OMG! OMG! OMG! It’s Almost Time!

It’s the biggest thing happening this weekend! I’m sure you’ve been hearing about it for weeks, months by now but you never tired of the coverage. In fact, you got more and more excited about it as you eagerly waited, wondering if the day would ever come.

That’s right.

Animorphs re-hits shelves this Sunday, May 1!

(What else would I be talking about?)

Animorphs means so much to me that I am officially declaring next week, starting Sunday, Animorphs Week! Well, officially on my blog because that’s the only place I’m authorized to declare any week an official anything.

As a precursor to Animorphs Week, I’m reposting an entry from last December:

Dear Ms. Or Mr. Appleagete (originally posted 12/20/10)

A couple of weeks ago, someone extremely awesome sent me some very exciting news. Animorphs is making a comeback! The series will be once again seen in bookstores starting May 2011. I can’t possibly express how exciting this news is for me.

Animorphs was my first love. Sure, I had books I thought I loved before Animorphs came around and I’ve since said that I loved many a book, but I’m talking true love. Such a deep love that it can’t be contained in only one post, especially since just yesterday I found a letter I wrote to K.A. Applegate when I was in the 7^th grade. (It was tucked away for safe keeping in a copy of that other childhood sweetheart of mine, Ella Enchanted). Apparently it’s the second letter I ever wrote Ms. Applegate, but this one didn’t make it out.

Of course, that’s because I was meant to share it with you thirteen years later.

September 6, 1997

Dear K.A. Applegate,

I Love Your

Books!!!!!!!!!

I just got finished reading Animporhs #11. And girl (or Boy) [Yes, I do now know that the “K” is for Katherine], you are tal-en-ted. I mean, usually [I] can read book after book, but after reading Animorphs I just have to take a break and say hmmmm… I honestly need time to recover. I can’t wait for #12 and The Andalite chronicles. I’ll be at the bookstore with a grin on my face and money in hand (hopefully) read[y] to buy the book. Yesterday, (more this morning) I read the whole book. I started at about 11:00pm and finished at about 1:00am. [I remember that night and that exact book! That was the weekend my family took our annual trip to Palm Springs.] I literally could NOT put the book down. I wrote a letter to you before, you probably get thousands and might not remember but I said stuff about I have ideas for future books and we should get together [on] starting a t.v. show or movie and my volanteering[sic] to play Cassie

because I [have] so much in common with her (even our names have somethings[sic] in common {I’m Cacy}), and I (he he) asked for an autographed picture of you and book (I’d still like to see those three things happen.) [Still waiting to hear back, K.]. I [know] right now you’re thinking, Gee, what a description, sarcastically.

Oh, I just remembered I sent three pictures, a half way finished Hork Bajir, a pretty good Taxxon and a retarded looking Andalite. And speaking of drawing, I drew those pictures for the art contest [I didn’t win– sad face]. Today my family and I ate at a chinesse[sic] food resturant [sic – geez, twelve-year-old me really needed to invest in a dictionary and/or learn to spell] and the fortune I got after dinner said,

WHEN IN DOUBT LET YOUR INSTINCTS GUIDE YOU

PEKING NOODLE CO.

I couldn’t helping thinking Animorphs [Oh, I get it. Like the animal instincts the characters had to contend with! Ha, clever twelve-year-old me!] And my dad’s been telling my sister to get a job all summer and her cookie said something about being a hard worker, so we had our he-he’s.

Maybe you can put the instinct fortune in one [of] you[r] book[s].

Marco and his dad (or Jake) can be eating chinesse[sic] food and after morphing into something then letting it take over he reads over the fortune cookie then he says, “Sometimes these things scare the cuteness outta’ me.” [I still think that totally could have been something Marco said!]

And I think that they should try acquiring, the Aliens (espielly[sic] the Visser) they can get Ax easily (if he lets them).

If they can morph into a yeerk, when Vissie[sic] Three gets out of the Andalite’s head for Kandra Rays one of them can sneak in and get into his head and run or morph into something big and V.T. is out of a Andalite host. Woohoo. [Wow! I was a violent-minded child, wasn’t I!]

The letter is obviously unfinished, which would explain why it was never sent. I can’t imagine what other awesome randomness twelve-year-old me would have had to say.

(And back to the present)

Oh yeah, and about that other thing happening like today or something. Seeing the same story on every channel and every show and every time I sign out of my yahoo account got old real quick, but sometimes even when you’re over an event’s constant coverage (Can we please stop calling it a once in a lifetime event? I’m pretty sure my parents and grandparents and lot of other people in the world were alive the last time something like this happened. Anyway, I digress…) Sometimes, even when we’re tired of hearing about the same thing for weeks on end, a little spark of awesome noses it’s way through the sea of sameness (I think I stole that last bit from a Disney Original Movie.)

Thank you, Neill Cameron, for existing.

Come back next week for the awesomeness of Animorphs, Adolescent Me: A Child Obsessed, a list of other favorite (mostly) alien stories of my younger years, and more

Liquid Diary: A Few More Thoughts After Seeing a Borders’ Store Liquidation Through to the End (Pt. 2)

(I meant to have this continuation of my last post up sooner, but I unexpectedly started a new writing project on Monday. I know. You’re like, “But Cacy, I read your last post. I know you ain’t gots a job. You couldn’t find one spare second in all that newly found free time to meet a deadline of your self-imposed posting schedule?” To answer a question posed this week by Misty at Nothing Cannot Happen Today, how do I balance blog posting and an intense period of that other kind of writing? Not very well at all, it turns out. Anyway, Part Deux…)

As I looked at the empty shelves, the fixtures pushed to one side of the store, the big expanse of open carpet, I thought of what I’d learned while at this Borders. I don’t know if it’s just because I was at an especially awesome store, but working there made me an even bigger lover of books, and more appreciative of readers of all types. No matter what their genre or how completely opposite their tastes, book lovers all have one passion in common. It’s a passion for reading that doesn’t go away easily despite any changes the publishing industry will be forced to go through.

While at Borders, I learned about the little bit of influence a single minimum wage bookseller can have even though she is only a small cog in the big ol’ publishing industry machine. I understand why a stack of ARCs sat in the back offices. Customers do pay attention to what booksellers say, and to the Staff Recommendation bay.

But you know, booksellers also pay attention to what customers are saying. Okay, I shouldn’t speak for every bookstore employee, so I’ll amend that to I paid attention to what customers were saying.

I'll miss striking up conversations with customers and learning about the books they love. I’ve picked up certain titles specifically because a customer has told me I HAVE to read this book, or because I’ve seen so many customers flocking in to buy the latest novel of an author that wouldn’t have been on my radar otherwise. At least once, one of those customer-recommended books made it onto my slot on the Staff Recommendation bay.

The superbly awesome thing about the Staff Recommendation bay was that if we only had one copy of a book an employee wanted to recommend, we’d order more copies of it. Suddenly, there are six copies of what may be a little-known book in the store instead of one. Suddenly, that title is sitting in prime real estate, right at the front of the store. Suddenly, all six are sold. (It helped when an employee talked it up to anyone who’d listen.) Six books don't equal enough in sells to get an author onto a best seller's list, but maybe that represents six people wouldn't have known about the book otherwise.

Bookstores are major points-of-convergence for all kinds of readers. Booksellers can influence customers, yes. But additionally, through booksellers, customers influence other customers without ever having to say a word to one another. Even if a book recommended to me by a customer didn't make it onto my spot on the Staff Recommendation bay, I often still ended up mentioning it to other customers.

I don’t know how often I’ll go up to strangers in a bookstore and strike up a conversation now that I don’t have an excuse to do so, but it’ll be even harder to do that from here on because, more significant than the fact that I’ve lost a job, my neighborhood has lost a bookstore.

And it may surprise you to learn this, but there's a lack of mainstream bookstores in “the hood,” which is what many call my part of city.

When I was a kid, my family had to commute all the way to the other side of town to get to the nearest bookstores. And I had a regular appointment. A new Animorphs came out the first of every month. My parents probably paid more in gas on a trip there and back than I paid for the book I so desperately needed. (And how awesome are they for it?) Overtime, more bookstores opened a little closer to home, but still a trip there was always out of the way.

Then finally, it was there. Only ten minutes away. A bookstore near my neighborhood. It sat at a crossroads location, near enough to both sides of the track to be of service to a diversity of people, including my community.

Well, it was nice while it lasted.

Though I will continue to find my way into bookstores for a long while yet, there will be less “just swinging by” a bookstore because I happen to be in the area. It’s gone back to being an out of the way journey.

I know it is ridiculously easy to buy books online these days, but buying online doesn’t replace the experience of stepping into a bookstore. So often I made recommendations that I might never have bothered to bring up if I’d been making recommendations based solely on what they’d already picked up. Also, I’ve found and purchased books vastly different than anything else on my reading list because it was faced-out on a shelf.

Readers will always find books to read, because that’s what readers do, but I appreciate what bookstores contribute to the industry and I really wish what remains of Borders oodles of luck. I wish the same for Barnes and Nobles and all the independent bookstores out there too. After all, having to go out of my way to visit a bookstore is better than having no bookstore to go to at all.

Have a great weekend!

Christopher Nolan Stole the Idea From Me (I Swear)

(Click to enlarge)

I know because I drew this years ago.

Anyway, no personal writing revelations or endless meanderings of random thoughts this post. I have a deadline to meet today (…or tomorrow? No! Today! TODAY!) Even though it’s self-imposed I must take it seriously because, when working with a partner, if you slack on your end you're holding up someone else’s progress...and I’m already behind where I’d prefer to be at this point. I’m almost done with this batch of writing/over-elaborate thumbnailing/character designing, but I’ve still got quite a bit left to do. Thus, short post.

But I would like to take a moment to thank Marjorie for giving me the Stylish Blogger Award.

Thanks, Marjorie!

(I’ll do the ten and ten before the week is up.)

Also, I was trying to tell my mom and my sister about how the other day when I was waiting in line at the crafts store, I saw a woman at the registers who was showing a good three to four inches of her butt crack. Not because she was bending over or because her pants were inadvertently slipping down, but because she was a grown woman wearing a pair of pants meant for a ten year old. Words wouldn’t do the spectacle justice:

I offer this illustration without exaggeration.

Please, don't be this person.

(Personally, I'd be afraid of something falling in.)