Jas Faulkner

A Critic’s Lament

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by Jas Faulkner 

grump 1Writers occasionally go through periods when the energy is there, but nothing seems to gel.  An idea may formulate and at first it might seem like a sound investment of creative energy.  Then the harsh reality sets in that the back space key has erased nearly one thousand words in one to three hundred word increments.  No loss there.  It was all so much verbal sludge to be hosed away. Maybe the initial idea was good, but this just isn’t its time.  I know this feeling only too well.  It sums up my week in writing.

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Give Your Customers A Break On The 14th

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by Jas Faulkner 

cupid-valentines-day1 For those of you playing at home, I got to go to this rilly nifty sooper sekrit cabal of booksellers in Memphis a little while ago.  The main topic on the dias was the untold history of those who are charged with the care and feeding of visiting authors.  Chatter on the floor was all about the next big push: Valentines Day.  Some booksellers love it, especially those who either have a coffee shop or sell candy.  Others?  Not so much.

“Are you single?” asked one store owner from Kentucky.  I told him I was.

“How do I market so that people will come in on and around the 14th?  The month of February seems to be about people making a rare visit to get a gift and everyone else avoiding anything remotely heart-shaped.”

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Fig Leaves and Cappuccino

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by Jas Faulkner

plain brown cover“How are things?” I asked Sam as I flipped through pictures of Dore engravings.

“Things are great,” said Sam, “Could not be better.  Have I told you my wife is a marketing genius?”

“Do tell.  I take it there’s a good story about to happen.”

Of course there was. And as many of them begin, this one starts with a visit from Taylor Slow.  For whatever reason, she wandered from her usual shelves of choice to the “literature” section, where she found copies of Lolita, The Canterbury Tales, and For Colored Girls… “right out there in the open where any impressionable young person could get hold of ’em!”

“I’m expressing my concern to you directly because I want to give you the chance to address this yourselves.”

“Really?”  Sam, who is one half of the ownership group of the tiny independent book store that not only could but did defy the odds and stay open in their small Mississippi home town glanced up.  She nodded sympathetically and then got back to work because that was what one does when Miss Taylor Slow gets a bee in her bonnet about something.

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Hi, Fidelity!

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by Jas Faulkner 

Mah mah mah mah my Sharona!
Mah mah mah mah mah mah my Sharona!

Ed Cho* and I are visiting one of the stores that uses his designs.  The sound system goes quiet for a second and then a familiar piano intro plays.  A woman who has been browsing pauses and then upon hearing Aretha Franklin’s first lines:

Though you don’t call any more
I sit and wait in vain

The shopper’s face lights up and a measure or two later, she is singing along with emotion and probably more audibly than she realises.  As she sings, she begins to walk around the racks,  picking up articles of clothing and holding them against herself as she decides which pieces she will try on and eventually purchase.    By the time the Queen of Soul finished, her duet partner was carrying three items.  Before the song, she had nothing in her hands and was walking around in way that suggested nothing she saw was particularly appealing.

Ed and I went outside.

“That is what successful audio design looks and sounds like.”

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The Role of Tracy Flick Will Be Played By Lance Armstrong

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by Jas Faulkner 

The remaining members of the media who are not getting the vapors over Manti Te’o’s pretend girlfriend are finding true gold in the race to the stygian levels of athletic malfeasance still being run by Lance Armstrong.

Watching Armstrong try to be likeable on Oprah was like watching two komodo dragons reenact every meet cute scene ever written by Nora Ephron.  You just don’t put someone who has been characterized as a bully and a liar and a cheat with an interviewer who was once visibly miffed because a schizophrenic child was less than impressed with the prospect of sitting down for a chat.  The princess force was too strong on that soundstage for either party to come out looking particularly good.

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Sisterhood of the Traveling Rants: Handlers and Liaisons Speak Out

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by Jas Faulkner

How would these guys handle Miz Eudora’s requests? (HBO Pictures)

 

I got the email from Sam and Tab shortly before the first of the month:

Can you come to Memphis?  It’s a coven meeting and you’re invited!

Why yes, that is coded speech.  Sam usually sends her invitations to coven gatherings via owl or white mice in a pumpkin.   But seriously, the girls are secretive about their professional gatherings and for good reason.  In the early days of the event, they were sometimes overrun by wannabe writers looking for that magic something that would get them published and readers seeking galleys before their favourite authors’ latest hit the shelves.  The attendees are all booksellers except for the occasional guest from the book trade or an author or a book jacket artist or somesuch person who shares their insight and experience and usually brings some very sweet swag.   In return they get a smallish honorarium and a long weekend at the B and B.

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Gently Used, Unfoxed, And Totemic

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by Jas Faulkner 

It was one of those finds in the LitCrit section of McKay’s Books that looked like a good cold weather read.  Playing Joan is an anthology of interviews with actress who have played the Shavian heroine over the years.  The book looked like it was nearly new and had never been read.  At $1.50, it was a deal.  Then I noticed there was a name written on the title page.

Before I get into that, I need to make an admission.  I’m one of those people who loves finding old things in books.  By old things, I don’t mean the dessicated corpses of insects or antique Fritos.  I’m talking about postcards, invoices, ticket stubs,  newspaper clippings and class schedules.   They give me a clue about who read this book before it fell into my hands. I’m also a fan of old library book discards.  It makes my shelves feel well-traveled.  

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Resolution Reading

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by Jas Faulkner 

The covers of the books in the window of Sam and Tab’s book store featured well-toned abs, beautified, decluttered homes, language lessons, and a few self-help titles.  For a characteristically grim touch, Sam dragged out a skeleton and had it seated in one corner of the window display reading Jim Fixx’s “The Complete Book of Running”.

Being the kind of person who will spend time looking at the titles on shelves in pictures, I sent Sam’s IPhoned photo to my email to get a better look.

“What you don’t see,” she said, “is the sign next to the cash register that says we’ll give them a coupon for half off a used book if they sign a promise to not bring them in for trade during the months of February or March of 2013.”

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