All Points Bulletin: I need a monkey, STAT.

It’s true. There’s a monkey in my book. Not only is this capuchin cute, he’s also clever: he communicates through origami. My publisher didn’t even want to mention the monkey on the jacket copy because apparently it skews the book younger. To me this is a head scratcher. I mean, I’m 43 and I can’t read enough about monkeys, especially when they’re doing interesting things like the ancient art of paper folding! But I digress. This post is about finding a monkey.

My friend Tonya thinks that all I need to do to get my book to sell when it releases in May is get a little video footage of a monkey doing origami. She swears she can get the thing to go viral, but we’re missing the key component: the monkey.

I put some feelers out on Facebook and got a lead on a marmoset named Maxwell, but marmosets look more like Gremlins than monkeys. Plus Maxwell’s owner told me he was in a “time out” and the photo he sent showed the little guy in a tiny Superman sweater, so all signs point to him being difficult to work with.

Then I found a guy in LA who rents out a capuchin that looks remarkably like my character. There’s even a photo of him at the wheel of a tiny pirate ship looking quite competent at the helm of a schooner.  I called his agent and asked about taking about five minutes of video of said monkey opening up a piece of origami. I just need the footage, I told him, and then I’d edit it and play the video backwards, making it look like the monkey was folding instead of unfolding the paper. (Genius, no?) He said he’d need $800 just for the shoot and maybe as much to “train” the monkey.  When I remarked that I thought a monkey might just be naturally curious and open up the folded paper on his own, the agent scoffed and said that kind of thing would take a lot of training. Right.

Now I’m at a dead end. I implore you for leads. Someone out there must know someone who knows someone who has a capuchin monkey! Six degrees of separation anyone? The future of my book depends on it!