No, she didn’t knock 70 dingers out of the ballpark. No, she didn’t plow over 70 people while driving a tractor trailer. We were down in Pennsylvania, visiting my mother for her 70th birthday. My brother, Wally, and his family were there as well for the celebration.
PAD
Although I don’t generally reprint e-mails, I hear about this often enough that I thought I’d take the opportunity to answer it generally. I doubt the letter writer will mind:
Yesterday, I went to the Sunrise Mall in Massapequa to look for Tong Lashing. When I asked in Waldenbooks about it, the clerk said, “Oh, we only order it on special order.” When I asked why, he replied “Well, they don’t sell as well as his Star Trek books.” I went upstairs to the B. Dalton and got a similar spiel about only ordering it on special order. So my question is… is it better to encourage one of these places to stock your books in the future by placing a special order with them…. or is it better to “punish” them by giving my business to a store that did bother to stock it?
Yes, welcome to the glamorous life of a successful author, where branch buyers and clerks create self-fulfilling prophecies by not ordering or stocking your books and then saying they don’t sell.
As annoying as it may be, the truth is that yes, the only way to encourage stores to carry my books is to special order them, because they keep track of what people order and adjust accordingly. They can’t keep track of it when you get annoyed and just order it off Amazon.
Understand, it’s not your job to try and reeducate bookstores. You don’t want to wait for the week or two it’ll take for a special order, I understand. But if folks are asking me what’s “better” (meaning, presumably, what benefits my career) then yes, special ordering the book is preferable.
PAD
We went to the Renaissance Fair up in Tuxedo, New York this weekend. We always make it up there, and this one was naturally Caroline’s first Renfair experience ex utero.
The day started off on a shaky note. Ariel had brought her friend Alyssa along (both in costume) and when we got there the human chess game was in progress. So was some suffocating heat, and we all promptly began to wilt. We trekked over from there to the first joust of the day, trying to stay hydrated. The major concern was Caroline; shielded as she was from the sun (carried in a backpack with a sun guard and also wearing sunblock), she was still starting to look a little glassy eyed. The real killer was the humidity which you could have sliced with a broadsword. So we stake out some ground watching the joust. In the shade, we hoped things would be more bearable. I was holding Caroline, and she had just polished off a bottle of formula…and then bam. Caroline’s first experience with vomiting. We’d brought a change of outfit for her. Unfortuately we hadn’t brought one for me: She got my shirt, my pants, and some on the cloak I’d been wearing. In my 22 years of child rearing, I’ve been hit with pretty much everything the human body can excrete or secrete, so there’s more of a “*Sigh* Not again,” reaction rather than an “Eccchhh! Look what she did to me!” Still, I wasn’t thrilled.
But then cloud cover came rolling in, cooling the day. Caroline, having heaved, promptly fell asleep in my arms and I just stayed there with her for 45 minutes or so. When she woke up she was in a much better mood, a light rain had erased the humidity and brought the temperature down by about ten degrees, and the cloud cover kept the day much more temperate and even enjoyable. Much fun was had at the Renfair, as it usually is when kids aren’t upchucking. And if I were to be philosophical about it, I should be glad that she didn’t puke while she was riding behind me in the backpack.
PAD
I received a box from Wizard via Fed Ex today. I cracked it open and, much to my surprise, discovered that I’d won the 10th Annual Wizard Fan Award for Favorite One-Shot (Hulk: The End.) Shows how much attention I was paying. I didn’t know I’d won, or even that I was up for it. And it was given out at Chicago, a convention I hadn’t been invited to, but would have gone to if they’d asked.
It’s a really nice award. A statue of a little boy reading a comic book. Much nicer than the old ones.
Thanks to everyone who voted.
PAD
Was I the only one who, yesterday afternoon, upon learning that power was going out all over the country and that cell phone systems were down, thought, “Ðámņ. Skynet’s gone active.”
PAD
The lights went out around here at approximately 4:03 PM. Thirty seconds later, the lights came back on. For the first time since I had it installed ten years ago, the heavy duty emergency generator outside the house got a major workout. Not only did we have lights, phones and a working refrigerator, but even the cable stayed on. We had more neighbors coming over in one night than in the last month as folks came by to make calls, watch the news, and just look up at the lights with about as much amazement as Edison’s neighbors must have done when they swung by to see what the latest invention he (or his people) had come up with. The amusing thing, as darkness fell, was watching cars cruise by and slow when they passed the house as the drivers must have thought, “Oh, the power’s back on…wait…”
I admit I did keep worrying about that “Twilight Zone” episode, but fortunately the generator is loud enough that neighbors would attribute the continuing power to that rather than aliens.
The thing that bugs me is imagining bin Laden watching CNN in a cave somewhere, snickering over the continual reassurances that it wasn’t terrorists. Before 9/11 I doubt it even would have occurred to anyone; no one shouted “Terrorists!” in the previous NYC blackouts. But concerns have so insinuated our culture that terrorism has become the first line of panicked reaction.
This has been another fair and balanced blog entry.
PAD
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