So the NY Times article about Jane Bites Back came out on Sunday. Well, it really wasn’t so much about Jane Bites Back as it was about Seth’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

All right, it wasn’t really about Jane Bites Back at all. But I’m still in there, in the last two paragraphs. And two paragraphs in the Times is more than most writers get. So suck it, Joyce Carol Oates. (Disclaimer: JCO is actually super nice. I wrote to her once and she wrote me a really nice letter back.)

Thank you to all three of my friends who wrote to say they saw the piece. The rest of you are jerks.

In other news, I have become more neurotic than ever. Not about the book, although that’s part of it. Just about things in general. Money. The state of the world. My hair. And as some of you know, when I get like this I start organizing things. My house is never cleaner than when I have a manuscript due.

Well Patrick already cleaned this week, so there wasn’t much to do in that department. Because of this I was forced to do something else to waste time. Specifically, I went to the neighborhood Borders bookstore. I’ve recently taken to reading again after a foray into reality television (America’s Next Top Model is brilliant television. No, it is.) and have gotten really into mystery/suspense/thriller stuff. A month or so ago I picked up Reliquary by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child and couldn’t put it down. As usually happens when I find something that holds my attention for more than five seconds I decided to read everything the two of them have done together. Hence my trip to Borders.

I don’t know if you’ve been in a Borders lately. Or, I suspect, any chain bookstore. Well, at some point they appear to have stopped being bookstores and instead become clearing houses for piles of crap. The place was stacked with those big, ugly “gift books” about crocheting pet sweaters and planting container gardens in old bleach bottles. Worse, the ratio of books to non-book items was low. Very low. They actually had displays of lip gloss.

Anyway, I get that times have changed. The internet. Video games. Second Life. Blah blah blah. And bookstores have to adapt. Whatever. Still, it was kind of weird. I tried to ignore it all as I went to look for the books I wanted.

Only I couldn’t find them. First I tried Horror, which is where I’d found the first one (but not at Borders, at my neighborhood shop). Nothing. Then I tried Mystery. Nada. I even looked in General Fiction. Not a trace. But when I used the helpful computer terminal thingy to look up Preston and Childs it assured me that they were there.

I went back to Horror and looked again. After a moment I realized the problem–the books were all out of order. Not just a little bit, but totally and utterly jumbled together with absolutely no regard for alphabetization. Douglas Clegg was next to Dan Simmons. Poor Robert McCammon was scattered between all the shelves as if he’d been drawn and quartered. In short, nothing was where it was supposed to be.

This was annoying for many reasons. First, it was untidy. Second, if you can’t find a book you can’t buy a book. As a reader that makes me crazy; as an author it makes me resent the thirty-two cents I’m losing every time someone can’t find one of my books and leaves empty handed.

The only choice, obviously, was to clean everything up. Which is what I did. It took me the better part of an hour, but by the time I was done every single book was where it was supposed to be. Clegg was on the first shelf next to Ramsey Campbell. Simmons followed John Saul. And Preston and Childs, who I found languishing incorrectly between Lovecraft and Dean Koontz, were finally where they should have been all along.

It is interesting to note that during my re-shelving undertaking not one, not two, not three, but four Borders associates walked by. Not one noticed the piles of books on the floor, or me busily arranging them. Two customers, however, asked me where they could find specific titles: Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love and Stock Investing for Dummies. I am pleased to say I was able to help them, even though they were totally not in my section.

When everything was as it should be I took my Preston and Child books and went to pay for them. At the register I was greeted cheerfully by one of the quartet of oblivious book elves who had walked past me while I was cleaning up the shelves. “And did you find everything you were looking for today?” he asked.

I think I should be commended for not smacking him. And I am so sending Borders a bill for that hour.

Yesterday morning I opened my e-mail, which I do first thing in case someone has written to me during the night to offer me millions of dollars for something (and not in the Nigerian Scam/Irish Lottery kind of way) or George Clooney has come to his senses and asked me to take him back. And there I found a message with the kind of subject line writers love to see: URGENT: QUERY FROM NY TIMES BOOK REVIEW RE: JANE BITES BACK.

Best of all, this time it wasn’t a joke being played by one of my stupid friends. It really was a request from a writer from the Book Review asking if I might be available for an interview regarding the current Jane Austen monster phenomenon. Fortunately my lunch date with the Queen of England and my canasta club meeting had both been canceled, and I was free.

Several e-mails with the publicity department at my publisher later we had a set time of 11:30 AM for the interview. Which or course meant that I couldn’t possibly do any writing because it would be interrupted and my creative fire would be extinguished. So I was forced to play computer backgammon and chess for several hours. I also spoke to my agent, who called to remind me not to say anything stupid.

As 11:30 rolled around I watched the phone for signs of ringing. It’s old and I’ve been having problems with it, so when it got to be 11:45 I hit the call button to make sure there was a dial tone. Then I worried that at that exact moment the reporter had tried to call me and I had canceled out her call. I hung up. Then I remembered that the off button has been sticking, so I hit it a bunch times to make sure I really had hung up. Then I hit the on button to make sure there was a dial tone. The vicious cycle had begun.

Anyway, I eventually stopped checking the phone and then the dogs all decided that they needed to go out. I managed to herd all five of them down the stairs while keeping my eye on the phone and out we went to the back yard. Where all five immediately started barking at nothing, making it impossible for me to hear the phone. Then I remembered that I could just take the handset with me, so I ran back inside for it. But I’d left it upstairs when I went for the dogs, and it was still there. I raced up there, got the handset, and checked the machine to make sure no messages had come from the reporter, who I was certain had called in the ninety seconds it took for all of this to transpire.

The dogs continued to bark despite threats of euthanasia, and I became concerned that if they phone did ring I would have to interrupt my answers to the reporter’s questions with shouts of “Sam! Knock it off!,” “Andrew! Don’t pee on your sister!” or “Teddy! Don’t even think about eating shit!” I suspected this would do nothing for my reputation as a leading literary light. I begged the dogs to behave and became unnerved when they appeared to be laughing at me.

Eventually everybody came back inside and I made them go upstairs, where two of them (Andrew and Teddy) got into a fight. I left them to it, came back downstairs to my office (aka The Garage) and resumed fretting.

By one o’clock I was a little peckish, having eaten only a frosted cinnamon Pop Tart for breakfast. But I didn’t want to make lunch lest the phone ring while I was eating, which seemed rude. However, I perform poorly when I haven’t eaten, and I was getting a little faint. So I risked everything by making a sandwich, which I then wolfed down because if the phone rang I would have to set the sandwich aside and look at it longingly while talking to the Times writer, most likely resulting in my saying something stupid (See: Warnings From Agent above).

At half past one, my sandwich a lead ball in my belly, I called my agent. “She hasn’t called,” I said. “

“Are you sure you weren’t supposed to call her?” he asked.

I frantically checked all of the e-mails from the publicist. “No, it says she’s calling me,” I answered.

“Did it occur to you to call your publicist?” asked my agent.

“Isn’t that what you’re for?” I shot back.

I called the publicist. A few minutes later he called back to say that the reporter was running late and would call me any minute now.

The problem was, I had to pee. But if I went to the bathroom the likelihood was great that the phone would ring mid-stream and I would have to either answer it while finishing up (remember, I had the handset) and hope she thought I was standing near a fountain or try to stop peeing and take the call elsewhere. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to stop peeing, but short of employing a rubber band it’s not as simple an undertaking as it may seem.

Neither option was ideal, so I decided to hold it. But with every minute that went by the need to go became more urgent. At the same time I worried that with every passing minute the call was more likely to come in. Only when my bladder threatened to proceed without me did I give in, holding the handset and praying it wouldn’t ring. Thankfully, it didn’t.

After another fifteen minutes the dreadful thought occurred to me that it might never ring. Perhaps she no longer needed–or wanted–to talk to me. I saw my one chance to appear in the NY Times Book Review go up in smoke. My friends would laugh. My agent would fume. My editor would be disappointed. Worst of all, I had already changed my Facebook page to say that I was being interviewed. In my head I heard the voices of children chanting, “Liar! Liar! Pants on fire!”

Clearly, my life was ruined. The Times hated me. The only option was to kill myself. I wondered if I had enough pills to do the job. I imagined botching it and ending up in a coma, which my insurance totally would not cover.

Then, of course, the phone rang. The reporter was lovely. We chatted for ten or fifteen minutes. We laughed. We made plans to get together for drinks (okay, we didn’t). I hung up. Then I called my agent to let him know the interview had happened after all.

“Did you say anything stupid?” he asked.

I couldn’t remember a single thing I’d said. But the piece comes out next week (I think) and we’ll find out.

Last summer, after trade industry magazine Publishers Weekly mentioned my 3-book deal with Random House for a series of novels featuring Jane Austen as a modern-day vampire in their “Hot Deals” column, I started getting e-mail from Austen fans. Some were a little annoyed by the idea that their beloved Jane was being turned into a bloodsucker, but the vast majority said they were looking forward to the book.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when independent publisher Quirk Books announced the publication of Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Grahame-Smith, the author of a bunch of riotous books including How to Survive a Horror Movie and The Big Book of Porn, has taken the original text of Austen’s classic novel and inserted zombies into the action. Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth find themselves worrying not just about matters of the heart, but about fending off the living dead as well. The bits I’ve read are hysterical.

So, apparently, are some Austen fans, who find this “desecration” of the author and her work to be more terrifying than the living dead. Across the blogosphere people are weighing in yea or nay on the book, all without having read it. It’s not surprising given how protective Austen fans can be about their beloved Jane, but in the end it generates more interest in the book, so I say rage on!

Now just when you think things couldn’t get any odder, word comes that Elton John’s production company, Rocket Pictures, is getting ready to shoot Pride and Predator, in which the alien from the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film (yes, it’s that Predator) crash lands in Austen’s world and carnage ensues. No word on whether or not the Predator will wear an Empire waist dress.

It’s always fascinating when a cultural phenomenon like this occurs. And thanks to the interwebs it’s easy to follow the progress. When I read about Grahame-Smith’s book my initial reaction was that because it would be out first (the zombies arrive this April and my book arrives in early 2010) I’d look like the Jan Brady of the Austen monster craze. Even The New York Times online suggested as much. For a day or so I wandered around practicing my “It’s always Seth, Seth, Seth” routine.

But the fact is, our books could not be more different, and not just because of the zombie vs vampire thing. Seth’s takes place within the world of Austen’s novel. Mine is set in present day and is about Jane herself, not her characters. Seth’s book is 322 pages and mine is 324. His employs a Carlson font and mine uses Garamond. Mine is dedicated to my friend Liz and his is dedicated to . . .

You get the idea. The point is that there’s room for all of us. There’s even room for a werewolf Jane if someone feels like tackling it. And it will be interesting (and probably nervewracking) to see how this all unfolds. I’ll be writing about what happens over the next months, so tune in for updates.