The other day I was dusting my living room, which while highly out of character still happens on occasion. I was looking for a place to put a new gift, a copy of Love Songs Are Too Violent for Me, by Will “The Thrill” Viharo. Will is a hard-boiled noir guy who puts his own unique twist on detective stories. His tales aren’t for the family, or even the faint-of-heart, but they are an intriguing read and this copy was special.
He gave it to me on the last day of “Thrillville,” a mini movie festival where some of the best movies meet some of the cheesiest. If you throw in some surf music, burlesque dancers, horror-show hosts, casual nudity and martini glasses you get the general idea of what the average “Thrillville” looks like.
Will’s moving to Seattle and inscribed a little something to me. I put it next to an earlier book of his and went through the rest of the books on that particular case, dusting, cleaning, and sorting. It took me a while, but I finally figured out what all the books on that case had in common.
They were haunted.
There are copies of American Gods and Neverwhere, signed by Neil Gaiman when he was a big name but before he became a huge name. We talked about what an under-rated voice Peter S. Beagle was and how influential he was. Neil is a gracious and kind person who would never remember meeting me in a million years, but I remember the conversation, and it meant a lot.
There is also Infected and Nocturnal by Scott Sigler. I remember having drinks with Scott after a signing where he correctly predicted that the Ravens would beat my 49er’s in the Superbowl. He was a gracious and engaging person and I’ll always hate him just a little for correctly predicting that Superbowl.
There is also a copy of Plainsong by Kent Haruf. Kent is an award-winning writer whose book was adopted by the city of Stockton. He did a wonderful reading of Plainsong followed by a question and answer session. The audience was there to listen and the question and answer section drug on slowly. Since I am the current reigning king of awkward readings, I did my best to ask questions that not only I wanted to know the answers to, but questions I thought the audience might enjoy.
After the reading Kent asked me if I was a writer. My copy of Plainsong reads “From one author to another.”
There are books from authors like John Stanley, Anne Rice, Christopher Moore and Stephen Hockensmith. Every one of those books is a little haunted with the memories of a gracious author who took a moment for a fan, and every copy has a story.
