My Lucky Day

One of the luckiest things I ever did was decide to ditch work one day and watch Oprah. She had her book club pick on that day and I decided to read it for no good reason. In fact I was just starting my business and had every good reason to read a lot of other work-related books, not a novel. But I decided to go ahead and read Isabel Allende's Daughter of Fortune.

After I read it, I decided to write a letter to Oprah about how much I loved it -- because I really did -- and my mom always encouraged me to try everything -- my dad too. So I sat my butt down and wrote her a letter.

They got somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 letters. They invited 4 people on the show. I was one!!! I was so excited! I was working with authors, agents and publishers at the time and a number of them asked me what strings I pulled to get on the show -- NONE -- it really was sheer luck. And I've always been a good letter writer.

Here's my letter. My kid was just going into kindergarten around that time and boy was it a treat to be flown to Chicago from LA and have a two-day mom R&R break at the all-suites Omni Hotel in Chicago where Oprah puts all her guests!

And talk about someone who knows how to turn bad luck into good luck, read Isabel Allende's words here.