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Rachelle: Really?!!
Rachelle: Wow!! Having Lyle Lovett like one of your Tweets is amazing! That must be a real feather in your cap!
Rachelle: I’m proud of you, Pickle!
Rachelle: Yes, of course I do.
Rachelle: He’s one of The Avengers, isn’t he?
Rachelle: The Jewish one.
Rachelle: The one who could turn himself into a plane that’s also a tiger.
Rachelle: Oh.
Rachelle: I thought one of The Avengers could do that.
Rachelle: And that they embraced all religions, that they fought for freedom of religious expression and each hero represented a great faith.
Rachelle: Oh.
Rachelle: Well, I guess I don’t know who Lyle Lovett is then.
Rachelle: Hmm, a musician.
Rachelle: No, none of those songs are familiar to me.
Rachelle: Just before my time, I guess.
Rachelle: Not a dig, Pickle. You’re just a lot older than me.
Rachelle: No, I’d say 12 years is a lot. Anything double digits.
Rachelle: What??
Rachelle: He was married to Julia Roberts?
Rachelle: You mean the guy who looks like a scarecrow/funeral director is Lyle Lovett?
Rachelle: Wow.
Rachelle: It’s true, personality does counts for a lot.
Rachelle: And yes, it is almost as if Julia Roberts liked your Tweet!
Rachelle: Aww, that’s sweet!
Rachelle: Well, if I’m your Pretty Woman, you’re my little Lyle Lovett!
Rachelle: Yes, my power skating class is over and I’ll be home soon.
Rachelle: With the wings.
Rachelle: Extra mild. Sauce on the side. Extra wet naps. No carrot stick taller than the others. As always.
Rachelle: It’s a little bit of a serial killer kind of order, you know.
Rachelle: That was auto correct.
Rachelle: I wrote “You’re a sweet kind of order.”
Rachelle: Well, auto correct works in mysterious ways.
Rachelle: Through a glass darkly and all of that.
Rachelle: Yes, you probably will start getting ads in you Facebook feed for serial killer things now.
Rachelle: Well, they say technology knows you better than you know yourself, Pickle!
Rachelle: Oh, I’m kidding, honey.
Rachelle: You’re no serial killer.
Rachelle: In fact, you would be the worst serial killer in history.
Rachelle: Well, your allergies to start. Always blowing your nose and sneezing. You’d be detected straight away!
Rachelle: And then there’s your general physical and mental weakness. Serial killers have to be on the ball! I bet serial killers get 10 hours of sleep a night!
Rachelle: Ha Ha!! I know, I would kill for 10 hours of sleep, too!
Rachelle: But look, the fact that you could never be a serial killer is a compliment, not an insult.
Rachelle: I know, these are confusing times.
Rachelle: The falcon cannot hear the falconer.
Rachelle: It’s from a poem.
Rachelle: I think the falconer is the person who dresses the falcon when they go hunting. Picks out the outfits. Not positive.
Rachelle: Anyway, see you in about half an hour! xo
The other day my book A Van Full of Girls
was selected by Kerry Clare, author of Mitzi Bytes and literary rainmaker, to be on the One-Of-A-Kind list. https://49thshelf.com/Blog/2017/03/02/The-One-of-a-Kind-List
If you’re thinking that “one-of-a-kind” is some sort of backhanded compliment and that this designation is like being sent to the Island of Misfit Toys,
well, you’re an idiot and you have never been more wrong about anything in your entire, often wrong, life. This is a tremendous honour, and as if that wasn’t enough, Kiley Turner, who owns a goddamn company AND is managing editor of 49th Shelf, implied, very, very strongly implied, that I had written the BEST BOOK DESCRIPTION IN HISTORY for my book A VAN FULL OF GIRLS, which you can order from any fine bookseller or from me, a shady bookseller.
Put on your sunglasses and read this:
“Have you ever been in a van full of girls? All the girls are alive and they’re happy. You’re all heading off to do something whimsical and flirty and maybe a little bit drunk. You’re going to see a Beach Boys tribute band. You’re going to the casino to bet it all on red. You’re going to a séance that you just know is going to end in skinny-dipping. Something like that. A Van Full of Girls is a collection of short, dizzy, funny things. It’s zippy and unpredictable, like a mongoose, but it’s dead sexy. You will want to take Polaroids of each precious, little missive contained within and then tape each one to your fridge. You will want to give this book to somebody you need to love you.”
That’s the description.
The best book description in the history of the world.
At any rate, all of these accolades have inspired me to write a letter to Canadian literary legend Margaret Atwood. This is the letter:
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Dear Margaret:
You probably heard that my book A VAN FULL OF GIRLS was recently awarded the prize for BEST BOOK DESCRIPTION IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
Let that just sink in for a moment.
Maybe a little longer.
Okay.
You feel it?
Peggy, I beat Crime and Punishment.
I beat Paradise Lost.
I beat The Shining.
I beat every book you ever wrote.
I even beat the fucking Bible.
You might be on a stamp,
and one of your books might have been made into a movie, (Only 29% on the Tomatometer, though), but nobody, not even a drunk person, has ever declared that you wrote THE BEST BOOK DESCRIPTION IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
So next time you see a small man dressed in as much Adidas wear as he can afford and using supplemental oxygen
waving frantically at you while you’re out for one of your ponderous, unfriendly strolls through the Annex, you might deign to wave back to him, because you know what? That man is me, your literary better.
Michael Murray
PS: We have one spot available in our fantasy baseball league this year if you care to finish behind me in yet another competition!
This is a link to Kerry Clare’s new book Mitzi Bytes: http://www.harpercollins.ca/9781443449229/mitzi-bytes
Kiley Turner is Managing editor of @49thShelf, dictator at Turner-Riggs ( http://turner-riggs.com/) and content manager at brand-new ReaderBound: the easiest way for publishers to get a great website.
And you can order my book here: https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/a-van-full-of-girls/9781554831685-item.html
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I sat at the bar, listening to your message once again, and still smiling, spun on my stool like a liberated child. Before me on a little stage a beautiful woman with severe and mysterious bangs performed music that was alien and precious and entirely lovely. In a nearby booth there was a young couple– arm in arm, their heads pressed together. They swayed to the music. Oh, oh, what a beautiful autumn night, really, what a lovely night, and this couple, you could see that they weren’t expecting to find this tiny miracle unfolding before them, this music playing just for them. They were just out for a quick drink, maybe a bite, but now they were in the middle of a poem, everything they encountered a happy accident, the soundtrack to their romance.
I had to leave a little bit early and the musician was still performing. As I passed by her I turned and smiled, giving her the thumbs up and mouthing the word, “awesome.” She smiled and nodded, and I like to think her eyes sparked with a little bit of surprise and gratitude, and then I hit the street, a little bit of rain falling, and I was then, as I am now, thinking of you.
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