Well, that was interesting…. To me, anyway. My office line just rang and it was someone unexpected: Maria Perry, owner of Flights of Fantasy, one of the most fun sf/f/mystery bookstores in the Northeast. She was actually calling because she’d had a couple newer writers ask her how they should go about getting published, so she rang me up to ask what to recommend to them. I can’t remember the last time she called and it’s been a bit since I made my way to her store (last Anne Bishop signing, I’d guess). It always makes me smile to hear from her, though, because “way back when” as I was just starting out as an agent and had only a few clients, I ran into her at the first Albacon, whereupon we reminisced about the “days of old” when I first applied to Waldenbooks for an after school job (thinking it would be eminently practical to get a discount on books since I read them so quickly) and she was the manager of that same store. Funny, how our two paths have twisted and turned and keep re-crossing. And that store isn’t even there anymore, long ago a victim to the vicious retail market. Now I have the urge to curl up with a good book….
Saving the world, one book sale at a time.
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This work by Jennifer Jackson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Et in arcaedia, ego. 
Somewhat amused
I’ve been looking at this for a while, and have to ask.
Did saying “Now I have the urge to curl up with a good book” result in a deluge of unsolicited manuscripts?
Hello!
Hope you don’t mind that I added you as a friend; I’m interested in writing from just about every angle so your entries are very informative. I felt I should comment on this entry in particular since I’m currently working at a Waldenbooks after school… Well, between school. Though I’ve found that I buy a lot more books now, so it’s more expensive even with the discount.
Hi! I always say the more friends, the merrier. And I get what you mean about buying more books. My consumption definitely increased when the money spread further, which might be how I ended up in my current fix of having nearly 800 books in my “to be read” pile.