Red Hot Copywriting

Since I just got back into town from my family vacation, I didn't pay much attention to the mail. I mean who is anxious to check out the bills, right? Well I just got a letter from the Apex Awards, letting me know I WON! Rather my tutorial, Red Hot Copy to Woo Your Target Market won.

It was judged one of the top teaching tools for 2005 in a contest with nearly 5000 entrants. Very cool!

The Fourth of July is always huge in Hannibal, Missouri where I was born and spent summers growing up. John, Justin, Chase and I trekked from California to Missouri to visit with my 86 year old grandmother, my parents, sister, brother, cousins and my niece. Here is my niece, sister, grandma and me.

I gotta tell you it was really nice to get out of the congestion of Studio City, where I live. The air was so fresh. Of course it was also HOT.

My favorite author (sorry Uncle Waldo) is Mark Twain. Well he spent his boyhood in Hannibal. His characters from the books Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn were based on himself and people he knew in Hannibal. It's just rich with history. I loved exposing my sons to Mark Twain's history.

Growing up with my cousin (who is really more like a sister to me) and I used to go to the Mark Twain cave, waterski on the Mississippi River (I know - gross! It's so dirty) and have pork tenderloin and homemade root beer at the Mark Twain Dinette. As children our grandma would also take us to the cheesy haunted house on Hill Street where you pay a quarter to go thru a dark hallway with a fluorescent painted hand spinning as it's flushed down a toilet. None of the effects have changed since we screamed our heads off as 6 year olds. I still screamed my head off as I ran through the hall. My sons were laughing at how lame the effects were.

My grandma actually lived in one of the three houses on Cardiff Hill by the famous lighthouse and claimed to find a box of old letters made out to the "Widow Douglas" a character in "Tom Sawyer" and "Huck Finn". I thought she was pulling my leg but I came to found out that the woman who Mark Twain used as a character came to be known as the Widow Douglas and was quite beloved.



They have a fence-painting contest ala Tom Sawyer (true story but it was Samuel Clemens, not Tom who conned other kids into doing his work for him) and a frog jumping contest. Now I actually think frogs are cute. In fact, my husband calls me "Frog". So it's an endearing amphibian, but I don't want to touch one. Luckily this little girl did it for me so I could show you a real live frog.



What they do is have a roped off area for the frogs and their "owners". Don't have a frog? No problem. You can rent one from the Boy Scouts. But don't get the biggest one you can find. Go for the spry smaller guy. They apparently have more spring. When they give the word, you try to get your frog from one side of the corral to the other. It's hysterical.

Here I am with the inflatable red frog my husband won for me at the carnival. I got red because of...well, you know! But then my cousin said he looks like Elmo. Now I don't have the love for him I once did. In fact I let the air out of him. My aunt said it's too bad you can't do that with your husband when you get tired of him. (Auntie!!!)



The best part of visiting everyone was I brought my MP3 player and recorded my grandma talking about her life. Her eyes just lit up to know someone was interested and her legacy wouldn't be forgotten.