Archive for September, 2009

Romance isn’t dead. At least not in the Romance aisle.

Posted on September 30th, 2009
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I’m not ashamed to admit it, but I thought working in a bookshop would be romantic. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t expect Mr Darcy to come galloping out from the pages, all dashing and misunderstood, I mean hoped… but didn’t actually believe.

It just so happened that my one great love affair has always been with books. They are that proverbial shoulder to cry on. They cheer you up, they bring you down – they even make you think WHAT THE BLOODY HELL WAS THAT ALL ABOUT? At least that’s what I thought as I turned the last page of Breaking Dawn and proceeded to throw it into the bin.

Oh alright then, you caught me. I didn’t actually do that. I mean I wanted to, badly in fact, but at the end of the day, it was a book. And it deserved more. Besides, haven’t I just been saying that my one great love has been BOOKS? How could I chuck something away that I essentially loved? It’d be like chucking away a boyfriend. It’s to that end, I rarely get rid of books; and if owning one was like a marriage, I’d be a polygamist several million times over.

When you are committed (not psychiatrically, although sometimes I think I need it) to something, you want to be able to spend your whole day with it. That’s when the brilliant idea of working in a bookshop found me.

The visions I had were glorious, let me tell you. I often still dream about them and in one such fantasy, I’d be reading all day – all the time – stopping only to turn the pages of the book or to serve a customer if they were lucky. Sometimes I even imagined them asking me for recommendations on any great novel I’d read recently. I’d laugh at them, sometimes patronisingly, sometimes not. Perhaps if I was feeling particularly self-effacing [snort] I’d look up from one such ‘great book’ I was in the middle of reading and I’d turn to them and say, “Yeah, of course. Of course I’ve read great stuff.”

As if it was even a question; as if they had to ask to me.

To me it wasn’t so much recommending as it was matching – or rather matchmaking the book to the reader. The books were my babies; it’s only fair I gave them to the right person. Not everyone deserved to read Wuthering Heights after all.

And that’s where my fairy tale ended. Reality set in, the dust settled – literally – over everything and my back ached. Who knew books could feel so heavy?

I suppose in some way, I’d been conned out of my fairytale. Yes, I may have been working in a bookshop, but it was at the airport. There’s no relaxed, coffee shop vibe about the place. It’s all stress, stress, stress and my plane is boarding ten minutes ago and I need these books NOW, NOW, NOW! Hurry up will you?

Imagine going on holiday every day. How exciting you think. But then you realise, you’re not going on holiday – you’re just going into work. You go through the hassle of checking in at security, of the queues, of airport prices, (or as I like to call it extortionate prices) of being whacked with trolley’s and hand luggage bags, all of which are being rolled across the floor and then your foot (so quite why it’s called hand luggage is beyond me) and then at the end of it all, there is no jet setting. You check in – you check back out.

So you see there’s no time to recommend them anything, no time to read – hardly a second to breathe. Not that I’d want to with the amount of dust in the air. Picture the peaked caps of the Himalaya’s, but instead of snow, all you have is dust. Thick disgusting layers of black stuff; enough to pick it up and scoop in the bin with your bare hands.

But that’s not the most disgusting part of the job, oh god no. Not by a long shot. Having to watch two people make out in between the book aisles very nearly made me do something I’ve never done before. Throw a book. A heavy book. A Vincenzi book.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m all for public displays of affection, but when it borders on dry humping, I feel a bit uncomfortable. The bookshop isn’t massive either and if I turned away, I’d be facing the wall. And then I’d not only feel uncomfortable, I’d look like an idiot too.

And to think I used to believe book shops were romantic.

When you connect with your audience

Posted on September 23rd, 2009
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For the last few months, I’ve been writing reviews and articles for Sy-Fy. I run a fan website for a TV show they air on their channel: Legend of the Seeker.

For my latest article I wrote a comparative piece on a character of the show. It was supposed to sound intellectual, clever… well thought out. That was the plan. Instead what I ended up with was, well, a whole lot of crazy.

All good articles start with a hook; keep it current, keep it relevant. My choice of hook, in hindsight, was probably more down to lack of sleep than anything else. And the idea for the article came only five minutes earlier whilst sat on the toilet. Why is that previous statement relevant here? It explains the frame of mind I was in whilst brainstorming and undoubtedly gives you all a nice mental image. Imagery in writing is very important. Still, I plundered through with my article and finished sometime around day break. I’m not a slow writer, I’m just slow.

I submitted the article, somehow it got approved – and then, I had my first comment.

ur crazy.

I swear to you, in that one moment, I’ve never felt like I’ve connected more with my audience. Finally they were getting what I was saying. This is what all writers strive to achieve, isn’t it? That level of understanding between themselves and the reader.

I’ve made it.

I’ve really made it.

Three came home.

Posted on September 20th, 2009
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Last week found me lying in bed, quite morose I might add, sick, delirious, and in desperate need of a way in which to relieve my boredom. The four walls and ceiling had, up till that point, provided much of my entertainment. Summoning the strength required to lift the remote control from the bedside table, to point and flick – much like Hermione in Harry Potter – at the television set and eventually turn on, was a feat I’m proud to say I managed.

If I confess one thing this week, let it be that I love black and white films. I’m not sure if that love came from growing up with my grandma (Norman Wisdom was a constant childhood companion of mine) or the fact I really spent too much time watching television. But when the screen lit up in all its black and white glory, I was hooked.

Three came home was the title of the film. The name of which sadly gave away much of the plot but I still managed to enjoy it. It was that good I didn’t change over once. Not even during the ad breaks. I won’t mention at this stage that I actually dropped the remote somewhere under the bed. And that getting on my hands and knees to retrieve it would have damn near killed me. These irrelevant facts should not stop you from watching the film. If anything, it should make you want to watch it more.

It was a World War Two epic, not your standard fare as it was set in Borneo, where western prisoners of war were in abundance. It depicted a life of hardship, of imprisonment and oppression in dire proportions. It made my own sickness seem insignificant in comparison – well, it would have done if it wasn’t a film. But you know what I mean. I even cried during one scene, or so I thought, until I realised it was actually snot that had worked its way down my face.

As the credits rolled, the image that stuck with me was not of the woman who had overcome the unfavourable odds stacked against her, it was something much more subtle; her eyebrows. Here was a woman whose husband had been ripped from her, who had been beaten, abused, nearly raped – and the only message I took from it all was her god damn eyebrows.

At one point during the film, the husband asked her: “Where’s that Yankee spirit?” Clearly it was all used up on making sure her eyebrows stayed strong throughout her two year incarceration. If you can put on a good face, you can conquer the world – or something like that. Whether it came rain or shine, no matter if she starved for months on end, was beaten black and blue, or cried till she made herself sick – through it all, her eyebrows stayed immaculately arched, not a single hair out of place.

It had been three days since I’d last seen a mirror. Buoyed by the near-magical appearance of her eyebrows during her two year ordeal, I had much hope for mine. Sadly, I was mistaken.