Mumble Messages Persist

I’ve blogged previously about the growing trend of what I lovingly call “mumble messages”. These are voicemails from someone calling about my book(s) but their message is so garbled and unintelligible that I can usually only make out part of the caller’s name, that the call is in some regard to a book, and maybe their callback number. Unsurprisingly, either they never leave the name of the group they represent or that name is mumbled so much in the message that I can’t make out what was said. Check out the past posts if you’re curious about the trend’s history and my previous contacts:

• The Mysterious Voicemail
• Another mumble (voice)mail
• The Mumble Trend
• Mumble Mail to the Extreme

Well, I’m sad to say that the trend has not ended. Even though I haven’t blogged about them in a while or updated my website’s beware page, the calls do persist. I haven’t bothered to call any of these recent mumblers back. My experience has taught me that calling them and asking for them to contact me via email doesn’t yield any results. Instead, either they stop calling or just call incessantly with no regard to my expressed wishes. And since I don’t have company names or any traceable information, I opt not to update my beware page with such generic contact details. It is possible that some of the phone numbers might prove useful to others but most reverse phone number lookups failed to provide usable data.

However, I’m not above posting what little contact information I have in a blog post. Someone may find it useful and may have more insight on who these mumblers are but for me, this is the best I can do for now.

• October 8, 2024
  • Phone Number: 916-974-9404
  • Location: Arden-Arcade, California
  • Name: Mavis Johnson (maybe)
  • Company: ???
  • Offer: literary agent services
• October 21, 2024
  • Phone Number: 254-307-0224
  • Location: Waco, Texas
  • Name: Amy Anderson (I think)
  • Company: Books Academy (cut out and this was best I could make out)
  • Offer: discuss my book
• November 19, 2024
  • Phone Number: 916-974-9404
  • Location: Arden-Arcade, California
  • Name: ???
  • Company: ???
  • Offer: literary agent services
  • Note: Same caller as on 10/8/24
• December 6, 2024
  • Phone Number: 646-503-6638
  • Location: New York, New York
  • Name: Rico Santos
  • Company: ????
  • Offer: interest in book but otherwise unspecified
• December 12, 2024
  • Phone Number: 925-255-1480
  • Location: Orinda, California
  • Name: Mike
  • Company: Top Three Solutions?
  • Offer: Book 2 something about interest in a movie deal
• January 15, 2025
  • Phone Number: 254-780-0356
  • Location: Temple, Texas
  • Name: Jeff Oliver
  • Company: Did not specify in message
  • Offer: bookstore
  • Note: Not really a mumbled message just very generic and did not include any details regarding who he worked for.
• February 11, 2024
  • Phone Number: 323-991-3439
  • Location: Los Angeles, California
  • Name: Nicole ??
  • Company: <something> Media
  • Offer: make a “good offer” regarding my “book”. 
• February 24, 2025
  • Phone Number: 888-203-7688
  • Name: Rico Santos
  • Company: not provided
  • Offer: interested in book but nothing else
  • Note: same caller as from 12/6/24
• March 3, 2025
  • Phone Number: 888-203-7688 (ext. 501)
  • Name: Rico Santos
  • Company: not provided
  • Offer: interested in book 
  • Note: Same caller as from 12/6/24 and 2/24/25
• March 11, 2025
  • Phone Number: 857-315-3025
  • Location: Boston, Massachusetts 
  • Name: Kaitlyn Lewis
  • Company: Continental Rights
  • Offer: endorsement letter about literary agent
  • Note: not so much a mumble message as I could understand much of what she said but just a generic message that was inline with other recent calls and I’ve never heard of Continental Rights.

Some of these were more intelligible than others but I have not responded to any of them. I have no plans to respond to any of them. Even the ones that I can understand are of no interest to me. Lit agents don’t call you out of the blue. Nobody is going to offer me a deal on a book in the middle of the series. Just nothing about these messages seem enticing or encouraging to me. Why waste my time with wha to know to be a waste of time?