Kelly McCullough November 13th 2007

Weirdness, deep, deep, weirdness…

So, I’m a writer. Or maybe, hello, my name is Kelly and…I write novels. Rest of group answers back “Hello, Kelly.”

No, that’s the wrong script. Anyway, I do write novels and like the rest of the folks here at SF Novelists I even sell them. This tends to lead to things like, well, books. In my case mass market paperbacks–at least to date.

One of the central points of this exercise is to have people read the books. Another is to get paid to play make believe, but that’s a post for another time. This one is about people reading my stuff. Way back when I started down this road one of my important goals was to find publishers who would buy my stuff and put it out into the world where it would be read. That’s happening now, and I even get the occasional piece of fan mail–yay! I’m delighted to have people read my books

All right, so that’s part one of this post. Part two is that my wife is an F&SF fan and avid reader. She’s also a physics professor which saves me loads of research time, but again that’s beside the point. She reads all my stuff, generally several times: Ongoing draft, Beta, and galleys. She loves my work and once again I’m delighted.

This brings us to last night. She’s just been elected chair of her department and is a little bit stressed about her current workload–it should drop off over time, but that’s for later. In the meantime, she’s feeling swamped, and as so many readers do, she turns to books for escape. Last night was no exception. She said something to the effect of “I need a good book that I’ve read before, comfort reading.” Then she headed for the shelves. This usually means she’s grabbing something by Robin McKinley, and sure enough she was looking at the Mcs. You see where this is heading, don’t you?

Well, you’re right, she picked up one of my books. I didn’t notice at the time since my brain had already said, “ah, McKinley” I hadn’t actually paid attention. So, we’re in bed, she reading her book, me mine. After half an hour or so she asks me a question in re: what she’s reading. I look over and see…my…book. Brain freeze, complete brain freeze. It’s the most surreal thing ever.

My wife is reading my book as bedtime reading.

Does not compute.

Surreal.

Bzzzz, resetting life expectations, bzzzz. Please call back later.

I’m still processing this one.

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