Because the caffeine has yet to kick in...

I’ve been keeping a running list of searches that bring people to my site. It is by no means a complete list, but here’s for your enjoyment (original search in bold):

Tuesday With Morrie Homework questions

Um, no. Not unless your homework questions are written by someone completely fed up with selling this book.

TNT book seller

Why, yes, I was dynamite. Thank you for noticing.

Tween discussing sex

No tweens here. No tweens discussing sex here either. Discussing whether or not tween books should discuss sex? Now we might be on to something.

Anderson speak is unrealistic

This just makes me sad.

product placement in books cost

For the right amount of money you can get a whole book about your product. See the Bulgari Connection.

starbucks, bookseller

Yes they are and it is only a matter of time before they take over the world. (Probably because their caffeine is also necessary for a bookseller’s sanity.)

pluses and minuses of being a sales representative

Oh, darling. If you have to ask then you’ve obviously never been one. Let me sum it up for you: Pluses-customers, minuses- customers. It depends on the day whether your column is positive or negative at the end.

Obsessed toes

They come alive at night and wiggle in demand for nail polish!

Comments on what makes a good reader

Enjoyment.

Fear of doing homework

A fear I knew all too well.

Jacketflap new look

Lovely.

Franzen False Memoir

Proof that Frey was so last year.

Men behaving badly orange blouse

Um, say what? Do I even want to know what men behaving badly and orange blouses have in common? I sense a “There’s Something About Mary” scene in the making.

Feel free to state your own conclusions on how these searches came about or "answer" their search question.

SB Day: Knowledge Dealer

For this holiday Smart Bitches Day, I have a confession: I’m one of those people. One of those evil booksellers who will point out that the book you’re dithering over whether or not to buy might not be here next time.

Or (*gasp) worse, you might not remember the title the next time you come in, only the lovely blue of the cover, and I, bookseller extraordinaire (*bullshit*), might not be able to help you.

Or, even worse than that, two years from now you might walk into my store and demand this unknown book because it is exactly what you need in that moment in time, and I will be unable to help you because we don’t keep records of what we put on our table. (True story.)

Or multiple times worse than the first scenarios, when you want to finally read it, it might be out of print, and it might be so wonderful and fantastic that you can only find copies on Amazon for fifty bucks or more.

If I’m feeling nice, I might point out that impulse control when it comes to books is highly overrated as you’re guaranteed to probably learn something (new vocabulary, interesting character traits, strange historical facts!) and learning something is better than watching an actor in a TV lab pipette straight from a frickin’ chemical source (and thus contaminating it) instead of pouring out the necessary amount into a beaker or Erlenmeyer flask. Damn you, CSI!

(I love you, CSI. I do, but could you follow proper lab procedure once and a while? It’s amazing all of your cases haven’t been thrown out due to contamination.)

(P.S. that love does not extend to you, CSI: Miami, home of he of the acting crutches and the glasses obsession. You are only good for drinking games based on how often Horatio Caine puts his hands on his hips.)

Where was I? Oh, yeah. I’m a high pressure bookseller. The evil used car saleswoman of booksellers who waits until you are having a weak moment at the counter to point out all the awful scenarios that might take place if you don’t buy that book now.

But this really has nothing to do with making a sale. I do this out of love, really I do. I firmly believe that my customers will thank me later when they are forced to dig into that huge stack of books next to their bedside or favorite chair because the snow storm/tornado warnings/tropical storm/hurricane/flooding/or some time of personal injury will not allow them to head over to the mall to browse the newest titles and authors we have available. And even if they don’t read the book right away, there is always a chance a friend or family member might be browsing the TBR shelf and stumble across something that calls to them. Something that would not have been there had that person’s friend or family member not broken down in my store, lured by the siren’s call of three books for the price of two or a colorful cover, and purchased said book despite the realization that this might mean the difference between Kraft Mac and Cheese and Annie’s Mac and Cheese.

Rest assured that I, too, suffer from this poor impulse control and the result is that my home shelves are clogged with books that are just waiting for some natural disaster to strike and give me enough time to sit down and enjoy the words on their pages without interruption (or enticement by the next new thing).

How good is your impulse control?

It’s Not You, It’s Me…Maybe

Due to the comment and hit explosion that happened yesterday thanks to the linkage from Smart Bitches (which would have solidified my love for those women even if Candy hadn’t invoked the great and holy Sir Mix-a-lot with her entry), I got a lot of reassurance that I am not alone in my abusive authorial love and a lot of authors got beat down on. While the former was great, the latter aspect was semi-unintentional despite what my further commentary on Reader Loyalty may indicate. You see, Marta had a point when she said:

I think there's another way to look at this. Some writers have only one or a few terrific books in them. Harper Lee and John Kennedy Toole are examples. Do we think less of them because they only wrote one great book? Nope, we are grateful for that one novel. Other writers only have four or five or part of a series in them.Heck, that's an amazing accomplishment. To say that their newer writing is "irredeemable" is a harsh assessment.

Now, the Sophomore Blues/Slump explanation has been popping up recently in many different news venues in conjunction with the question of whether or not we would have wished for these authors to write more even if it couldn’t match their premiere works. As many of you have mentioned (both here and on the Smart Bitches thread), you would rather wait or have fond memories of an author rather than to read work that you consider “phoned in” (unless you are Raine, who needs someone to hook her up with a medium so she can get Nathaniel Hawthorne to cough up a few more stories, or someone who can fake his style well enough that we have something to base next year’s literary scandal on. Long lost Hawthorne works, anyone?). Still, despite this “phoning in” aspect, many of you continue to buy, follow a series in paperback, or at least linger over the newest title by an old favorite. In my own store I’ve had many a customer practically yelling their frustrations at a novel one minute (because it is completely acceptable to talk to a book like it’s a person), only to plunk down thirty bucks for it the next. Because they paid the money, they feel it is perfectly fine to complain that the book has let them down.

But what about when you, as the reader, have changed? In her comment, Marta also says:

The writer/reader relationship is two-way. Not only does the writer progress, but the reader goes through things that change our perception of a novel. I read Bridehead Revisited when I was young and read it again more recently. It was a different book to me (though still marvelous).

Our personalities are an amalgam of different experiences and backgrounds, and no two people are going to approach a book the same. There will be books that we read and enjoy because of this, and others we will hate simply because of a certain plot aspect that we don’t agree with. We can’t expect that our favorite author should mirror us in our growth, nor that a book will look or feel the same way after several years of distance. To further complicate the matter, our emotions when we read the book the first time might be heightened due to a traumatic event or stress, adding another aspect to the reading experience. It’s like having the munchies due to smoking pot; everything you eat under the influence is just the BEST. THING. EVER, but when you revisit the same flavors while drug-free they taste and feel completely different. Does this mean that they are worse? No, simply that the change in the environment and in your emotions cannot create the same affect.

(Not that I would know anything about drugs. Nope. I’m pure, mama, I swear.)

This divergent growth from your author love does not necessarily explain the Disappointed Potential Redux (DPR) that I explained yesterday. DPR is most common in series that strike the reader as having gone on too long, or entered into the realm of repetition, something Wry Hag at Smart Bitches blamed the editors and publishers for:

BLAME THE PUBLISHERS. BLAME THE EDITORS. They’re the ones who keep
the same old same-old assembly line running. They’re the ones who, once an author becomes a cash cow, refuse to say, “Listen up, Steve. You’re beginning to plagiarize from yourself. That means you’re pushing my yawn button. Plus, this fucker is so rambling and discursive it makes Gulliver look provincial. Shave off two-thirds of that rancid fat, and we might just have us a digestible hunk of meat here.

Again, it’s an opinion shared by many a reader at my store and one that from the readers end is hard to argue against. But as an editor of a series, you have to figure in some ways they are held captive. It is the author who has the overarching themes and plot planned out in their heads and it is the author who knows (supposedly) each step along the way. If that author says that the repetition is necessary then who is the editor to argue. This might be a simplification of the situation or way off base, I don’t know. I just tend to steer clear of most series because I’ve been disappointed so much in the past. Anything that extends beyond four books usually doesn’t even get picked up.

Unfortunately this means that I miss out on a lot of great books, and I know that. Just like I might miss out on some great titles because an author to me is hit or miss and I’m tired of looking for the hits. With so many books out there to choose from, a reader can afford to drop one author for another, meanwhile an author can forever lose a reader with one “bad” book. Whether book is considered bad by all, or just that reader who’s moved on is (I would like to believe) a measure of the writing and the caliber of the story…or whether or not drugs were involved in any way.

Reader Loyalty

As many of you admitted yesterday on “Use Me, Abuse Me” we all have authors we just keep going back to despite our disappointment. This has led me to try to figure out why, only realize the answer is part of a much larger question, “What creates a loyal reader?”

Let’s face it, every one of our favorite authors probably has a book we like slightly less than the rest. Sometimes this is because it truly is a weaker book, while other times it may be due to changes in writing style, a different editor, a rushed deadline or some other factor. More often than not, this is the book we don’t reread, it’s the one we give away to our friends or trade in at the used bookshop, but it doesn’t stop us from buying the next novel (though it might make us hesitate).

The novel may not be weaker at all, but a departure from the author’s established genre to one where many fans don’t wish to follow. I can’t count the number of times that an author has switched genres and I, as a bookseller, hear about it. Often reader loyalty will bring them to pick up this new book, only to be disappointed by the radical changes the author has made to fit his/her plotline into this new arena.

Is our ability to forgive based on the strength of an author’s backlist? Are we more likely to forgive an author that slumps on the fourth book than on his/her sophomore effort? Will the placement of the slump dictate whether this author is still bought in hardback, paperback, or checked out from the library? And what makes us go back at all, why not quit cold turkey?

Going cold turkey would mean (to me at least) we thought the author was irredeemable. If my abusive author/reader relationship of choice could be proved irredeemable, I would walk away and never look back, but much like cigarettes there are defined addicted qualities that reel me back in:

• The books represent a calming influence during a point of upheaval: We all have books that we read when we are stressed out or feeling depressed that offer the escape we need. It is only later, when our emotions have settled and we try to reread them that we realize these books are not the GREATEST. THING. EVER, but do, in fact, suck donkey balls. Bring back that stress, however, and you’ll go crawling back to that author faster than you can book a therapy session.

• The book represents disappointed potential: Once upon a time I “volunteered” to be a teacher’s assistant for a class of college freshmen and reading their first essays had to be one of the most painful experiences of my life. This was not because they were all bad (although some had me wondering if maybe mom or dad had written their kid’s entrance essay), but because no one seemed to know how to trim the fat. Underneath the layers of repetition and hanging threads were some great ideas just waiting to bust free, but it took a lot of slash and burn editing to get to them. This potential is the same thing I recognize in the authors I keep going back to, whether it is in the plot, characterizations, writing style or all of the above. It’s why I keep picking up the next book with the hope that it will be better, that an editor or the writer will have gotten ruthless, taken a page from Carver (just a page, not a whole book which can be a bitch to handle at times), and did a little showing instead of telling.

• Disappointed Potential Redux or “the first few books were great and then…:” You’re following a series and it is great, wonderful, stu-fucking-pendous. You can’t wait to tell your family, friends, neighbors and book group about it. Then the fourth or fifth book comes out and that worshipful love starts to dim. The plot has started to repeat itself, characters are acting differently without precedent, villains are brought back from the dead for no apparent reason, and there is no end in sight. But you love this series and you’ve been following it for years. You have to know how it ends because each story has advanced the overarching plot. Besides, s/he has to finish the books soon, right?

I’m sure there are many more reasons we go back, or different nuances to the ones I’ve posted above. And we all have our own limitations, the point where we say enough is enough and never look back. Still, I have to wonder what influences that decision and how much we are willing to forgive and forget. If you knew that an author was going through a hard time in their personal life would you be happy that even managed to put out a book (despite the fact that it wasn’t up to previous standards) or would you wish they had waited? Would you have stayed loyal during that wait or moved on and forgotten the author’s name?

The questions are endless, but I would love to read your thoughts on those already posed, as well as any you come up with.

SB Day: Use Me, Abuse Me

It’s Smart Bitches Day, and once again I feel compelled to talk about the abusive author/reader relationship. This relationship can occur in many ways: an author you previously loved changes their writing style or genre and you follow in the hopes that they’ll get over this stage and come back to you; an author you love keeps writing a series to the point of repetition and you realize that s/he will die before they finish (this is known as the Robert Jordan Syndrome); or you find an author who you fundamentally disagree with in several stylistic and character building areas but their plots (or plot ideas) are so compelling that you just keep going back because it’s got to get better, right? They’ll change.

He says he loves me.

And it is not until your friends are hustling you out of your home so that they can perform a ritualistic cleansing and book removal while you’re restricted to an Austen-only diet, that you realize that you’ve wasted the best years of your life on this person only to be left with a shelf full of re-released paperbacks and hard covers that you’re ashamed to tell anyone about.

“Why? Why did it take me so long to break free?” you’ll cry to your friends who will pat your on your back or tell you to buck up—we’re talking about books here, sheesh. They’ll give you a list of books that are supposed to expand your mind and your education (So that’s the difference between the Booker and the White Bread!) and you’ll take up knitting to keep your hands busy. Slowly you’ll expand your reading to recommendations given by the librarian, bookseller, and the girl who runs the espresso machine at your local coffee shop and then to clicking on the also bought links at Amazon.

You’re strong, you’re healthy, and you’re committed to never going back again. Not that you’ll ever be dragged back in! Because—hah!—you’ll never be that weak. It was all a phase. Those days are behind you.

And then one day, while playing around on the net or listening in on a conversation at the bookstore, you realize that your old author has a new book coming out. You turn away, pretending disinterest, but that information stays in the back of your mind. More research—purely for mockery purposes of course—reveals a summary and several reviews.

The reviewers love it. Sheep, you call them.

The summary is lauded as exciting and unique. We’ve tread this ground before, you remind yourself.

The excerpt ends as a cliff-hanger. A ploy, you cry, a cheap ploy. But your palms are starting to sweat.

You try to read some Austen, but you end up throwing the book across the room. You ask the bookstore employee for the Booker Bread winner, and stomp away when they look at you funny. You find yourself sitting at home in your bathtub, just rocking back and forth because the plot, those characters, that cliff-hanger! Why are they affecting you this way?

Of course! This paralyzing fear is because you haven’t proven that you are stronger than this author, you have not proven that you can flip through this novel and just mock. If you were to just read a few pages the shakes would stop and you would be assured that you moved on.

It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

So off you march to the bookstore—the waitlist at the library is too long and you must slay this monster now!—determined to just stand in the section and read the first chapter. That’s all you’ll need to prove dominance.

And you do read the first chapter and it’s all still there: the same awful dialogue, characters, and narrative voice…along with that evil, compelling thread of plot, the one that taunts you, teases you, promises that this book—oh, this book—will finally be the one to deliver.

You’re at the counter paying before you can rethink it, the cover slick from the heat and wetness of your hands. You have to take this home despite the twenty-five dollar price tag, you have to read and mock in private. If any of your friends saw you here they’d think you’d fallen off the wagon, which is just not the case.

You’re stronger than this. So strong that you can barely put down the book in the car. So strong that you skip dinner and take the phone off the hook. So strong that minutes after you finish the last page you’re on the internet looking to see when the author’s next release is due to drop.

And in that moment when your brain finally calculates that you’ve got a six month wait, you drop your head in your hands and cry. What happened? You’re smart. You’re educated. You know better. You should have some sort of self-control. It’s just a book, damn it. If you dislike it so much you should be able to just walk away.

But you can’t because that plot line that never quite delivers keeps pulling you back.

Next time, you know, next time it will be better. Besides, everyone has to have a weakness, right?

What’s your abusive author relationship of choice?

SB Day: Top 10 list Why Not (Heroines)

It’s Smart Bitches Day and my brain is a little dead, so today let’s keep it short and sweet. I present to you the 10 ways to know you are not a romance heroine (feel free to add on):

(Note: two or more of these must apply to you to gain Romance Heroine status, complete with Happy Ending and Man-Titty Galore.)

10. You are not all alone in the world due to some tragic accident that took your mother, father, and multitude of siblings while blessedly sparing you or a horrible illness that killed your doting widowed grandma just as you graduated.

9. You have not woken to find yourself next to a naked man you don’t remember, whose very presence fills you with an unexplainable and overwhelming desire to shag like minks instead of calling the police and screaming at the top of your lungs about roofies.

8. You do not have a boyfriend who lives, LIVES, to go down on you. No, no, you don’t have to reciprocate. He does this because he loooooves it.

7. You have not been bitten by a dark, mysterious stranger whose sharp fangs make you feel tingles in your nether regions.

6. You have not had a secret baby (How does one go about having a secret baby anyway?).

5. You have not been kidnapped by pirates only to be taken in by the pirate captain because he thinks you are plucky (and also because he really likes your cleavage, wench).

4. You have not had an affair with a billionaire sheik/duke/business man/Spaniard/Australian only to break it off because of BIG MISUNDERSTANDING that could have been solved by just talking.

3. You have not been mysteriously transported to another dimension or time to meet the Viking/alien/cowboy of your dreams.

2. You have never pretended to be a man to infiltrate a secret society, save your brother from his gambling debts, or spy on your most hated enemy.

1. You do not have long flowing locks, bouncing breasts that defy gravity, and a twiggy figure that could never support them.

(Your) Thoughts (and Addictions) on Books...

I'm one of those people who are susceptible to other people's yawns. You yawn around me and I'm going to start up.

It's bad.

One day in the store, I've got this guy with jaw-cracking yawns in the SciFi/Fantasy section, and I can just feel myself get sleepier and sleepier as I yawned too. Duriing a break between one of his yawn sets he turns to me and says, "I think there is an opiate in the ink."

And I, desperately trying to not expose my tonsels to the entire store, have my mouth covered, so I mumble, "Wha?"

"Opiates. I think there are opiates in the ink they use for the books and that's why we're all so tired."

"Part of some greater master plan, maybe?" I say because you get weird theories in bookstores all the time and you just learn to go with them.

"Probably, but it's too late for me." He grabbed a book and grinned. "I'm obviously already addicted."

Me too. The feel of the paper, the slide of the cover, even when the cheap ink rubs off onto your fingers: I'm addicted all the way.

How about you? What's your book addiction? What genre can you just not quit? What author, despite how bad they are, do you just keep going back to? Or are you a paper addict too?

We're all here to share and support.

Worse than Meth: Robert Jordan, Christine Feehan, and McDonald’s fries.

Hello all you friends, romance readers, Aiken-ites who may still be lurking, Food porn aficionados, and those who randomly clicked on this because of the title!

According to Beth, it’s Smart Bitches Day once again which means all you have to do to participate is bitch, post, and notify her of said bitchiness. Or in my case, tell a random story that meanders on for pages until it finally gets to some equally random point that has little or no resemblance to the topic paragraph and call it good.

I can just feel your anticipation now, and since I’m a big believer in instant gratification (it’s what makes me an American), here we go!

We have a customer at my store we call the “No Fries” guy (I just can’t seem to remember his real one, not that he would want it plastered all over the internet anyway). Quite odd, I know, but his name stems from an incident years ago. He was a frequent customer even then, and we were do for a customer service review any day, so feeling hyper-vigilant I tried to get him to finally invest in our (former) company card because he really would have saved money (I’m not just saying this, he came in enough), and the walls had ears or eyes or whatever, and I was not going to get marked off for not trying. So try, I did, and try and try with him shooting me down at every point…and then my coworker at the time got into the act.

Me: It will save you ten percent off of all your purchases here.

Him: No.

Coworker: I don’t know, he looks like a tough sell.

Me: But if you buy just fifteen books a year that’s enough to pay for the card, and you do—

Him: No.

Coworker: Oooh, close one, but not quite. You’ve got to work harder. Harder! This is not a man who will be led around by his pocketbook.

And on it went with me saying something, him saying no, and the coworker throwing out pithy comments like she didn’t have anyone to wait on. His eyes kept bouncing back and forth between us, whether waiting for me to crack up or her to shut up I’m not sure, but he seemed pretty entertained. After I’d exhausted all possible avenues trying to get him to buy the card, or at least buy a chocolate to up my units per transaction, he launched into a speech: he didn’t hate us for having to say the card schpeel—he loved us, that’s why he shopped here—but he hated the corporate mentality that forced us to hawk cards, chocolates and our souls to make the bottom line, etc. As speeches go, it wasn’t the longest I’d hear, or the most virulent (those involve politics or religion), but it stuck in my head.

The whole incident made him pretty memorable as did the fact that when he came in the next week, he didn’t even wait for me to finish taking a breath before he said, “No, I don’t want the card, another book or a chocolate, and I don’t care if you’re having another sale. Thank you.”

“Okay, but how about fries?”

“Fries?” He looked confused.

“Do you want fries with that, sir? I think that’s the only option we haven’t covered.”

He laughed. “No, no fries with that.”

And thus the name was born. It’s become a store joke, something that I hadn’t anticipated, but not that surprising since we’ve all tried to upsell him on something and probably have all received the same lecture. He’s aware of it, too. Every time one of us passes him in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section, our inner smartass will kick in, and out comes, “Any fries today, sir?” or “We’re all out of fries, sir, hope you’re not disappointed,” or just “Hey, it’s the No Fries Guy!”

His reaction has been to rub his hands together, smile, and say, “Excellent, my reputation precedes me,” or to just start laughing. Other customers look at us like everyone involved must be nuts.

The other day I walked into work, and my boss waved me over to the counter.

“The No Fries Guy was in today.”

“He get anything besides a paperback?”

“He bought a hardback this time.”

“Really?” He never does this. Never. Sometimes when he wants to throw us a curveball he’ll get a chocolate with his mass market, but never if we mention the chocolates. I was intrigued. “Which one?”

“The new Robert Jordan.”

“Oh dear.”

According to the boss, this is how it all went down.

“No fries today, right?” she asked as he approached the counter.

“No, no fries.” He placed his book on the glass.

“Wow, Robert Jordan. You’re really going all out,” the Boss commented as she went to ring it through the computer.

“Yeah, Robert Jordan.”

“You don’t sound too happy about that.” And we hate it when someone doesn’t sound too happy about a sale because nine times out of ten they will return that book and the paperwork (though now streamlined) is a pain.

“It’s just…” He took a deep breath. “I don’t want you think that this is directed at you—It’s not directed at you. Just let me get it out of my system because I’ve got to talk to someone and I’m sure you’ve heard it all before so…”

And on he went. Not about our customer service or the guidelines our company makes us adhere to. Not about whether or not he wanted fries.

No, here was this short, well-groomed man with his khakis, tucked in polo shirt, and goatee, going off about Robert Jordan.

Yep, that’s right, Robert Jordan the author of the Wheel of Time series.

No Fry Guy was incensed, enraged! The man just kept writing books and books and not finishing the series and it hadn’t been any good since the fifth book, or at least that’s when No Fry Guy stopped caring, but he kept buying them because what if he didn’t buy them and they got better or the series actually got finished, he would never know and that would be horrible so he just kept buying them in hardback because he had to know and he’d never been good at waiting but it just continued to be a train wreck, a complete and total train wreck, but he KEPT READING! KEPT BUYING, DAMN IT! It was like a sickness, a disease. No! It was like a drug! Robert Jordan was meth and he was addicted even though he knew it was wrong for him, but he just couldn’t stop! Just like those meth users who kept telling you how wonderful the drug was even as their teeth were falling out and they were scratching at the open sores on their face and…

Wow, he felt a lot better having gotten that out of his system.

The Boss kept laughing as she told me this story. It is one that we’ve heard a lot from Jordan readers, a refrain repeated with each book sold. They don’t know why they are buying it, they’re just going to be disappointed, but they can’t help themselves!

I’d consider it a lack of willpower if I didn’t have first hand experience with issue. You see, my addiction of (non)choice is Christine Feehan (see, eventually this got around to romance).

The woman drives me nuts. Nuts! Her writing style, the way the Carpathians all sound EXACTLY alike, her sentence structure, the fact that some of the series are still going! You name it; it annoys the hell out of me. That she can take a perfectly wonderful plot and get it lost somewhere in the He-Man antics of her characters just makes me—

Argh!!!!!

And yet, whenever I open a box and see her newest book sitting on top, I can’t help myself. I must read it. I must read it now! Maybe it’s gotten better. Maybe I can just enjoy. Maybe the Carpathian version of manliness will not invade the Drake sister—whoops there she goes with Oceans of Fire! Swear to God, I spent the whole book expecting the Russian agent to be all, “My family is descended from a noble line from the Carpathian Mountains, baby.”

It would have been the Perfect. Freaking. Capper!

But I must derive some enjoyment because when the newest Ghostwalker book came out, Night Game, I stayed up until 1:30 in the morning reading. Of course, I kept reading because I expected there to be sex, gratuitous sex immediately and there wasn’t so I kept reading because, hello, shocking change up in writing style. Perhaps my reading all these years hasn’t been for naught. Perhaps this was the shining moment. The payoff for carrying on.

Perhaps it wasn’t like a drug after all!

Um, yeah. No.

Of course, if she is a drug, there’s always counseling, treatment centers, and other drugs, but like the bumper sticker said:

I’m no quitter.

So all I really have to say is this:

Dear Christine,

Can I call you Christine? I feel like we’ve been through a lot together with all those wacky Carpathians, the leopard people line that I thought you’d abandoned only to have you bring the Carpathians into it, the Ghostwalkers and the Drake Sisters (whom I love despite the inherent cheesiness in anyone trying to write spells, which is not your fault because I even laugh when Nora Roberts does it). We fundamentally disagree on your writing style (is it too much to ask for you to embrace a little lyricism?), your concept of manliness, and what makes characters different from one another (and no, I don’t think changing the name is enough of a difference), but despite all of this, I’m addicted to you.

Rather backhanded in the whole compliment arena, I know, but I own all of your books and it has caused me physical pain when I’ve had to sell some off to a used bookstore.

What I’m saying is if you keep writing, I’ll keep reading—buying the first day even—so maybe you can throw me a bone or two. You know, change up those male characteristics, give me some of the Drake Sisters as opposed to the Carpathians, slice and dice that sentence structure that you’re so in love with a little to give me some sentences that flow, anything! It doesn’t have to be big. You don’t have to do it throughout a whole book (unless it’s a character issue, then it has to be consistent). It’ll just be between the two of us, our secret. And I swear, if I see it, even catch a glimpse. It’s Bellinis on me, baby!

Unless, of course, writing vampires for so long has made you partial to Bloody Marys, in which case I’ll provide the jalapeño vodka!

Because this about growth: your growth as a writer, our growth together, the growth of my addiction, and I’ve got to believe it’s happening for some reason, any reason at all, because I’m afraid that tomorrow I’m going to find myself in the romance section with my teeth falling out and my face covered in sores as I handsell your book to the unsuspecting lover of the paranormal like a dealer on the corner. “C’mon, try it! You’ll never be the same…”

And that alone makes me deserving of a little love, right? Or at least an ARC of the next Drake book. Pathetic, I know, but I never claimed I couldn’t be bought.

Sincerely,

Your alcoholic book-meth addicted bookseller

The Secret Life of Joel Osteen

I didn't know much about Joel Osteen, just that he was a preacher and his book, Your Best Life Now, had been on the bestsellers list forever, but he seemed to remind me of someone.

But who? Who could it be? I puzzled over it for days until it finally hit me!

Martin Short! It was all there: the hair, the eyes, the nose, the smile. It's a wonder that it escaped me for so long, what with all of those similarities. I mean, really, what are the odds that two people looked that much alike? And on top of it, looked like that!

Could Joel Osteen be the illegitimate son of Martin Short? Or was it something more? We were talking about Martin Short here, master of disguise.

Maybe Martin Short was Joel Osteen!

Suddenly it all made sense. Martin Short was fooling everyone, pretending to be a Preacher Man, making money off the masses through his bestselling book (and journal and reader's guide), not to mention suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder! I mean, this was the man who gave us Ned Nederlander from the Three Amigos!, Frik from that really long-ass TV movie about Merlin, and Jiminy Glick from the Jiminy Glick Show. My, how hard it must be, juggling personalities and realities as you move back and forth between sets. Really, it was just a matter of time before Short forgot what TV set he was on and came out before Osteen's congregation looking like this!

Can't you see him emerging from behind he curtain at the front of his church, spewing a rain of doughnut crumbs with each open-mouthed breath. The TV viewing audience and the congregation would be stunned into silence, shocked by the obese, dirty man standing in front of them, unable to believe what their eyes were telling them: that this form should be inhabited by the spirit of their savior. And Short/Glick, realizing his mistake, would then raise his arms high to the Holy Lord, and say, "The Power of Jesus has made me a changed man!"

The possibility is almost enough to make me want to watch Osteen's show.

I know Short can only keep up the charade for so long, and I want to have a video tape recording when the time is right.

C'mon, give into the Temptation, Man! Let the world know who you really are! Embrace yourself! Give us the joy of wetting our pants with mirth!


So, um, yeah, this is what I think about as I toil away between the stacks of books: decode the conspiracies that lead to today's bestsellers. Knife of Dreams, Breath of Snow and Ashes, Harry Potter, I've got explanations for them all except for one, and really, Mary Magdalene being the actual chalice? A Catholic cover-up? Da Vinci hiding some sort of "code" in his paintings? Who comes up with this stuff?

It's a crazy world out there, folks, and there is only one thing we can rely on: Martin Short trying to screw with our heads.

So heed this, Martin, we're on to you, and we're waiting (record button ready) for you to make a mistake. Bring it on.