Yappy Days

Bernadette Duncan spent twenty-six years as a radio talk show producer. In "Yappy Days: Behind the Scenes with Newsers, Schmoozers, Boozers and Losers," she vividly recounts her adventures in the trenches of big-time talk radio during its most dynamic decades set against the dramatically changing backdrop of America's pre- and post-9/11 realities. This candidly told story includes Bernadette's firsthand impressions of the sometimes quirky celebrity talk show hosts whom she served as a producer during her career. In talk radio, a producer does a wide variety of tasks in facilitating a show, including booking the guests, screening the listener phone calls, occasionally engineering the program, and most important, holding the hands, supporting, consoling, encouraging, and simply trying to get along with some of the most egotistical, egocentric, neurotic, insecure, demanding, opinionated, sometimes horrible, but oftentimes wonderful and always remarkably talented human beings to talk across the face of the earth. They include some of the biggest in the business: Larry King, Sally Jessy Raphael, Gil Gross, Tom Snyder, Lou Dobbs, Charles Osgood, and more. Bernadette also collected a number of insightful anecdotes interacting with hundreds of high-profile guests during those caffeine-charged years, from media, show business, and politicsmany as quirky, ego-driven, and neurotic as her talk show host bosses. "Yappy Days: Behind the Scenes with Newsers, Schmoozers, Boozers and Losers" is a fun, breezy, informative, and gently analytical look at the media, journalism, and the complex nature of ego.

Adrienne Stecher has always known she’s different, and she’s fine with her place on the spectrum. She loves her job and her apartment, and she’s happy to help out her grandfather a few times a month. If she could just get the peacocks that plague his neighborhood to stop destroying his yard, she’d be set. Native to Mississippi, Casey Knight knows beautiful when she sees it, and California is full of beauty. She appreciates everything about her college town—the weather, her job, and the majestic birds that populate her neighborhood. Though every encounter Casey has with Adrienne seems designed to scare her away along with the birds, Casey keeps finding herself drawn back to her neighbor’s granddaughter. Adrienne is adamant that her quirks make it impossible to date, but something about her makes Casey just as certain that they could be birds of a feather.

This is a story of a mans love of horses, and of friendships that endure through the best and worst of times. Sam Jackson, the main character, searches, as we all do, for a place in time and space, where he can spend just a few sunny days, enjoying life. That place, for Sam, is in the ranching country, and in the small hamlet of Denio, located in the high, cold, desert of far northwestern Nevada. Denio is a real place, although in this story, the characters and most of the establishments are fictional. Unfortunately, that place and its quirky residents depict an icon of the fate of many small communities in the American West; destined to vanish. The story of Sam Jackson, narrated by his lifelong friend, Joe Running Bear, is about a young mans quest to become a World Champion rodeo cowboy. Traveling a long and rocky road, and with help and encouragement from his friends, he finally achieves his dream, only to lose it all. His friends in Denio, not only nurture his transition from youth into adulthood, but also help heal his wounds after his fall from glory and fame. But, nothing can stop the winds of change, and, like Sam Jackson, the town and its people are also changing; slowly fading into a sea of endless time.