A few days ago, we heard through the proverbial grapevine that Denver-based journalist and blogger Douglas Brown had a hot proposal circulating the publishing world. And by hot, we mean the concept, which will see Brown document the results of a pledge between him and his wife to have sex at least once a day for 100 consecutive days. So no wonder New York‘s Vulture blog and Gawker were all over the proposal. “You have to assume that every single male editor who received the submission is already trying to figure out a way to get his wife to read the proposal without seeming like an asshole,” wrote Vulture on the book, provisionally titled JUST DO IT, while Gawker’s Emily Gould was less kind. “The whole ‘Set Time Period During Which I Tried To Make Myself A More Interesting Or More Debilitated Person’ thing is over, or should be.”
Chatter’s all well and good but it seemed just as good an idea to go to the source – the person shopping the proposal. Daniel Lazar laughed off the negative hype. “Vulture picked 2 most salacious paragraphs from entire 60 page proposal,” he said by telephone yesterday evening. “Yes, the book has a sexy hook but it’s much more about marriage, about falling in love with your spouse all over again. In someone else’s hands this would come off as lecherous or even silly but Doug has universally and wonderfully identified what makes marriage work.” Already Lazar has turned down a pre-empt and he expects to close on the deal sometime next week. “Even the editors who’ve turned this project down said that people are going to love [Brown].”