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GREENSBORO - Angela Martin wears a bone in her hair.

Now, it's a rawhide bone - $3.99 from PetSmart, painted hot pink and hot-glued with pink sequins. But as you read this, she's on her way to Los Angeles to hobnob with celebrities and hang out at the Emmys.

Angela's book is part of the Emmys' infamous gift bag, and it's a doozy about divorce. Check out the title: "How To Ruin Your Ex-Husband's Life One Day At A Time ... the backhanded yet friendly approach to finding happiness in his misery!!''

In that tabloid-crazy land of headline-grabbing divorces, you can bet her book will get some attention in Hollywood. And so will Angela. She'll be in a hotel penthouse, handing out autographed copies - with her sharp dress, her squishy club from Party City and her bone in her hair.

The bone fits. Angela sees herself as a modern-day cave woman stumbling out of the dark to discover who she is and what she has become.

She's 36, a mother, a physician's assistant, a woman from small-town South Carolina who grew up believing she'd find a Prince Charming. She didn't. Today, her daughter is 9 and her marriage is over. Five years after her divorce, she takes to heart that disco hit from 1979, "I Will Survive.''

She has.

"It really wasn't about him," Angela said about writing her book. "It was all about me healing and finding a creative thing to do without me crying all the time. And it's helped.

"I've seen come to fruition that phrase, 'Where there is a will, there is a way.' I've learned to do a lot that I've never dreamed I'd do.''

She quit her job, tapped into her life savings, borrowed a friend's laptop and sat on her couch 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, reworking what she first wrote in her journals.

She published the book herself. And now she's at the Emmys.

From the title, you'd think Angela's book would be vindictive. It's not. It's more of a survival guide on how to handle heartbreak and get on with your life. Read it, and in its 149 pages you'll see that Angela covers everything.

Including your sex life.

Her 70-year-old mother, Ernestine, loved that.

"Angela," she implored, "I wish you wouldn't put that in there.''

"But Momma,'' Angela responded, "sex sells.''

It has. She's gotten letters and e-mails from both men and women, the divorced and the happily married, who laughed their way through every page.

But she's also received messages that are poignant. Like the letter from a divorcee in Michigan who wrote that she had been contemplating suicide - until she read Angela's book.

Angela uses humor to heal. But she also uses her moxie to get attention.

Last month, during a trip to New York City with her boyfriend, she paraded around downtown in a wedding dress - and her "Just Unmarried'' sash - and snagged a few big-time minutes on "The Early Show'' on CBS.

So, it should come as no surprise to anyone who knows Angela that she snagged the Emmys' gift-bag gig. She met a woman in Atlanta who gave her the contact information for the gift-bag folks.

Angela got in contact with them. They called her back. She mailed them a copy of her book overnight. And less than two days later, they called. She was in, the only book in the gaggle of 100 gifts.

Angela Martin. Youngest daughter of a cattle farmer. Native of Williamston, S.C., a town of 5,000 with five stoplights. She is going to the Emmys.

She feels she has something meaningful to say about divorce.

And about survival.

Even with a bone in her hair.

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jeri.rowe@news-record.com