Keep Your Day Job

About the Book

It takes a lot to get a soap opera on daytime television.  It takes even more at night to keep the show on the air.  For example the cast of characters might include a twenty-something network executive who is really a Michael Jordan wanna-be who only goes to show white guys can’t jump; a daytime head of television who is a dinosaur with one foot in the tar pit yet the other one on the pulse of what America will swallow, wash, and powder; a director who has confessed on a talk show that he has a sex addiction, yet can’t manage to corral the young starlet who is determined to get her plastic surgery paid for by sleeping to the top; a head writer–maybe two-who could win an Emmy if only she/they would simply put her/their fantasy life into the show’s scripts; and a whole bunch of actors who somehow keep millions of viewers hooked each day, even though the ego and petulance of these whole bunch wouldn’t fit into the state of Texas.

Oh, and did we forget to mention a couple of dead bodies?  Or is it one body killed twice, or maybe two people in the same body dying once?  Certainly the soap opera “Laguna Beach’ is just like a novel.

Yet this story is up close and personal and political.  A close look at network television and its continual battle between Business–we need to cut costs–and Show–a few more dollars and we’ll have ART!!  A personal romp written someone who’s been there, done that, and lived to cash the checks.  A novel that is about an addiction that is as American as, well, soap operas.  A bonfire of vanities and loyalties and millions of people who only watch from closets.

About the Author

PHILIP MACHALE lives outside New York City with his wife and two children. When he's not plotting their escape, he's researching his next novel.