The Day I Got my Hyphen or . . . The day I Became a Porn Star

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Stephanie you have won the prize for June 17th. Please email me your snail mail addy at my web site address, www (.) christie (at) christie-craig (.) com.

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P.S. Remember next week is the big prize giveaway. I'll be posting trivia questions about Weddings and everyone who gets them right will be entered to win the Pamper Me Like A Bride Basket.





I know, I know, you regular readers are probably saying . . . “But wait, we thought that it was Gemma who skirted close to that edge.” You do remember that blog, right?

Well, surprise, surprise, surprise. This just goes to show that you never really know someone until . . . well, until the person gets crazy enough to show her true colors. And what color is that, you ask?

It’s red.

Yup. My face was red with embarrassment. Not embarrassed enough to keep this a secret. Hey, lucky for you guys, I’m a tell-all, uhhh, “show-all” kind of person.

It happened several years back—before the sales of my latest novel releases. (I’m blushing just thinking about it.) I was desperately working on my novels. When I say desperately, I mean I was obsessed.

My thought process was that if I could write a bunch of books, then when I finally sold, I would have this great back list. (Hey, it worked out, but there’s a downside to being obsessed.)

You see, I was also juggling my day job—a very successful freelance career. I wrote for a large variety of magazines, I penned articles on: toilets, window treatments, stupid bank robbers, the warm fuzzy feelings of motherhood, tomato horn worms, Tom Selleck, and birth control for cats.

My point is, well there’s two points. First, if they’d pay me, I’d write it. Editors knew this, and I was constantly getting assignments just from my website alone. However, I did have some scruples. I mean, I had yet to take my clothes off for a public venue.

My second point is that I was very, very busy. So busy I ignored things like spam-looking emails. (Looking back, this is where my problems began.)

Anyway, I’d been getting lots of spamish-looking emails trying to sell me domain names. I had my domain name, Christiecraig.com. Why would I need another? Then I get a call from some really nice guy who worked for my internet server. “Did I know that I had let my domain name lapse?”

I’d thought I’d bought it for five years. It seems I’d only bought it for three. Hmm, so those emails hadn’t been spam? And now the domain-name place wanted to charge me hundreds of dollars to keep my name/web address. Since my website was on all my business cards which I passed out regularly to prospective editors/clients, I really wanted to keep it.

Thankfully, my internet guy said to just let it lapse and he’d buy it back the next day for the same minimal fee as before. Such a nice guy. I mean, normally, my husband would have taken care of all that, but he was in Mexico working for three weeks.

So I was back to work as usual. Plugging away on my books and meeting deadlines writing more articles about toilets. The next day, I get an email from a casual acquaintance. It read: “Wow, checked out your website. Saw a whole new side of you.”

Now, this person is known to have a whacky sense of humor, and I just assumed she’d read the newest article posted on my website about how cats were better than men. (But you know what they say about assuming, don’t you?)

Anyway, later that day I got a phone call from my brother in Florida. I was so stingy with my writing time, I almost didn’t take his call. But since he was supposed to show up in a few days with several of his motorcycle buddies to do some dirt bike racing, and they were all going to bunk at my house, I gave in and answered.

“Hey, sis,” brother said. And he had that tone about him. The same tone he used when he asked me to pull his finger. “Uh,” he continued, “I told my buddies that you were a writer and gave them your website to see what you wrote.”

“Yeah?” I didn’t have time to chitchat. I had books to write. “And?”

“And one of them just called. Let’s just say he’s very excited about “coming” now. Really wants to meet you.”

“Me?” I’ll be honest, I got concerned. But not for the right reasons. I mean, I thought the guy was probably either, A: a guy with a toilet fetish, B: really liked Tom Selleck, C: wanted to discuss feline sex. None of the above appealed to me.

Brother continued to laugh. And I got this feeling he was really enjoying this. Like it was payback or something. And yeah, this is the brother I found his magazines under his mattress and mentioned them to my mom. So it kind of scared me.

“Sis, have you checked out your website lately?” he asked.

Duh, I didn’t have time to check out my website. But I did it. I typed in christiecraig.com. And when it said I needed to be eighteen to enter, I got really scared, but when the first image popped up, I totally freaked. I mean I didn’t even check out Christie Craig’s face, mostly because the face wasn’t in the image.

I screamed, hung up on brother who was enjoying this way too much and called my internet guy who’d completely lost his “nice guy” status. “You said you would buy it back!”

“I tried,” he said. “But someone already snagged it, but don’t worry, I bought you Christie Craig with a hyphen.”

“Don’t worry? DON’T WORRY!!” I screamed again. “I’m now a porn star. I can’t be a porn star. Editors have my website.”

I heard him punching keys and then he . . . laughed. He laughed really hard and then said, “Wow, can I have your autograph.”

I hung up on him.

Then I called the man who always fixed my problems. I called my hubby in Mexico.



“Help. I’m a porn star.”

“You’re a what?”

“I lost my domain name. Another Christie Craig bought it. Now ChristieCraig.com is a porn site. What can I do? I’ve got to get them to take that down!”

I heard him typing, and he got really quiet. “Sweetheart,” he said calmly. “I’m afraid you can’t make them to do that.”

“But baby,” I pleaded. “People are going to think that’s me.”

He got quiet again, and said. “No, baby. They won’t think that. You got way more up on top than she does!” Then he . . . laughed. Really hard. And I hung up on him, too.

So there you have it. The day I got my hyphen . . . or the day I became a porn star. Moral of the story: Don’t let you domain name lapse!

Okay…it’s still June, so post a comment, tell me about something embarrassing that happened to you, or tell me if you seen Weddings on the bookshelves. Or just post a quick hello and you’ll be entered in a contest to win a Sexy, Suspenseful and Seriously Funny Tee-shirt and a pack of Christie Craig note cards. Come on guys, if I can tell you about my porn days, you can post a comment!

P.S. The “other” Christie Craig has since closed house. I’m thinking it’s because she had too many emails asking her to write about toilets.