After Elon Musk took over Twitter, I started getting contacted there by bestselling authors, including one who often spelled her name wrong. That's understandable; novelists are notoriously poor spellers. The messages from the bestselling author who died back in 2023 were more puzzling.

These authors often began by asking about my creative process. Which is flattering, but a bit like having Eric Clapton ask about the chord progressions I try on the guitar. My creative process, incidentally, is wake up, have breakfast — the most important meal of the day, you know — plop down in my La-Z-Boy with my laptop and start writing. Or rewriting. Or rewriting some more. You may not find that impressive. To be honest, I don't either. But several of these writers called it brilliant and innovative. And they should know, right? I guess the La-Z-Boy is the key.

They all had wonderful things to say about my writing, and they each had a favorite among my books, which they encouraged me — quite strongly — to promote. That was odd, because, at that point, all my books were at least 15 years old and not exactly generating a ton of buzz. One of these mega-selling writers even revealed he got a bit jealous when he discovered that one of my books had made a UPI Ten Most Underrated List, just seven spots below a Meryl Streep movie about a dingo that ate a baby. So, massive book sales aren't everything. Later, I found out this same writer had won two Pulitzers. Which is also pretty good.

In one way or the other, every one of these writers eventually insisted that by not promoting the book in question, I was being selfish and unfair to the reading public, the nation or humanity in general. Still, eventually, I think they all started to accept my refusal. Then "The Great Dick" hit the streets.

If you're not a regular reader of this column, that last sentence may require explanation. Obviously, "The Great Gatsby," a novel about a tragic love, and "Moby-Dick," a novel about a giant whale, are the same story, just worked out differently to speak to their different eras. Okay, maybe they're not exactly the same story. But at least they're both about someone's desperate struggle to overcome a failure that threatens to define their entire life. So, if anyone wanted to write that story today, in acknowledgment of "The Great Gatsby" and "Moby-Dick," it should obviously be called ... "Moby Gatsby." Or maybe, "The Great Dick." No giant whale, no tragic love, just a demon, some dead bodies, open crypts, dark spells, sudden death and the Ralph Lauren Version of the Manson family.

For a bit more clarity, I gave my version of the story a subtitle. So, it's "The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon." And when my various famous writer friends on X found out about it, they, to a man, or a woman — or, apparently in one case, a corpse — insisted that their personal book promoter had to be the one to, at a very reasonable fee, do for "The Great Dick" what he or she had done for their work. It's amazing how anxious, almost desperate, each of them was for me to hire their incredibly successful book promoter. And, busy as these promoters are, no matter how long I put off the decision, my bestselling friends keep insisting their promoter could still squeeze me in. I am apparently infinitely squeezable. No matter what several former girlfriends may claim.

Still, with everybody now messaging me several times a day, it's all starting to wear thin. I may have to complain to my friend, Elon Musk. His handle @therealElonMusk has got X's official green checkmark of validation, so I know it's really him. Unless the green check-marked Elon Musk @ElonMusk#1, who contacted me last week, was.

Check out Barry Maher's dark humor supernatural thriller, "The Great Dick: And the Dysfunctional Demon on Amazon. Sign up for his Substack at www.barrymaher.com.

To find out more about Barry Maher and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Gülfer ERG?N at Unsplash