Jim Cramer Doesn't Live Here

If, through the wonder of modern search technology, you've arrived here looking for Jim Cramer, you're definitely in the wrong place. And you'd probably like my books!

Seriously though, and for the record: as far as I know, I was using the title
Mad Money long before Jim started using it for his television show. And, in one of those jokes the cosmos is so fond of, though Mad Money hadn't been used for the title of much of anything for a long time when I decided to give the first Madeline Carter novel that moniker, both Cramer's show and my book center on action in the stock market, though they do it in very different ways.

Now, you can't copyright a title but, if you could, I'd have had
Mad Money before Jim got his hooks into it. Here's how I know this: I wrote most of Mad Money in 2002. As soon as I realized what the book was about -- crimes taking place against a financial background -- and that the main character's name was Madeline, I decided to call the book Mad Money. Because it's Madeline and, you know, the stock market is about money. And, of course, that's all mad anyway.

After finishing the book around the middle of 2002, I set out to find an agent and -- when I did -- the agent had to find a publisher and then said publisher had to do all the magical and mysterious stuff that they do (like design a cover and figure out where my picture was going to go).

I knew by mid-2003 that the book, still called
Mad Money, would be published in December of 2004. Which, of course, it was. And Cramer's television show hit the airwaves in the early spring of 2005. So even if they were planning on calling it Mad Money a long time before the show came out, I'm sure the title was attached to my book longer still. So there.

Now, all that said, aside from a bit of confusion for some of my friends and fans, it hasn't really made much difference to me to share my excellent title. And it probably hasn't made any difference to Jim, either. What we do is very different. He shouts eloquently about the actual stock market and actual stocks.

In Mad Money, and subsequent Madeline Carter books, Madeline deals with the sort of shady shenanigans you seriously don't want to run into in the for real stock market. At least, not when your cash is on the line. It's a little bit like Agatha Christie in the age of Enron, if you follow. High stakes high jinks with an edge of whodunit.

All right: nuff said. I just wanted it known that Jim Cramer doesn't live here. And that I had the title first!

Comments

Sandra Ruttan said…
The great old title debate - Jan Burke just found out that the title of her next book is the name of a new tv show for this fall.

She admitted she used a bad word when she heard that.
Sandra Ruttan said…
PS - It's on her blog, so I'm not telling secrets.
And I went and found the item on Jan's blog. It's here:

http://www.janburke.com/2006/06/why-i-said-f-word-during-dinner-last.html

(Though I'm not sure how to make a link in comments. Do they allow you that much html? But if anyone wants to go there, they can copy the URL and paste it into their address line.)

And I totally understand the profanity at discovery. I did the same thing myself. Ack!
Sandra Ruttan said…
You can put a link in comments using the same code for a link in your blog post. I discovered that when I was trying to explain to someone how to make a link in their blog post and my code came up as a link instead of, well, code.

Which made me use a colourful word!
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