If I had to take an authors portrait…

...I would do everything possible to make it not look so cliché. Nerdy authors all dressed in clothes they probably didn’t pick themselves in completely unnatural poses to make them seem much cooler than they are is not a category I want to fall into.
Doesn’t anybody post a photo that they didn’t spend hours preparing for? How about the author lazing on the couch watching some stupid reality show? What about two seconds after the writer stubs her toe? What about the exact moment of total shock when someone barges into the bathroom while he’s dropping a deuce? The possibilities are limitless.
I just don’t want my friends or family to look in the back of my book, see my portrait and say to me “Seriously, you’re never that cool.” When the photo is of you drunkenly urinating on a bush at your Fourth of July barbeque, there’s nowhere to go but up!