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Your Book Reviews Are In
I’ve been to the future. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Quintuple-stuff Oreos. The reanimation of Walt Disney*. Laundry robots. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. And the reviews for your novel. No, not the one you’re writing now, the next one. The one you’re certain is the best possible work you could ever do. (Wait, don’t scrap the one you’re currently writing. It’s the best possible work you could ever do. For now.) The Time Lords wouldn’t let me bring back a laundry robot, but they couldn’t stop me from memorizing what people will say about your novel. Here are just a few of the…
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The Table in the Corner
There is a table in the corner of a small cafe where The Writer sits. It is a table for two, but one seat always remains empty, waiting. The table is next to a bookcase. The books there are dusty, but not forgotten. They have earned their dust. The ghosts would agree. The ghosts often sit in the empty chair, listening. Nodding sympathetically when they’re not nodding off. They understand the dust. Sometimes they draw their names in it. “It’s not easy,” they whisper. “This writing thing.” The Writer often responds aloud. “You’re telling me.” Someone at a nearby table will glance over, then quickly look away. A stymied writer…
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The Worst Book Ever. Or Not.
“Coldplay sucks!” I had my car window open (as required between blizzards by Colorado law). Mylo Xyloto was playing on a recently-purchased stereo that had doubled* the value of my 2000 Jetta. I didn’t see who shouted it. Probably not the elderly woman on the sidewalk who was attached by a taut pink leash to a matching taut pink poodle. And surely not the five-year-old doing donuts on his Big Wheel in the driveway across the street. It’s a pretty safe bet the Chris Martin hate came from someone in the huddle of teenagers admiring their generation’s ironic muscle car, a tricked out Scion tC. I ignored the shout and passed through…