Just As Long As It Isn't A Charles Colson Book Club Choice

I've been working hard on the Possible Third Book, or as I've taken to thinking of it, Story Of O Without Sex, but even the most hardworking of writers has to throw the garbage out occasionally (that's actual garbage, not P3B garbage, although I've thrown out my share of that as well). I opened the door and what should I find waiting outside but a box with a dozen brand new bright shiny paperbacks of Life As We Knew It.

I knew they were coming, but I didn't expect them quite so soon. A very nice person at Harcourt had told me she'd mailed them out the end of last week. And here it is, the beginning of this week, and what a nice beginning it is.

I scanned the front and back jackets and the neat page inside with all the lovely quotes. For some reason it scanned in black and white (it is a dark and depressing book, although compared to what I've done with the PG47 rated Story Of O Without Sex, LAWKI is Gilligan's Island). In real life, the cover is the exact same shades of dark and depressing blue as the hardcover we all know and love.

Here's the best part. It's embossed! Just like the first hardcover printing of LAWKI, the first paperback printing is multi-dimensional. The moon feels like an orange and the title and my beauteous name feel like a high class wedding invitation.

It is my sincerest hope that the embossing is limited to the first paperback printing, because then all true LAWKI collectors (i.e. me and my mother) will have to run out and buy a second printing just to have a complete set. Well, at 96 my mother doesn't do a lot of running, so I guess I'll be the only one who actually buys a second printing just to have a complete set.

For those of you who don't feel like pressing your face against your computer screen and squinting, the back cover has three quotes from places that end in .com, and a whole list of LAWKI's accomplishments. My favorite is "A CCBC Choice" since I have no idea what that means.

Oh, and on the front of the jacket it says, "The weather finally broke...for good." Which I'm pretty sure Harcourt stole from the UK version (I don't blame them; it's very nifty). And how could I have forgotten- on the back it says: READ THE BOOK EVERYBODY'S TALKING ABOUT:

I'm not sure, but I think EVERYBODY is a pseudonym for Anonymous. We know how popular LAWKI is with Anonymous.

And on the back it also says http://www.lifeasweknewitbook.com/ which if you type into the Google box, takes you right over here! Without even knowing it, my darling blog became a dotcom.

Inside the book, the front page has More Praise for LIFE AS WE KNEW IT, which mostly comes from respectable magazines. In real life it doesn't look nearly this smudgy.

Can you stand even more fabulousness? You can skip reading the entire book and go smack to the end, and there's a sneak peak (don't blame me; that's how they spelled it) for the dead and the gone. First there's a page telling you about it (READ THE VERSION THAT TAKES PLACE IN NEW YORK CITY), and then there's that actual sneak peek- I mean peak- the Saturday May 21 section (Alex goes to church and then to the pizza parlor; compared to Story Of O Without Sex, it's Three's Company).

Guess what? You can look for online discussion guides at ttp://www.thedeadandthegone.com/ If you type that into the Google box, it takes you right here also. I'd better start working on those discussion guides (let's discuss how wonderful the dead and the gone is. Also how beauteous its author is).

The rest of my mail wasn't nearly as interesting, but at least there weren't any bills. It's insights like that that make the dead and the gone discussion guides so useful.

I'm off to make my poor heroine suffer some more. She only has one more desperately bleakity bleak event to go before she starts coasting into the fun stuff, like armed battles, tornados, and a whole town with nothing but dead people.

Charles Colson will love it!