noun) is, strangely enough, the most successful relationship she’s ever had! Which validated Laura’s deep belief that even though Failure has dogged her and made things very difficult for her, Failure has also been incredibly helpful and generous.

Go figure!

Anyway, Laura couldn’t wait to get started on her new book (she can’t remember the last time that happened), but first she did what she usually does when she gets (or when someone gives her) a new idea: she does a little market research. Which is what she’s doing right now: running the idea past her Brant readers and asking them to keep checking back this week and next week for more about
FAILURE: A Love Story.

Laura really wants to thank the people who left notes on her brant telling her that they’re reading it. But, in all honesty there really aren’t that many people telling her that they’re reading it (8) — especially if you subtract the last two comments which not only were written by the same person so they should only count once (7), but because they were also written by a “business acquaintance” of Laura’s (her agent) who sort of has to read it (6). Also, if you subtract Laura’s own comment — the comment she sent to comment on Hilary’s very funny comment — we’re down another one (5).

Laura wonders why every time she starts branting her brants turn into math problems (8-1-1-1 = 5), and once again she’s showing her work in case she’s made a mistake. But assuming she’s done the simple subtraction correctly, there were only 5 comments left on her brant, which, math expert or no math expert, and at the risk of sounding like an ingrate, she can hardly say is a lot.

So, please keep sending your three little words — I’m reading it — in.

For those of you (besides Laura) who are counting the days before “Piece of Work” is published, there are only ten more days between now, September 15, and the official publication date of September 25. Laura thinks she’s done the math right (25 minus 15 = 10), but just in case she hasn’t she’s showing her work (maybe if she hadn’t gotten an 11 on her math final in her junior year of high school she would have more faith in her ability to do math, if you can even call simple addition, or subtraction, math). If she’s made a mistake in her calculation, please bring the error to her attention by leaving a comment here on her brant (just make sure you sign it “Smarty-Pants”).

Not to get bogged down in more figures and numbers (this is the most math Laura has done in years), but in the 15 days since her first brant entries Laura got pretty busy. She meant to keep her brant current with interesting and entertaining entries to satisfy her rabid readers (although from what she can tell about them so far, she’s not sure satisfying her readers is possible because they are SO incredibly rabid), but she was kind of swamped (inundated, actually) with enthusiastic responses to her website. Yes, okay, so a lot of the praise was for the site designer’s (Jefferson Rabb’s) actual design of the site (”cool”, “hip”, and “modern” are three words Laura got really sick of hearing this week), but she, too, received her share of comments regarding the content. While most people (allegedly) enjoyed the faux-narcissistic voice of the third-person narrator (also known as “Laura The Branter”), one or two people (buzz-killers) doubted the fact that Laura is really as insecure as she makes herself out to be. In other words, they wonder if her self-deprecation is an act. This struck Laura as incredibly funny (in fact, she would have started laughing hysterically if she wasn’t already crying hysterically because of how wounded she felt having her credibility called into question like that). All Laura can say is that these doubters (buzz-killers) must not know her very well. In fact, Laura wants to reassure everyone that she is even more insecure in real life than she makes herself out to be on her website!

(OK, well obviously that’s a lie, but you know what she means.)

Laura also wants to call attention to the fact that her theories about celebrity narcissism (featured in “Piece of Work”) are actually based in sound scientific research. To prove that she does her homework before shooting her mouth off (even though, technically, she shot her mouth off long before this bit of supporting research was released), she’d like you to read this September 13th article from the Los Angeles Times — “Celebrities Are Their Own Biggest Fans.” (Again, she’s providing the link even though she doesn’t know how to get the link to light up and do it’s linking-thing.)

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/cl-et-narcissism12sep12,1,5835330.story?track=crosspromo&coll=la-headlines-entnews&ctrack=1&cset=true