Well, it’s all over. Now everyone is fatter and sleepier than usual. Even the dogs are Thanksgivinged out, and they didn’t even have turkey.

Neither did we, actually. We had fish and chips. At a restaurant. Our friend Jill had the turkey dinner, though. She’s a traditional kind of girl.

Not that we weren’t festive. We were. At least I was. I usually wait until the weekend after Stuff Your Face Day to start thinking about the Festival of Hysterical Consumerism and Unmet Expectations, but this year I decided to get a jump on things. You’ll find out why next week.

It surprises many people when they find out that I have a tiny obsession with Christmas ornaments. I admit to being a tad Grinchy when it comes to the holiday in general, but I’m all for pretty things that I can store in boxes and make lists of.

Here is a picture of some of the ornament storage boxes in the cellar. This is maybe a third of them. What you can’t see in this picture is that each individual ornament is nestled in acid-free tissue paper in its own cardboard box, labeled with its name, maker, and piece number. I told you, I like lists.

Patrick says I have way too many ornaments. I say that I have 417 (which I know because of the aforementioned lists) and that there is always room for more. Well, if I buy more acid-free tissue and boxes and storage bins. And a bigger house. But my point stands.

Anyway, yesterday morning I gave in to tradition and hauled all of the ornament storage bins upstairs. The tree I set up the night before so that I could test the lights, which by some miracle all worked flawlessly. This is a lesson I learned last year when I plugged the old tree in and it started to smoke.

Because I am nothing if not festive, I put myself in the holiday mood by watching The Creature from the Black Lagoon, which as far as I’m concerned is absolutely required holiday watching. That and The Year Without a Santa Claus because it has the Heat Miser in it and he’s the best.

As most of my obsessions do, my fascination with ornaments began accidentally. A couple of years ago I was trolling ebay and stumbled upon what I thought was the oddest ornament I’d ever seen. Here it is.

The seller had it listed as a vintage Russian Christmas ornament and called it something like Mushroom Person. I wrote to him asking if he knew more about it, and he said that it was a character from a popular Russian children’s book. That’s all he knew.

Fast forward a few days. After much googling and going hither and yon I discovered that the book my ornament friend was referring to was Il Romanzo di Cipollino (The Adventures of the Little Onion) by Gianni Rodari. Although little known in North America, Rodari was a very popular Italian writer of books for children, winning the 1970 Hans Christian Andersen Award for his body of work.

But why had Russians made ornaments of characters from his book?

This is where it gets interesting. During World War II, Rodari had been forced to join the Fascist party in order to work as a journalist. However, he was horrified by his experiences (particularly his brother’s incarceration in a German prison camp) and in 1944 he joined the Communist Party and became part of the resistance movement.

And this has what to do with Christmas ornaments, you ask?

Fast forward to 1951 and the publication of Il Romanzo di Cipollino. The book is the story of Cipollino, a little onion boy. Cipollino and his family live with a bunch of other vegetable and fruit people in their little town. Everyone is happy. But then along come the wealthy Mr. Tomato and the Orange Duke. They announce that all the land belongs to them and that the villagers have to work the fields and give it all to their masters. Cipollino’s father speaks out against the tyrants and is jailed. Cipollino sets out to find him and rescue him. Along the way he’s helped by a variety of characters, including the Cherry Boy, the Radish Girl, the Pea Lawyer, and the Mole. Oh, and Dr. Mushroom.

The book has never been translated into English, so I’m going on what I’ve read of the story and what I’ve been told by others who have read the Russian version. But you get the idea. It’s the story of the rich against the poor, the upper class against the underclass, and ultimately evil against good.

The Communist government of Russia thought this was a delightful story, which it is. But they saw something else in it–an opportunity for self-promotion.

WARNING! HISTORY LESSON APPROACHING

Way back in 1917, when the Communists took over following the Russian Revolution, the celebration of religious holidays was forbidden. But the people were a little cranky about having their holidays taken away from them, so the government took a cue from the Christians and did some syncretization.

See, in Days of Yore (DOY) when the Christians got all gung-ho about making sure everyone knew about Jesus, they encountered a little bit of resistance from the pagans of Britain and Ireland. These folks were pretty happy with their gods and didn’t see why they should start worshiping a new one they’d never met before.

The Christians tried beating sense into the pagans, but they found this did little for their popularity, so they hired a PR guy who came up with a brilliant idea. “Hey,” he said. “Instead of taking all of the pagan holidays away, why not just kind of smoosh them together with the Christian ones? That way people might not notice.”

It worked like this: They picked an already-existing pagan celebration and stuck Jesus into it. Yule (the winter solstice) was already a big deal. It was the time of year when the bleak, dark days of winter were the longest and everyone was pretty well sick of it. But then came the return of the young Oak King, who slew the aging Holly King and brought light back to the world.

Sound familiar? The Christians thought so to, so what they did was just replace the Oak King with the Baby Jesus and there you are. “See,” they told the pagans. “You can still have your Yule and your Oak King, only now you have to call them Christmas and Jesus. What? No, no, it’s exactly the same. Oh, except if you slip up and use the old names in front of us we’ll set you on fire or drop rocks on your heads. Otherwise, you’re good to go.”

Now back to the Communists. They had a PR guy too, and he looked at how well syncretization had worked for the people trying to get God into a resistant culture and thought it might work just as well in getting God out of a resistant culture.

This is where Cipollino and his friends come in. The Communists knew that no matter what they said the people still wanted their holidays. So they compromised. Christmas celebrations were turned into New Year celebrations. God and the Baby Jesus and all of that went out the window and were replaced with figures that glorified the Communist ideals of national identity and brotherhood.

Christmas ornaments based on figures from traditional Russian folk tales and legends (like Baba Yaga and her house perched atop a chicken foot, left) were already popular. But now ornaments were produced that both subtly and not so subtly reinforced Communist ideals. Ornaments of Soviet cosmonauts were hung on trees beside hammer-and-sickle designs. Cipollino and his friends were turned into whimsical ornaments. Placed on trees, they naturally attracted the attention of children, who were then told the story of the brave onion boy and his longsuffering comrades.

Brilliant, isn’t it? Who knew that Christianity and Communism had so much in common?

I find these ornaments fascinating. But when I tried to learn more about them I discovered that most of the Russian sellers knew almost nothing. The person who is probably the most informed expert on their history is actually an American–Kim Balaschak–who discovered the ornaments while living in Moscow and working as an efficiency expert for Russian companies.

It was Kim who got me up to speed on the ornaments and what they really represent. Through her I learned that the ornament generally identified as “a bearded soldier” is actually Ilya Muromets, one of three legendary bogatyrs (knights or heroes) whose exploits are celebrated in Russian folklore. Similarly, the ornament that frequently appears as “a goat” is actually Ivanushka, a boy from the tale “Alyonushka and Ivanushka,” in which he is turned into a goat after disobeying his sister.

Okay, yes, the ornaments are a soldier and a goat. But they’re so much more than that. There’s a rich history behind them that is rapidly disappearing as young Russians raid their grannies’ attics to make some money on ebay. Most of them couldn’t care less what folktales are represented, or why anyone would make a Christmas tree ornament of a doctor who has the head of a chestnut (another of the Cipollino characters).

But I do, which is why I now have boxes of fragile, chipped Russian ornaments. I have a lot of the ornaments based on Russian folk tales, as well as some of those more obviously intended as propaganda. But the Cipollino ornaments are my favorites, and after several years I now have almost all of them. (We think there are 22, of which I have 16.) Sadly, the ones I don’t have might be gone forever. Kim knows of only one complete set, and the ornaments have virtually disappeared from the collector market. My Russian contacts (I love saying that, like I’m a spy or a heroin smuggler) haven’t seen them in years and don’t think they will. After all, glass doesn’t hold up well and many young people think these are junk and simply throw them away when their parents or grandparents die.

Every time I put the Russian ornaments on the tree I think, “If this breaks I can’t get another one.” All it would take is one of the dogs knocking the tree over for all of this history to be gone. But I do it anyway. I don’t like to think of them spending the rest of their lives in boxes. I want them out where I can see them and where other people can see them. I like telling their stories.

I have a ton of other ornaments as well, of the more common variety. And these are fascinating too, some because they’re just beautiful (to me anyway) and some because you just have to wonder why anyone would make an ornament of, say, a bellhop. But they did. And there are stories behind some of these as well.

But those will have to wait for another time.

I have written some very bad sentences. I’ve overloaded them with adverbs to the point where they resembled rococo drawing rooms. I’ve used seventeen words when two would do. I once compared a character’s uncircumcised penis to a sleeping bat.

While it is embarrassing to find these sentences in my own work, I love finding them in other people’s books. It reminds me that I am not the only writer who has days when his brain goes on the fritz.

Every year I go to British Columbia and/or Alaska with my friend Lynn to go scuba diving on our friend Mike’s boat. We’re usually out there a week or so, and in between dives we read. We used to do things like look for orcas and bears and visit Haida villages, but after seven years we’re kind of over them. Especially the Haida villages.* So we read.

Lynn reads much more quickly than I do and goes through maybe seven or eight books per trip. I get through two or three. The problem is that bringing more than a couple of books uses up valuable luggage space. What with the dive gear and assorted this and that there isn’t much room to begin with. Also, books are heavy, and now that the airlines charge you twice the price of a ticket for bringing more than 8 pounds of stuff we’re totally paranoid about that.

Because of this we rely on the ship’s library. Guests leave the books they finish and take ones left by other passengers. It’s a nice system, and every year we find ourselves with a new crop of books from which to choose. Except for Mercedes Lackey’s The Black Gryphon, which has not moved from its shelf in the seven years we’ve been going on these trips. Every year I’m tempted to read it just because I feel sorry for it, but now ignoring it is something of a tradition.

Depending on the library for our reading material is of course something of a gamble. If the previous guests were of dubious taste you can end up with a lot of stuff you don’t want to read. Or–as happened to us one year–if the departing guests are German you’re left with books you can’t read even if you wanted to. But usually there’s something.

Because we are horrid people, Lynn and I like to share with one another the worst lines of the books we’re reading. It’s something of a competition to find the most awful one. On this last trip I found a doozy. In fact, when I came across it I knew without a doubt that I had found our winner for the entire trip.

Ready? Here it is.

“His praise was so effusive that, even reading it by herself, in her own kitchen, she was slightly embarrassed by the effusiveness of the praise.”

Isn’t it brilliant? We thought so. It’s practically a structural palindrome of hideousness. Every time I read it we would shriek for two or three minutes. Then Lynn would ask me to read it again.

Okay, it’s not bad in an “It was a dark and stormy night,” Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest way. It’s almost worse, because it’s such a nothing little sentence. Ordinarily you wouldn’t even notice it, skimming past to get to the murder, or the sex scene, or the part where the kraken swallows the ship whole. But because it shouldn’t stand out, it does. Kind of like the mousy girl who comes out of the restroom with the back of her skirt accidentally tucked into the waistband. You wouldn’t normally look at her twice, but now you can’t stop staring at her pink-and-purple-polka dotted underpants.

So who wrote this gem? It comes from the pen of Dean Koontz and is found in his novel The Eyes of Darkness. Written in 1981, the book was originally published under the name Leigh Nichols, and according to Koontz this was an early stab at writing a cross-genre novel. I know what it’s like to switch between genres. It’s difficult to change your approach and get the new voice right. Also, Koontz writes eleventy-six books a year and is bound to have a clunker now and again. So in some ways I’m tempted to cut him some slack.

Here’s the thing, though. According to various Koontz bibliographies, The Eyes of Darkness is his 38^th published book (including books done under other pseudonyms). That’s a lot of books to have written, so many that you might be tempted to think he wouldn’t be writing sentences like that.

But he did. Because that’s what writers do. We write bad sentences. Not always, of course, but from time to time. Readers just don’t usually see them. Often we find them and get rid of them before anyone else sees the manuscript, and if we don’t then usually an editor or copyeditor finds them and tells us how awful they are.

But not always. Sometimes things get through. That’s just how it is. And inevitably some smart ass reader will send you or your editor a note letting you know that this horrible sentence made it past all of you. Sometimes they will helpfully offer to read future manuscripts for a small fee to prevent this kind of thing from happening to you again. Every so often they just tell you they hate your book and you should be ashamed of yourself for thinking you can write.

And sometimes they’re right and their comments are helpful. Several times I’ve used the wrong character’s name in a sentence. Occasionally I’ve made factual errors. (Did you know there are no laundromats in Provincetown? I didn’t.) In one novel I confused the nicknames for the University of Pennsylvania (Penn) with that of Pennsylvania State University (Penn State). And people let me know so that I could fix the errors in the paperback editions of the books. Which I mostly did.

It’s interesting to note that the version of The Eyes of Twilight that I read is the REVISED edition, published in 2008. That means, I assume, that Koontz looked over the original and did some tinkering. I wonder if he saw this sentence and decided to leave it alone because it amused him or if he saw it, was blinded by its awfulness, and like a victim of some terrible event (the Blitz, maybe, or someone who stumbles upon Glenn Beck’s show by accident) developed amnesia to protect him from the memory of it.

By all accounts Dean Koontz is one of the nicest human beings on the planet. He loves his dog. His readers adore him. He still answers fan mail. I like a guy like that. And I like him even more because he wrote such a terrible sentence. If we were friends I would call him up, read him that sentence, and say, “Ha ha! That’s crap, Dean!” And he would open one of my books, read something, and say, “It’s not as crappy as that, Mike!” Then we’d complain about how Stephen King never invites either of us to his poker games.

By the way, if you want to read a very, very funny account of the experience Koontz had with turning this and several other novels into made-for-television movies, check out this entry on his website. It’s hysterical.

*Handy Travel Hint: If you ever find yourself touring a Haida village, do not ask them where the Haida bed is. They don’t think this is funny.

Today’s blog is not brought to you by the letter N.

So Sarah Palin’s book came out yesterday. Did you pick up your copy? If not, you can get one cheap. Amazon (where it’s #1) is selling it for $14.50. So is Walmart. Since those two sellers account for a huge chunk of book sales in this country, chances are they’ll move quite a few copies.

They’ll have to if Palin is going to earn back the reported $5 to $7 million advance HarperCollins paid her. Just how many copies? Let’s do the math. For the sake of argument, split that estimated advance down the middle and say she got $6 million. The best-case scenario for Palin is that she gets a 15% royalty on the book’s list price of $28.99, meaning that for each copy sold she’s credited approximately $4.35. At that rate she needs to sell 1,379,319 copies before her advance is earned back and she sees anything more.

She very well might. HarperCollins reportedly shipped 1.5 million copies of Going Rogue to booksellers. That’s a huge number. Granted, Palin will have to sell nearly every single one of them if she wants to see any more payouts, but it’s not impossible to imagine. There are a lot of Walmarts.

And I hope she does.

What? You’re surprised? Why? I wish every author nothing but success and happiness. Palin worked really hard on her book, and she deserves the attention she’s receiving.

Okay, that’s not true. I have ulterior motives in wishing her success. Did I mention that Palin and I share a publisher? Well, we do. True, her book was published by the adult division and mine are published by the children’s division, but we’re all one big happy family. Why, I bet my editor could just pick up the phone and ask Sarah’s editor if Palin would like to exchange autographed copies of our books and next thing you know Sarah and I would be chatting over steak and endless salad bar at Sizzler.

Or not. I doubt Palin would want to read my Harper books. She might like my upcoming zombie novel, Z. There are guns in that one. But my last one, Suicide Notes, is about a gay boy. Sarah’s not a big fan of the gays. Neither is Lynn Vincent, the ghostwriter who actually penned Going Rogue. She really doesn’t like us. In fact, she went so far as to compare us to Communists and declare that “the homosexual ethos depends on an abandonment of truth.” I know, rude much?

There’s a little bit of irony here. See, the success of Palin and Vincent’s book is due largely to the work of Jonathan Burnham, the HarperCollins publisher who shepherded the project. Burnham is gay (calm down, it’s not a secret), and enough people have pointed out the irony that it’s hard to believe Palin is unaware of it. Then again, that would require reading a paper or something, so perhaps not. But you’d think someone would have mentioned it, maybe right after telling her about Levi Johnston’s Playgirl shoot.

Anyway, Burnham has taken some heat from folks who think he shouldn’t be dealing with the likes of Palin and Vincent. But I think they’re missing the point, or at least not seeing the bigger picture. Think about it. Going Rogue is going to make a heap of money for HarperCollins. And that will make it possible for them to keep publishing writers like myself who don’t bring in all that much for them.

So a big thank-you to Sarah and Lynn! And to all the people buying their book! Every time a Walmart checkout person scans another copy of Going Rogue and another $4.35 goes into Sarah’s account, there’s a little something going into HarperCollins’s pocket as well. Eventually that little something gets passed on to me as a littler something and I get to write another book.

Yes, critics aren’t being very kind to Sarah. And sure they’ve found one or two or a hundred factual errors in the book. But she was on Oprah, and that’s something. Give the poor woman a break. And buy her book. Heaven knows I she could use the money.

One more thing. Jane Bites Back got another review. This one comes from Library Journal. And they love it. Check it out.

In this clever paranormal tale, YA author Ford has created warm, witty characters that will appeal to both Janeites and vampire fanciers. Literary humor and intriguing snippets from Jane’s book are the icing on the cake. Two more books are promised in this series, so readers who fall under Jane’s spell will be eagerly awaiting her next adventure.

I know, they call me a YA author. Which I am. I’ve written what, 30 novels for that audience? But it’s not like this is my first novel for adults. It’s my seventh. So it’s kind of funny. And anyone who writes in different genres will tell you that this is one battle you’ll never win. Reviewers of your YA novels will always say something like “Ford takes a break from his popular fantasy series about Jane Austen living as a modern-day vampire to try his hand at a story for younger readers,” and reviewers of your adult novels will say something like “YA author Ford moves into grown-up territory with his latest.”

Hey, as long as they like it, it’s fine with me. (Cue Sally Field acceptance speech music.) And they do like it! They really like it!

I know today was supposed to be the premier of Creepy Clown Monday. But something magical and wonderful has happened and I can’t wait to share it with you.

The first two chapters of Jane Bites Back are now available to read and/or download on scribd.

FOR FREE.

That’s right, you can trot on over there and see what all the fuss is about. So get to it. And tell your friends. They’ll thank you later, but I’ll thank you now.

Again, if you want to read the first two chapters of the book Publishers Weekly called “fang-tastic,” go here.

Creepy Clown Monday will debut next week. I promise.

It’s been an odd day.

When I got up this morning I thought I would spend the day answering copy editing queries on the manuscript for Z, the zombie-themed young adult novel I have coming out in 2010. But first–in a blatant concession to procrastination–I checked in with one of my online groups to see what was going on. I’ve been in this group for three or four years now. There are maybe thirty or so of us who make up the core group, and although only a few of us have met in real life, I consider a lot of them good friends.

The nature of this group runs to the sarcastic, which is why most of us enjoy it. We tease each other. We say terrible, outrageous things. We occasionally get our feelings hurt and don’t speak to each other for a while. It’s definitely not for everybody, but particularly for those of us who have been around for a while it’s a place where we can be ourselves and not worry about being judged.

Having a dark sense of humor is par for the course in this group, so when I saw the thread in which one of my friends claimed to have attempted suicide last night I at first assumed it was another of his jokes. But it soon became apparent that it wasn’t. Fortunately, his attempt failed, yet the feelings that prompted it (triggered by going off his meds) were obviously still there. Most distressing was that after half a dozen posts our friend disappeared, and those posts had been left hours before most of us read them. For all we knew, he had tried again, maybe had even succeeded.

The general feeling was that someone should call him or go and check on him. The thing was, we only knew bits and pieces about him. One person knew in what city he lived. Another knew–or thought she knew–his last name. Somebody had an address from a CD swap we did last year but didn’t think he still lived there. And anyway, what would we do with this information? No one lives close enough to go make sure he was okay. Should we call the police and ask them to check on him? Try to find a phone number and call him ourselves?

We found a phone number for a listing at his address. It turned out to be a book shop. I called and discovered that the building was actually a huge complex of stores and residential units. The woman I spoke to had never heard of our friend. Also, I think she thought I was either lying or insane.

All of this information was relayed to the rest of the group in real time. As new pieces of information were collected people threw out new possibilities. Meanwhile, a Google search of our friend’s screen name connected us to his blog and to other groups of which he is a member. One of them mentioned the university he’d begun attending last year.

It occurred to me that we could call the student services department of the university and that perhaps they could contact our friend or send emergency services to check on him. The question was, what if he was joking. We’d look like idiots and he might get in trouble. Or, even if he had in fact attempted suicide, what if he resented our interference in his life?

I decided to make the call. I don’t think the woman who answered the phone believed me at first, but eventually she transferred me to someone who did. “I don’t even know if we have the right name,” I told him. “This is all guesswork. But we figure if he is registered there and you can check on him it’s better to have him mad at us than dead.” I think that like the lady in the book shop he at first also thought I was insane, but the more details I gave him the more concerned he became.

Because of privacy issues, the man couldn’t even confirm if our friend really was a student at the school, although the tone of his reply suggested that we did in fact have the right name. When I hung up, I definitely felt as though something would be done. Whether we would ever know what it was or not was another matter. And how our friend would react to our attempt at helping him was yet to be seen.

Maybe half an hour later there was a post in the group. Our friend was fine, or at least he was awake. He had, he said, been sleeping since making his earlier posts. He was about to go see his psychiatrist. He had yet to read all of our responses, but was grateful for the offers of help and genuinely surprised that we would go through so much trouble for him. He promised not to do anything stupid. As far as I know, he hasn’t.

Patrick sometimes teases me about thinking that people I know only through online interactions are real friends. But I do. At least some of them. Still, deciding to get involved in this person’s life in a fairly intrusive way tested that. It would have been easier to ignore the situation or to write it off as a really bad joke. It would have been easier to “let someone else worry about it.” After all, we only know this guy through an online group, right?

But I’m glad we did something. I’ve been where he is. I know what it feels like. Sometimes that darkness seems so welcoming and part of you doesn’t want anyone to turn a light on. But then someone does and you realize that you were hoping all along that they would. Hopefully our friend feels that way tonight.

Oh, the other part of the day. Well, first I got a pile of creepy clown videos in the mail, so look for the first review on Monday. Also, the audio rights to Z sold and the pet store got silk worms back in stock and Ocho Patas is totally pigging out. So yay for us. Good times. Good times.

The other night my friend Jill and I ventured to the theater to see An Education. It was a no-brainer: period setting (1960’s England!), fantastic costumes (pearls and gloves! Odile Dicks-Mireaux!), great music (Juliette Greco! Brenda Lee!), a scandalous romance (He’s 30! She’s 16!), and so on. We live for that kind of thing. Patrick, who does not, elected to skip it.

Oh, and it was good. Especially Carey Mulligan, who plays Jenny, the young woman swept away by Peter Sarsgaard. She’s so absolutely fantastic you just want to hand her an Oscar now and tell everyone else to go home. Peter Sarsgaard is pretty good himself, although his British accent is a little awkward and he’s so adorable that it’s hard to watch him be a jerk. And despite her freaky deer eyes–and even though last month I couldn’t fully enjoy Surrogates because I spent most of it trying to figure out where I’d seen Bruce Willis’s wife before (I eventually remembered that it was in Pride & Prejudice way back in 2005)–Rosamund Pike is so good in her role that I totally forgive her and we can be friends again.

Anyway, go see the film. Even though you don’t leave all thrilled about life, it’s worth seeing just for Cary Mulligan’s performance, Rosamund Pike’s outfits, and Peter Sarsgaard’s goofy smile.

One of my favorite parts of the movie is the script, which is by Nick Hornby (who wrote the novels High Fidelity and About a Boy) from the memoir by Lynn Barber. There are too many great lines to remember, but one that stuck in my head is spoken by Jenny’s father. Earlier in the movie Jenny goes away for the weekend with Peter (Peter Sarsgaard’s character), who has lied to Jenny’s parents and told them that they’re going to Oxford to see the university there and to visit C.S. Lewis, who Peter claims is a friend of his. He even fakes Lewis’s signature on a copy of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe as evidence of their closeness.

Later, when things with Peter begin to unravel, Jenny gets into a heated discussion with her father, who has completely fallen under Peter’s spell and doesn’t want Jenny to stop seeing him. In an attempt to convince her to give the relationship another chance, he enumerates Peter’s virtues, among them the fact that he knows a famous writer. Jenny counters that her school friend Graham (who has an obvious crush on Jenny, and who is constantly outdone by Peter throughout the film) might actually write books one day, to which her father responds dismissively, “Becoming one isn’t the same as knowing one.”

Jill and I roared at this (well, we tittered, as we loathe people who make noise during films), although no one else seemed to find it all that funny. Probably because they aren’t writers. Because, see, this is so true. Although slightly intriguing in theory, in reality writers tend to be anxious, unsocial people who find life tiresome and always want to borrow money. Being a writer essentially means committing your life to your work, which is to say that you’re always stressed out about deadlines, perpetually convinced that you have brain cancer, and seldom get to go on vacation and when you do you don’t enjoy it because all you can think about is the deadlines and brain cancer. There are of course writers whose lives are not like this, but we don’t like her and only go to her parties because we can’t afford that kind of imported cheese on what we make.

Knowing a writer, however, now that’s a whole different thing. When you tell people you know a writer it’s like announcing that you know, say, a unicorn, or a mermaid. Something mythical. People are impressed that you know someone who writes books (or at least books that they’ve heard of). But this is only because they don’t know the writer in question. If they did, they would just roll their eyes. And should they happen to subsequently meet your writer it will end badly for you. I once had a friend pay me a visit and bring along someone I didn’t know. It turned out this person was just dying to meet my friend’s writer friend. That would be me. And apparently I was not what she was hoping for. At one point during the long, tedious afternoon I overheard her whisper to my friend, “I thought he would have nicer furniture.”

I know a few other writers, some of whom people have actually heard of. Occasionally it will come out that I know So-and-so, and not just in a “we have the same publisher” kind of way. Inevitably the person who hears this asks, “What is he really like?” Even people who should know better ask this. And I always say to them something I heard a friend of Stevie Nicks say she tells people who ask her what Stevie is really like: “She’s exactly the way you think she is.”

Because the illusion is what makes knowing so much better than being. Being involves, well, being. Knowing gives you all the benefits of being associated with fabulousness but without any of the icky stuff that comes with it. You don’t have to actually write the books or make the movies or go to rehab, you just have to know the person who does. And that’s really what most people care about. If you tell them you know a prostitute*, for example, they will more often than not think that you’re a daring sort who leads a very interesting life. Tell them that you are a prostitute, however, and now you’re just a whore who has crashed the party.

I have to get back to being a writer now. Try not to get too excited about it. I wouldn’t want to disappoint you.

*In the above example you may, for prostitute, substitute paroled felon, film agent, and Scientologist, among others.

For some reason Mondays bring the most reader mail. I don’t know if it’s because people have more time over the weekend and decide that writing to me is preferable to cleaning out the garage or what, but the mailbox always seems to be particularly stuffed come the start of the week.

Today I received two e-mails that–for very different reasons–made me happy. Here’s the first one. (Note: I’ve changed the writers’ names, but the text is unedited.)

Mr. Ford,

Were you born a homosexual or did you choose to become one (long story short I’m writing a research paper for my English 104 class and I came upon your book, and I just HAD to email you)?

Thank You,

Debbie in Dubuque

I get a lot of mail from students writing papers, mostly from kids who have read one of my young adult novels. Usually they arrive on Sunday evening and end with “my paper is due tomorrow morning, so please write me back before 8:30.” Also popular is the “My teacher told us to write to someone who wrote a book and ask what it’s like to write a book and where do you get your ideas so I picked you and could you send me a signed book kthxbi” letter.

Patrick tells me not to answer these letters. But here’s the thing–they’re not letters, they’re blackmail notes. Oh, they might sound all cute and friendly, but read between the lines. Do you see it? Right there? The part that says:

“You could ignore this but if you do I’ll tell all my friends that you’re mean and your book sucks, and they’ll tell all their friends, and then I’ll tell my cousin Amy in New Jersey and she’ll tell all her friends, and this summer I’ll tell everyone at Camp Monkewinnemac and then pretty soon every kid in the whole United States will hate you, and once I write to my penpal Jeanine in France so will everyone in Europe, and also I’ll tell everyone in my Jonas Brothers online group and then it will be all over the internet and you might as well die.”

So it’s a problem.

But I like Debbie’s letter. First, the subject line was: REALLY Quick Question! Clearly, she understands that a world-famous author such as myself is terribly busy and can’t possibly have time to interact with his readers. A clever girl, our Debbie. Thoughtful. It makes me wonder about her. Who is she? What is this English 104, and what kind of teacher does Debbie have who is encouraging the students to write to world-famous homosexual authors? It gives me much to think about. Why, it’s practically the foundation for a thrilling novel!

Then there’s today’s second e-mail.

Mike, I am a Viet Nam veteran. I remember the exact moment I came out to myself. I was sitting on a pile of dirt, filling sandbags, getting ready for the Tet holiday, 1972, feeling like shit. And a sergeant walked by on his way to the shower, with only a towel wrapped around his waist and flip/flops on his feet. I realized whatever joy, happiness, fulfillment there is in this life; I would find it only with another man. Your descriptions of the night of the draft lottery, the first smell of Viet Nam when getting off the plane; these are memories that few people I know can identify with. And you described them so well.

Thank you.

A Soldier

Now, I know what novel this man is talking about. It’s Full Circle. And I’ve received this letter before. Not the same one, of course, but similar ones. And every time they make me cry.

I am not one of those writers who gets feelings of well-being and contentment from having written a book. I am one of those writers who is almost constantly overwhelmed by feeling that there isn’t a point to anything, including the writing of books. At least until I read letters like this one. Then I remember that there is a point–sometimes you tell a story that allows someone else to realize that their story is important.

This is a good feeling. It usually doesn’t last long, sometimes an hour, or a day, maybe a week or two at most. But often it’s enough to lift that oppressive wet wool blanket of doubt that often makes writing an impossible task. For me, anyway. I know there are writers who get up every morning and do cartwheels over the thought of working all day. But I hate those writers and don’t talk to any of them, and so occasionally I need people like A Soldier to remind me why I do this.

So thanks to Debbie in Dubuque and A Soldier for brightening my day. Debbie, I hope you get an A. Soldier, it was an honor to capture some of your experience in my novel.

Oh, what did I answer Debbie? I told her I was born fabulous and grew into it.

Two good things today.

First up, I got the cover for my next Kensington novel, The Road Home. After making a slight detour with the cover for What We Remember we’re back to the look of the earlier novels. Once again the cover art is by painter Steve Walker. It’s called “Tender in the Grass.”

The Road Home is a “smaller” story than my last couple books have been. It focuses on one man–Burke Crenshaw–who following an accident finds himself recuperating in his childhood home in Vermont with the help of his widower father. When Burke, who is a photographer, becomes interested in the story of a Civil War soldier who lived in the area, he begins a journey of discovery that unearths not only the secrets of the past but of Burke’s own life.

Oh, did I mention that there’s also a torrid little romance involving the son of Burke’s best friend from high school (with whom Burke once had a never-again-mentioned encounter)? And that during the course of his investigation into the Civil War mystery Burke meets an oddly-appealing librarian who forces him to rethink everything he believes about what it means to be happy?

No? Well, that’s all in the book too. You can find out for yourself when it comes out in June of 2010.

Of more immediate interest is the latest review for Jane Bites Back. This one comes from Kirkus.

Keen readers will perhaps pick up on the semi-snarky remark in the closing lines of the review. Do not be alarmed. Kirkus reviews are required by law to contain at least one bitter morsel*, and for them this is radiant praise. I am very pleased.

And now to their verdict:

Armed only with her vampire powers, 192-year-old Jane Austen hits the publicity trail to promote what fond readers think is her first novel. Though the standard reference works agree that the author of Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park died in 1817, they’re all wrong. After being turned into a vampire by a bite from a contemporaneous celebrity author, Jane Austen faked her own death and went into hiding. At first she sought the company of her own kind, but she drifted away from vampires and ended up as Jane Fairfax, owner of Flyleaf Books in cozy Brakeston, N.Y.

The only blots on her happiness have been her inability to return the love of widowed carpenter Walter Fletcher—what would she tell him when he grew older but she didn’t?—and the 116 rejection slips awarded her novel Constance. (There’s some justice here, since excerpts employed as chapter epigraphs are rather overripe for Austen.) Now, however, the second of these trials seems to be at an end. Kelly Littlejohn of Browder Publishing loves Constance and wants to publish it in time for the beach-reading season. Jane promptly scores a spot on the TV show Comfort and Joy and an interview with Entertainment Weekly. Soon after she’s invited to a conference on romance fiction and Constance debuts as #1 on the NYTBR list. But Jane’s Cinderella story is comically curdled by her discomfort with airplanes, makeup and publicity, the need to keep her private life private, dark accusations of plagiarism—not to mention her thirst for the blood of an English professor, one of the talk-show hosts and, most satisfyingly, the philistine author of a self-help volume entitled Waiting for Mr. Darcy.

Ford (What We Remember, 2009, etc.) approvingly cites Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but his own mashup is better integrated, more knowledgeable about Austen and considerably funnier—although not quite as funny as his gorgeous premise might suggest. First of a promised trilogy.

We’ll just ignore that “not quite as funny” part. It’s a fine line. Go too over the top and they accuse you of parody. Try to keep it just this side of that line and you’re “not quite as funny.” And so it goes.

*This is not true. No one makes them do it. They just do.

I’m still sick. I know, it’s annoying. Really annoying. I’m all for lazing about the house in one’s pajamas, but even that gets old after a few days. And let me tell you something–two seconds after Halloween is over all of the delicious horror movies disappear and are replaced by Christmas crap, so it’s not even fun to watch TV.

By the way, don’t even get me started on the ghastliness that is QVC and the Home Shopping Network, which you should never watch after loading up on Tylenol PM. What the hell am I going to do with three Advent calendars?

Anyway, I haven’t gotten much done in the way of work. Or, really, in the way of anything. Mostly I’ve just been lying around complaining about how hot it is and sucking on Otter Pops, the last box of which Patrick found hidden at the back of the freezer at Safeway.

But I have managed a couple of things in the past few days, so here we go.

1. I voted.

I wasn’t going to, but Patrick made me. He also made me a handy list of how to vote. I mostly followed it, although one of the propositions was worded oddly and it was difficult to read what with the Robitussin flowing through my veins and I might have inadvertently voted to allow Gavin Newsom to be declared King of San Francisco.

Our polling station is at a house a few blocks away. The woman has dogs, and they were barking because they were annoyed at being locked up for the day. In case you’re interested, they’re cattle dogs ( I asked). Oh, and on the way home we met two enormous bloodhounds, one of which is having surgery on her back this week to repair a ruptured disk. That’s not something you run into every day.

By the way, I know I look like crap in this picture. Did I mention that I’m sick?

2. I listened to the new Tegan and Sara album

I downloaded Sainthood last week when it came out, but didn’t listen to the whole thing until this weekend. I love it. My favorite tracks are “The Cure,” “On Directing,” “Hell,” and “Paperback Head,” but honestly there’s not a bad song on here.

I want Tegan and Sara to be my best friends. We would sit around watching B-movies and eating SweeTarts and saying absolutely hysterical things. Also, when they’re on the road we would call each other on the phone every Thursday and critique the Project Runway outfits. And of course they would let me sing backup on their next album.

3. I watched Sauna.

I’ve been waiting for this to come out on DVD ever since my friend Douglas Clegg told me about it earlier this year. And it was worth the wait.

Marketed as a horror movie, this beautiful film is much more than that. Set in 1585 at the end of the 25-year war between Russia and Sweden/Finland, the story centers on two brothers who are part of a delegation sent to map the new boundary lines between Finland and Russia. One brother has spent years as a soldier, while the other has been sheltered at university.

I won’t reveal too much of the story except to say that the delegation stumbles upon a strange village and are forced to confront the decisions they’ve made and the deeds they’ve done during the war. Ultimately the film asks whether or not those choices are inevitable, what is right and wrong (particularly during war), and if there is really any way to atone for these choices. I found it a moving and visually stunning exploration of the way in which the effects of our decisions extend far beyond our own lives.

One word of caution: The subtitles suck. (My favorite line is along the lines of, “This food is not even good enough for a butt.”) Thankfully, the acting is excellent and you’ll figure out what’s happening despite the obviously inadequate translation.

Okay, so I haven’t done much in the past four days. I’m sure there was other stuff I just can’t remember right now. Did I mention that I’m sick? And the day isn’t over yet. I could still accomplish a thing or two.

But first I’m going to take a nap.