Heart Demons

For Heart Demons I write a personal essay each month. Currently I am working on December’s essay. I started the essay with no idea where it would go. Not an unusual method for me, but maybe it works better with poetry? The writing is good, but so far it seems to be two or three different things, each going off in its own direction. I enjoy the writing, and “do things you enjoy” seems to be advice to grievers. 

Yesterday’s post here about Kent’s haiku — and going through the stack of papers where I found it — made me sad. Only a few days after Kent died back in May I wrote a Heart Demons essay, tears pouring down my cheeks. I have plenty more to write about him, of course. So far the writing has mostly been about me, with the haiku post the first where Kent gets to talk for himself, if only for three lines. 

Heart Demons is hosted by a platform called Substack, which makes newsletters easy. Substack is the hot thing right now — or it was when I signed up last year. i created an account but writing a newsletter just seemed one more thing. How would it be special? I already have two blogs. I think what got Heart Demons into reality was Kent’s health. We couldn’t travel and I had energy to burn. I had Autobiography of a Book to promote, too, and Substack, being the hot new thing, was generating attention. Maybe I could take advantage of that? Somehow? 

As with LoveSettlement, Heart Demons gets its name from two poetry notebooks. I title my working notebooks after I’ve been writing in them for a few months. I write more about how I chose the title in the first Heart Demons essay. If you haven’t checked it out yet, please do. 

2023 in publications

Mollyhouse
Evening Street Review
Otoliths
Pure Slush
Dark Winter
Cream Scene Carnival
The Quarter(ly)
Exacting Clam

Autobiography of a Book, a 220-page volume from AC Books, became available as a pre-order. Physical copies are expected in February. 

I found a publisher for a full-length poetry manuscript, but then things seemed to go off track. It may yet be possible to bring it back on track. We’ll see. 

I had a featured reading with Lyrics & Dirges here in Berkeley. I hit a handful of open mics. 

The list of publications is shorter than the average of the last few years. Did I send out fewer poems? That might be so. I spent quite a bit of energy rerouting rejected work. Looking at the list, the only poems accepted this year that hadn’t been previously rejected was the batch at Otoliths. It was Mark Young’s final issue so I sent him poems I’d just revised. It was a group that wouldn’t work for most, I thought. Too weird, maybe. There is another set from the same project; no bite so far. 

I got a friendly rejection from Poetry Magazine: “We won’t be publishing anything from this submission, but we really enjoyed reading and discussing it among the editorial team, especially ‘The Heart Again.’ We’d love to read more of your work and hope you will submit again soon.” At the bottom of the message they emphasized it: “P.S. We really enjoyed you work!”

After decades of sending Poetry poems — everybody who’s written a poem wants to see it in Poetry — this was the first time I received encouragement. The rejection came in October, 2023, the poems having been uploaded to Poetry’s submission manager in September of 2022. That’s a wait of thirteen months, right? 

I had a fresh batch of poems, so I sent those right away. Here is what came back: “We won’t be publishing anything from your submission, but we wish you the best of luck in publishing it elsewhere and appreciate you sending it our way.”

That is standard language, generalized, not cruel, but not really encouragement. No “enjoyed” — not once, let alone twice. The sort thing they’ve sent me from the beginning. Yet I only had to wait two months. That’s a record in recent history for me. Usually it’s a year or more. So maybe Poetry has different tiers? The when-we-get-around-to-it tier for all the unknown poets (my tier up to now), then a look-sooner-shows-promise tier? Or maybe they finally staffed up with enough first readers that rejection wait times have been pared down by 80%? Or … 

Anyway, it would be nice to have a poem in Poetry. The encouraging rejection may be as close as I get. As you’ve seen, I’m right back to the unencouraging. I sent again. We’ll see if I am back to a 13-month wait as well. 

Interesting that the poem singled out for praise — “The Heart Again” — was brand fresh in September 2022. I was so pleased by it I sent it immediately to Poetry. By the time Poetry rejected it, “The Heart Again” had been rejected by 27 other faster-deciding zines. It has since been rejected four more times. That’s true of all the other poems in that 5-poem batch. Back in my 20s I would not have been able to endure 30 rejections of one batch. It would have been too bruising — and too expensive! I would have given up on good poems because I couldn’t afford the postage and because I couldn’t handle the dislike. Here in my 50s what’s changed? The basic expenses are different — having a computer, which I couldn’t afford in my early writing years, having an internet connection, paying reading/entry fees. I rarely pay fees, though. I can’t quite justify them. The average reading fee these days is $3 — and these venues typically do not provide any compensation, not even a contributor’s copy (not that that’s a thing with online publication). “The Heart Again,” the poem Poetry almost wanted, would have cost me $90 in fees by now. I can afford more rejections these days, but $90?

There are likely better publication-seeking strategies than my rather random style, I admit that. But I’m a rather random person, and I’m not going to turn into somebody else. Besides, it’s hard enough justifying the whole thing. There’s no money in it. There’s very little compensation of any kind, including making a name for oneself. I continue to send out my poems to honor my poems. They are good poems. They deserve to be little stars in the universe of poems.  

rejecto-zines

In 2021 I started sending out the poems “To Try to Fall” and “I used to think you were beautiful.” By the time the nice editors at Dark Winter decided to take them up, 50 other venues had already declined the opportunity. In case you are curious:

2021

Thrush, Cimarron Review, Agni, The New Yorker

2022

Arcturus, Magma, As It Ought to Be, Comstock Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Nashville Review, Chestnut Review, Glass Mountain, Gordon Square Review, Limp Wrist/Glitter Bomb Award, Black Fox Literary Review, Baltimore Review, Columbia Journal, New Welsh Review, Suburbia Journal, Dillydoun Review, Asheville Poetry Review, Scapegoat Review, Foglifter, Route 7 Review, Lavender Bones

2023

Mollyhouse, Southland Alibi, 805, Broadkill Review, Pidgeonholes, The Maine Review, Emerson Review, Roi Faineant, Bluestem, The Ignatian, New Orleans Review, Gigantic Sequins, Showcase, Miracle Monocle, Red Coyote, After Happy Hour Review, Jake, A-Minor, Labyrinth Anthologies, Lumina, Lunch Ticket, Rock Paper Poem, Meetinghouse, Trace Fossils, Slippery Elm

a few words inserted in the boilerplate rejection

Most literary magazines want to consider a batch of poems all sent together. Recently I sent poems to Grub Street, a lit mag that wanted five poems but they wanted each uploaded individually to their submission manager, each poem thus being considered apart from the others. One of the poems was rejected within the week, another shortly after, the third after a month. Two more lingered long enough for me to get hopeful. I got the rejections this morning, two months after I uploaded them for consideration. 

Rejections are friendlier these days than they used to be, on the whole, telling the poet the editors read zillions of poems, not to be discouraged, blah blah blah. I read the boilerplate rejections even though they always say the same things. One of this morning's rejections included a phrase not included in the other: "we found your style to be fun and engaging." The poem was overtly joky, so it was a rare instance of an editorial response that wasn't boilerplate. 

new year’s resolutions 2023

In last year’s new year’s resolution post here at LoveSettlement I mostly talked about writing. That’s what I tend to think about when I think about resolutions because most of the other things in my life aren’t things to make resolutions about. I don’t make resolutions about better diet or more exercise because I eat good food as best I can and I do as much exercise as my body will allow. If I were to make a resolution it might be to get to the gym again. I am still nervous about being around people expelling a lot of breath, droplets in air being the main transmission factor for covid. The rigamarole of going to a special building downtown and changing my clothes in order to make myself tired and sore is also relatively hard to motivate myself into. I like walks around the neighborhood, even straight up the hill, and I’ve added pull-ups to that routine by stopping by a park playground and finding a bar to hang from. I have a regular yoga practice. So not going to the gym doesn’t mean I’m not exercising.

I don’t set writing goals either. I write, or I don’t. I work on projects or whatever comes. What I need resolve to get done is the marketing. I need to push myself to send work out. In 2022 I was surprised to learn that a poet friend with two books and various accolades has not been sending her poems out to magazines. So I proposed we form a mutual support group for submissions goals. We’ve been doing this for six months or so, each month setting a goal for number of places to send to. Then we check in to see how it went. We don’t set high goals, but for my friend going from none to four was a big step. I tend to set my goals low then exceed them, but when I was answering only to myself I was setting my goals high and straining to reach them, which was discouraging.  Having a friend congratulate me on meeting my sub goal has been a real boost. 

So long as your work is going around you place stuff. Mostly the response from editors is rejection, of course. Having rejection be the primary aspect of the process is a resolve weakener, so adding a friend’s encouraging voice — and in turn encouraging her — de-poisons the atmosphere. If my friend is amenable, I would continue this through 2023. 

Another poet friend talked me into setting up a Twitter account: @lovesettlement … I did that at the beginning of October, then I read articles on how best to use Twitter. And I did all that just before Elon Musk bought it and started destroying it. I tweet links to old blog posts — and the stats for the blog posts always show 8 - 10 fresh visitors. Whether that means anyone new has stopped by to read is ambiguous. A number isn’t a reader. It may be some sort of software feeler, a bot. I don’t know. Should I bother anymore? Should I hook up with Mastodon? Some other Twitter-like site? Unresolved!

I am working with publisher AC Books to bring forth Autobiography of a Book. This year? Hope so! Supporting Book will be a task — seeking reviews, scheduling readings, figuring out what else one can do. Getting into that stuff will require resolve, but is it really any different from pushing oneself to do other things that need to be done but which one doesn’t readily want to do, like paying bills or renewing the passport? So would this count as a New Year’s Resolution? 

Then there’s assembling manuscripts. I have a lot of work in notebooks and in computer files that can be organized. I have a chapbook manuscript out to a publisher. I sent my book-length poetry manuscript out to another publisher late last year. So: assembling manuscripts, researching publishers, sending those out. Resolved! Ugh. I mean, Whee!

I am glad the world continues to open up. I am adding live, in-person poetry events to my calendar. I’ll get myself to open mics again. Being around people at poetry readings is something like socializing and socializing is necessary, if hard for me. The main way I’ve gotten Thousand out into the world is by trading it for other people’s books or zines. So I remind myself to bring copies along to literary and small press occasions. 

There is always something to do. I remember my mom saying something like that. True enough. People to see, things to do.

Glenn Ingersoll in Pushcart Prize Anthology

No, I did not get a poem in the latest Pushcart anthology. But we’ll get to more about that later.

Last Wednesday (10/20/22) I attended an SF LitQuake event featuring poets from the 2022 Best American Poetry anthology. I sat next to James Cagney, a friend from our early SF po scene days (the 90s). I said to James, “I was thrilled when I saw that you got a poem in there.” James: “Not half as thrilled as I was.” No doubt.

Other poets I’ve met over the years were included and read that night — Sara Mumolo, Sam Sax. 

I thought I was going to have fun, seeing people I knew (or sorta knew) being spotlighted. But the old feelings of being overlooked, ignored, unread began to swirl. Despite the head noise I did manage to be there and to listen. James and Sam gave dynamic performances, and I generally liked what I heard from the rest. “Fun” wasn’t quite what I had, but, you know, I wish them all well and since the LitQuake event I have been reading the anthology. 

BAP guest editor Matthew Zapruder said series editor David Lehman forbade him from apologizing for the “Best” appellation, so Matthew took a moment at the beginning (no Lehman around) to apologize to the night’s audience. Matthew didn’t claim the poems included were the Best, asserting instead that they were strong poems that affected and stuck with him, and that he probably failed to see many that could have made the cut. There are poets doing great work “including in this room” who ought to be similarly recognized, Matthew said. Matthew does not know me. I have no idea whether he’s read any of my poems ever. But I could imagine myself one of the poets doing great work that he was apologizing to.

No, I don’t write poems for the fame. That would be useless. Or to achieve publication. The times I did were, well, unsatisfying. I write poems because the place of the poem is an important place for me to spend time in. Once written I send the poems out for publication because just leaving them to sit in the journal doesn’t honor them. They go out into the world looking for those persons who might find them of interest. They often wander for some time.

So the next day I am at the library shelving books and I come across the 2022 Pushcart Prize anthology. It’s rare that the branch libraries get a Pushcart anthology. The branches tend to get books the buyers anticipate will go out frequently. All us writers want to get into the Pushcart but the truth is, it spends more time on the shelf than in readers’ hands. Berkeley Public Library shelves such less popular reads in the more generous stacks at Central.  

In 2021 I got nominated for the Pushcart by two different publications. Small presses are invited to nominate poems, stories, and essays that they’ve published during the eligibility period. Each press or magazine is limited to a handful of nominations, so, presumably, they only send in their favorites. Thus it is a real endorsement for an editor to nominate one’s work. My poem “Personal Testimony” appeared in Spillway and was nominated by editors Marsha de la O and Phil Taggart. Chapters from Autobiography of a Book appeared in Witty Partition and were nominated by editors Hardy Griffin and Bronwyn Mills. I later heard from Hardy Griffin that the Book chapters had made the first cull; that is, one of Pushcart’s screening editors had decided the work was worth advancing to the next editorial rung. We heard nothing further.

I would have had to sign a contract or something had anything of mine gotten into the anthology (i.e., “won a Pushcart prize”?), and nothing like that came my way. But as an old reader of Pushcart anthologies I knew there was a section in the back of the book that listed pieces that hadn’t gotten in but that the editors wanted to praise. So there I am shelving books at the library and I see the 2022 Pushcart anthology and I pull it down. On page 463, just after the final story, and just before the comprehensive list of “presses featured in the Pushcart Prize editions since 1976,” are the “Special Mention” pages. The mentions are separated into Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry categories. A parenthetical above the list says, “The editors also wish to mention the following important works published by small presses last year. Listings are in no particular order.” No particular order — not even alphabetical. So I scan the Fiction list. My name is not there; Book was not mentioned. I don’t bother to run my finger down the Nonfiction list. But maybe Poetry? There he is, Glenn Ingersoll. In Poetry. For “Personal Testimony.” 

Well! Isn’t that cool. It would have been really cool to have the poem itself in the anthology. It would have been really cool to have had a poem included in Best American Poetry. Neither of those things happened. But getting this mention was a nice pat on the back, wasn’t it? My work was read last year, and it affected some people, stuck with them. That’s nice to know. Nice to hear about. 

new year’s resolutions

The pandemic continues, so the opportunities for in-person engagement continue to be limited. I can send out copies of “Thousand” to people I like/admire, a project that doesn’t require spending time in company. It would be nice to do more of that, but I do what I can. (Yes, this is a standard script.) I did one Zoom reading in 2021. I suppose I could look for more zoom opportunities this year.

My two book-length manuscripts are out to publishers. My poetry manuscript (currently titled “Nobody You Know”) is out to one, and has been rejected five times since 2017. “Autobiography of a Book” is out to nine, has been rejected 12 times, also since 2017, though most were just in the past year, which means I’m keeping things moving. There are publishers who will consider prose without a reading fee. It’s a struggle finding any poetry publishers who will. After an ezine editor told me he sent his first novel to 100 publishers, I set a goal of 100 for my manuscripts. I’m 20% of the way there with “Book”. 

My thoughts on reading and contest entry fees would be a screed for another day. 

There was talk at the library of restarting programs. But that was before omicron, the latest covid variant. We’re back to wait-and-see. I miss both my poetry programs, the Poetry Circle and Clearly Meant. In 2021 I finally got permission to post the Clearly Meant videos on the Berkeley Public Library YouTube channel. I have one or two more to edit and post. 

I will continue to put together new batches of poems to send out, and continue to circulate those that haven’t yet placed. In order to reduce the power of rejection I hadn’t been keeping track of rejectors. It’s come to the point it’s more helpful to know where pieces have been than to shield from my tender view the gruesome pile up. 

#keepyournumbersup … Rather than the goal being to get into any particular venue or achieve a certain number of acceptances, I make the goal pure numbers. I let the number be vague, but more is better. This is really the only aspect of the process the supplicant has control over. No control over length of time editors take, no control over their responses (if any). So worrying about such things is not fruitful. Worry takes energy, and if I have energy, it’s better to use it sending work out. 

One thing happened in 2021 that I didn’t foresee. “Thousand” got taught. Two writing teachers included “Thousand” in lesson plans. Both told me that their students were intrigued by the method of composition (100 words a day for a thousand days). I don’t know how one might follow up on that. But things happen that surprise you.

What more to look forward to in a new year — nurturing/enjoying relationships, travel, reading, writing, healing.

It’s been a sunny 2022 so far. Nice, as we always say in California, but we need the rain.

new year’s resolutions — so far

I just finished a letter I began a month ago. When I send a copy of Thousand out I include a handwritten letter. My writing is pretty legible, if sometimes ambiguous. A friend recently read “month” when I’d written “mouth.” I suppose I could count up how many copies of Thousand I’ve sent out. These are not paid orders. I am sending out books to people I like/admire. 

I’ve gotten out a few this year. Not a lot. Not much response. I don’t blame anybody for not writing back. I can be a good correspondent, or a bad one. Everybody’s busy. And what does one say? So far I’ve always asked before sending, so the Thousand should never be a surprise. 

I continue to send out work — to submit, goes the lingo. The process hasn’t been rip-roaring this year. But looking back over LoveSettlement posts I see twelve publications. Not nothing! 

The sense of discouragement sets in with the book length manuscripts. 

Autobiography of a Book has now been out to 18 publishers. Eight rejected it. The other ten have yet to respond. At the writing of my new year’s resolutions post Book had only been rejected three times. I have a goal of sending Book to 100 places. Are there 100 places to send it? If Book gets its 100th rejection, I will reevaluate. Maybe at that point I will just post it on the blog or upload a file to a print on demand service.

When I have energy to market a manuscript I default toward Autobiography of a Book, thus the full-length poetry manuscript is neglected. That one is currently titled Nobody You Know. It is out to one publisher. 

#keepyournumbersup … There are 30 places still considering work I’ve sent out since the beginning of July (to pick a recent date). That number includes poems, chapters from Book, and the two book manuscripts. Pretty good. It means I am not neglecting the process. 

The question with which I ended the new year’s resolution post, “I wonder how many readers a published poem gets?,” got a data point in April. 

new year’s resolutions

I wrote the following in response to another blogger’s call for writerly resolutions:

In 2019 I got a first book published (prose or prose poetry). It was pub'd by a tiny press without resources for any kind of marketing. But it’s a handsome book and the publisher is a sweetheart. Figuring out how to get it out into the world has been, well, a hobby ever since. 

I like performing so I was going to open mics in our very active SF Bay Area literary scene -- I sold a few copies, I traded for other people’s books (I like trades!) -- but then the pandemic came along. The boxes have been gathering dust. So I've started doing something I always wanted to do -- I'm sending free copies to people I like and admire. I've only sent a few out this way so far. I include a handwritten letter. I am shy about sending to people I don't know personally. But I'm poised to do so. So I will be doing that in 2021.

There were years there when rejection was so hurtful I did few submissions. In 2017 I put together a poetry manuscript, motivated by a contest. Though the nucleus of the manuscript is published poems, many of my favorites were unpublished. So, while waiting to hear back from the contest judges, I started sending out the unpublished poems. The manuscript didn’t win the contest, but most of the poems have been published now in ezines. I will send the manuscript to other presses/contests in 2021. 

I have another prose manuscript, and I've been able to place excerpts in a few literary venues. I have gathered almost 150 rejections for excerpts. The full manuscript has been rejected only three times. I will put more energy into getting the manuscript out in 2021. 

Then there are all the poems that fill up notebooks. Since 2017 I have been regularly sending out work and rejection no longer feels so crushing. Acceptances happen now and then. Dreams of literary fame continue to haunt my chinks and crannies, of course, because I'm a dreamer. I sent out two poetry submissions before writing this comment. I got one rejection this morning. In my three-person writing group we use: #keepyournumbersup ... So when I'm feeling discouraged I remind myself to put out some of those good poems to places that haven't yet had the opportunity to read them. Every editor is a reader. If I've sent a poem to 20 places, it's been read 20 times, right? I wonder how many readers a published poem gets?

Saturday at the library

I walked to work this morning. On Saturdays I take the bus. Except today. I guess I just wanted to be moving. It takes me about 40 minutes to make the trek. The bus, frankly, isn't much faster, especially once you add in the time waiting for it and the ten minutes it takes to walk to the bus stop.

The morning fog kept me cool though I shed my overshirt just after crossing campus.

When it's quiet on the Information Desk I will shelve DVDs or new books or clear away a pile of books abandoned on a table. Saturday can be crazy. It's not been bad at the Info Desk but I think the circulation desk got slammed, as usual. When the delivery arrived - boxes of books from other BPL branches - I brought a couple boxes over to the Info Desk to check in.

My boss this week sent an email reminder to those of us who staff Info. No cell phone conversations at the Info Desk. No online shopping. No homework.

Hm. What about poems?

Fante, etc

I processed 12 more paperbacks. Tuesday, March 9. The batch prior I solicited guesses on which would go first, right? But one of the other things I was curious about was how long it would take for the first to go out. It took ten days.

That batch was made up of the sort of popular fiction you see by the supermarket checkout counter. There are readers for it here, but not a lot.

So what about the 12 I put out this week? It's been three days and already three have been checked out:

Ehud Havazelet - Bearing the Body
Ursula Hegi - Stones from the River
John Fante - The Road to Los Angeles

The Hegi book was an Oprah book club selection from a few years ago. But the John Fante? Fante was a writer long out of print until the small press Black Sparrow took notice (presumably at the urging of Black Sparrow house writer & Fante fan Charles Bukowski) - Black Sparrow Press was acquired by a New York publisher, so Fante now has a New York publisher. I don't know Ehud Havazelet.

Margolin goes first

So two weeks ago I added a batch of paperbacks to the browsing collection.

I made a couple guesses and David (in comments) left a guess, and Kent (offline) made a guess. None of us were right.

The first book from the batch that got checked out was:
Phillip Margolin - Executive Privilege

The next day another went out:
Amanda Quick - The Third Circle

And two days later:
Daniel Silva - The Mark of the Assassin

3 copies of P&P

I think we're shorthanded today. That wouldn't be unusual. I've already had my lunch - I ate at House of Curries, a chicken tikka masala with rice. This afternoon's break I will eat homemade chocolate chip cookies as I slurp my coffee. I am looking forward to it.

No hassles at the Claremont branch so far. I haven't smelled any homeless people. Maybe the sunshine has them out wandering.

The Info Desk is near the corner where we keep the DVDs and new books. If nobody needs reference help I'm often shelving in that corner.

The DVDs come in & out so quickly - I wonder how long we had them before I realized there are three copies of the 2005 movie version of "Pride and Prejudice"? Two are on the shelf right now. One is out.

I just fetched another batch of new books from the circulation desk. Are there any that I'd like to read? Not Now, Voyager has a clever title. It's by Lynn Sharon Schwartz, says it's a memoir. Seems to be a series of essays on travels - to Rome, to Jamaica. Chapter titles like "Hotels and Soap" and "Borders or Cabo Tormentoso".

"One day our doorbell in Rome rang," writes Schwartz, "and we discovered two strangers, an American couple in their fifties who introduced themselves as neighbors of my parents. They were vacationing in Rome and my mother had asked them to look in on us. ... My parents knew we had a furnished apartment but couldn't quite picture the details. So they sent this couple. ... [After a tour of the apartment they could] reassure my mother that we were living in some semblance of decency."

Looks okay. But I think I won't add it to my current pile.

goodbye Chinese books, hello cafe

Last Tuesday I put 14 new paperbacks onto the browsing racks. They're not new, as in brand new from the publisher; being as they were all donated, they are pre-read, but they are new to our collection. Last post I asked for guesses on which of these 14 would first be checked out. In the week since, not one has been checked out. Hm. That's not what I usually see. Usually one of the new items goes right out. The 14 books are just about all by bestselling authors of the supermarket wire rack variety. The readers here don't seem to go for that sort of bestseller. Dunno why. Anyway, you can still guess which will go first! If anybody gets it right, they'll get a prize! Or maybe a no-prize. An air kiss? We'll see.

The Claremont branch library is facing renovation. It's looking like there will actually be less shelving in the library after renovation than we have now. That's not making me happy. Even though I'm all into weeding and everything. Speaking of weeding - the Chinese books are out of here. We no longer have an employee who speaks (or reads) Chinese so we don't have anyone who can review the collection for currency and quality; the books are getting old and aren't often checked out. So we're deleting them. It's not a big collection. Six or seven shelves. Down to two. I spent an hour earlier today deleting.

When it rains we put a big roll of paper towels out on the returns desk next to a sign: "Please dry your books! Thank you!" If people bringing their books back don't use the towels, we certainly do.

There's a new cafe in the neighborhood. Just what the neighborhood needed? It's only been open a few days and already it's busy. The cafe takes over what used to be a soda fountain in a drug store. The rest of the old drug store has been taken over by the expansion of the independent bookstore, Mrs Dalloway's. Yes, an independent bookstore successful enough to expand. Who'd thunk?

any bets?

Patricia Cornwell - Predator
Anne River Siddons - Fox's Earth
James Baldwin - Go Tell It on the Mountain
James Baldwin - If Beale Street Could Talk
Amanda Quick - The Third Circle
Daniel Silva - The Mark of the Assassin
Eric Van Lustbader - Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Sanction
Haywood Smith - The Red Hat Club
James Patterson - Sail
Phillip Margolin - Executive Privilege
Robert B. Parker - Stranger in Paradise
Clive Cussler w/Paul Kemprecos - Polar Shift
Clive Cussler w/Paul Kemprecos - The Navigator
Clive Cussler & Dirk Cussler - Black Wind

The above are books I added to the browsing paperbacks collection here at the Claremont branch. I added the books on Tuesday, so it's been a couple days and none have yet been checked out. Any guesses as to which will walk out the door first?

I'm going to guess:
Robert B. Parker's Stranger in Paradise

Since there are so many I'm going to give a second guess. If not Stranger then Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin.

Info Desk!

One of my duties is waking sleeping people. It's not like I tour the library looking for them. But if I hear snoring I get up from the Info Desk and look for the snorer and wake them. Sometimes it's a homeless person, sometimes it's an old lady. I have seen a college student or two with head down but I've not yet felt I had to wake one. I mean, if you sit out of sight of the Info Desk and sleep quietly there's probably not much risk anyone will bother you. That is, unless we see you stretched out in a bedroll.

Nick was busy trying to finish shelving the holds. As usual we've got a lot of them. Each book (or DVD or whatever) has wrapped around it a printed slip showing the name of the patron for which it is on hold. We don't really have room for all the holds. Currently, I see, Nick has not been able to get them all onto the shelves so there are two book trucks poking out into the aisle with holds on them. Anyway, while Nick was working on the holds I helped out a bit on the Circulation Desk. So I was running back & forth - handing out a library card application here, helping with the balking self-checkout machine there.

Now I'm back at the Info Desk. A patron said he couldn't get access to our wireless network; he said he'd never had any trouble before. He waited a few minutes and is in. "Don't know what happened," he says.

My last reference question: a woman is putting together a short course (6 two-hour lectures) on the history of photography. So I helped go through the catalog in search of books & DVDs on the topic.