Bewitching Beginning, short story about my first "magazine signing" at Barnes & Noble, by, Gina Meyers

“Write what you know”. That was what her writing instructor at the Community Adult Class said back in 1994 in an old musty smelling classroom at Clovis High School in Clovis, California. She had already been writing what she knew and what she knew a lot about was the television show Bewitched. How was that going to make her known? Or rather how was that going to make her money? Skinny, perky Gina, an entrepreneur at heart felt out of place in the writing class. She felt the intellectuals glaring at her cause she was young, well, 23, and they were concerned about grammatical errors and when to use a hyperbole in a sentence and all she cared about was the fact that her marketing and entrepreneurial zeal actually was resonating with others, fans, and moguls in the television industry.

 

Me at my first "magazine signing" at Barnes & Noble in Fresno, California with fans of The Bewitched TV Show. Note: I am holding a pen, it looks like a cigarette. Another note: All ages attended the signing. In the background, the Community Relations Manager.

By this time, Gina had already convinced Barnes & Noble to host a Bewitched Trivia night, now mind you Gina didn’t even have a book to sell, just a tiny scrawny cookbook that was printed off at Kinkos the night before per her cousin Paulette Grilli’s suggestion. And her mother too, she was there to help. She did have a magazine article, a Darrin Trivia Guide of sorts, the exact title was "Social Darrinism", a.k.a. Mangled Monikers and she served as a consultant for all things Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie in the Collectible Nick at Nite Magazine, with a young John Travolta (From his Welcome Back Kotter Days) emblazoned on the cover. Further convincing was in order. Gina worked for a subsidiary of Xerox and worked at California Business Furnishings off of Brawley and Shaw in Northwest Fresno. The techy guys liked Gina and worked along side her cubicle upstairs in the more narrow than anything upstairs kind of long room. Her idea, put Elizabeth Montgomery’s face, aka Samantha Stephens from Bewitched on $100,000 fake colored bills. The graphic designers loved the idea and ran with it and Gina had plenty of Bewitched Bucks to hand out for the correct trivia answers during the evening festivities. She religiously met with the Barnes and Noble CRM (Community Relations Manager) and they cooked up a Halloween Costume Contest too, plus upstairs at the large and spacious Barnes & Noble there was a cafe of which it had been decided, Bewitched Blackberry Italian Sodas and a Tabitha Banana Latte would be on the Bewitching menu.

Further adding to the fun, The Fresno Bee decided to publicize the event in the Life Section and have Gina on the front cover. That involved runs downtown to The Fresno Bee for a photo shoot, and a couple of meetups with reporter Rob Vaneski. Answering Rob’s questions were interesting, her first taste of the news media had started to percolate and Gina kind of knew that publicity would be one of the most important features of sharing her love of the television show Bewitched.