By the way...

By the way, have you ever noticed that people make the most shocking revelation with the casual introduction of by the way...

By the way… my sister is engaged. We are all very happy for her. And the fiancé is a doll. Not literally, he’s just a really nice guy. They will marry next year.

By the way, I’m writing a comic book. 32 pages of story and illustration. It’s the largest project I’ve ever attempted. I don’t even read comic books so this might not be a good idea. Sometimes the best ideas are the really dumb ones, that on further inspection are in fact great. I’m crossing my fingers on this one. I’ve spent two weeks making four pages, if this is going to work I’ll have to speed up. It’s a simple story about me. And what would happen if I found my dream job. Always a literal sort I decided that job would be making dreams. What else would my dream job be? I’m scared to death of doing this. I’m afraid my style sucks, my story and writing is week, my drawing is stumpy and my commitment is phobic. But I’ve decided to go ahead and push past all of that and pretend I know what I’m doing and make this happen. And maybe this will be the start of something very big. At worst I’ll have a very expensive art book that I can self publish.

By the way I’m in love. Don’t get too excited. I’m in love with someone’s writing. I find it ridiculously charming. And I’m just a little madly in love with it. His name, the one whose writing I love, is Patrick Rothfuss. I even have a story of how we met. The book and I, that is.

I was standing in the Fantasy section or Border’s picking up a book for my 14 year old cousin. Unfortunately someone was standing in front of the bookshelf I needed to peruse. I wasn’t in a hurry so I pick up some Ray Bradbury. I never know if he’s dead or alive still, and it bothers me a little that I don’t know. Just as I was about revisit a story… a small nerdy man appeared out of nowhere. He was an employee. He asked me if I needed help finding anything, which I didn’t, what I need to do was kill time while that guy hogged the bookshelf I needed. I told him I was just looking, and he offered to make a recommendation.

Now I don’t know if that is something they do at Borders. If it’s something handed down from corporate, and he has to meet a recommendation quota or something. But it struck me as fairly amusing that a perfect stranger was going to recommend a book to me, knowing nothing about me and having found me a aisle I haven’t visited since high school. So I told him sure, go for it.

He asked me what authors I liked and I shook my head with a smile. “Uh uh, if you have a recommendation, then make it… I’m not going to tell you anything else. I want to see what you recommend. You offered.”
To be fair, he was game, he stared at me for a second, bit his lip, smirked, said Patrick Rothfuss and walked me over to his book THE NAME OF THE WIND.

When he picked it up I was filled with dread. The cover was pretty hardcore fantasy. And when I turned it over… sigh. I didn’t know how to pronounce the main character’s name. It took me back to another time, in my life when I read fantasy, before I changed my mind about all of that. Unpronounceable names having been a particular pet peeve. And then he began describing the novel.

It is one of a trilogy, it’s hard core fantasy, it’s a whole world with rules and structure, it’s about a boy who goes to magic school, like Harry Potter but hard core,… and he went on and on.

I stood there numbly, politely nodding, each sentence he spoke invited more dread. It’s a trilogy, am I going to feel obligated to read two more books? Hard core, do I look like a hard core fantasy girl? Each point I took as a negative.

I noticed the bookshelf was free, and I grabbed the other book I needed. The employee smiled and asked me what I thought. I pursed my lips, nodded my head and forced myself to smile. Sounds great!

Great!

He walked with me to the cashier telling me how he knew I was going to love this book, how it had won fantasy prizes, and was a critic’s darling! His first novel too! My stomach turned as I go to the registers and realized I couldn’t drop the book anywhere. The plastic smile again, Thanks! My voice sing-songed up and down, tell tale sign I was lying. I certainly wasn’t thankful.

And I bought it. I couldn’t ditch the book gracefully, so I bought it. Since I had it I thought I’d better read it.

I re-read the back cover, which upon re-reading suddenly seamed charming, boastful, and confident. With an open heart I sat down on the train and began to read. It was like coming home. to an old friend, or an old lover, or the one that got away. It was an embrace, a caress, whisper of what you always wanted to hear. It was in fact everything the guy in bookstore had told me. It was hardcore fantasy, in the best sense, it was a complete universe that you bought into without inconsistency or over explanation, there were rules and laws that made sense, the main character went to school like Harry Potter, but in a different world, a different character, a more exciting world.

I can’t tell you what makes this book so special. I wish I could. I would write love letters to this book. I’m infatuated, I giggle like a schoolgirl, I eagerly await the next two novels. And I check often for hints of when they will be available. I’m in love.