I’ve been AWOL for the past few days on a big-time mission for Sepia Mutiny. I was tasked by the bunker-mates to try and sign Kaavya Viswanathan to a contract to blog for us here at SM. I even offered her a $500,000 advance and a TWO-month guest slot (as opposed to the standard one month) at our bunker. I know that she has never blogged before and is pretty young, but a team of monkeys in our basement were ready to help in “packaging” her stuff so that it would fit the tone and content of our website. Alas, I just couldn’t close the deal due to some legal issues.

There was no way I was going to come back empty handed however. As a back-up we made an offer to both Amardeep Singh and Siddhartha Mitter. Details of the contract? No advance, no movie deal, no Couric interview. Just disgruntled comment leavers and a shot at fomenting mutiny. They agreed only once we said we’d throw in a hair and make-up person (and put a star on their door). Just to be clear, if they end up plagiarizing we had nothing to do with it.