Friday, November 9, 2012

Truth or Fiction

In If Hooks Could Kill, a film crew has taken over the streets near the bookstore. Even though there is no bookstore in the real Tarzana, it exists in a real place in my mind. So the street with the film crew is an actual Tarzana street. Imagine my surprise when I went to the grocery store a few minutes ago - I like to go at night when everybody else is home - and as I was passing the street where my fictitious film crew was set up, I saw that a real film crew was set up.

The TV program they’re filming in my book is called L.A. 911 and the star Adam North has a big RV as his dressing room, which I had pictured an exact location where it was parked. As I was driving home with my groceries, I noted that a big RV dressing room was parked in that exact spot. I almost expected to see my characters rushing out of it.

I hope I don’t hear tomorrow that somebody found a body there.

There’s some weird stuff going on at Amazon. I heard from one of my readers that she couldn’t get my books in a Kindle edition. When I checked, I saw that there were Kindle editions listed, but there was no price information available, which means you can’t buy them.

It got even weirder when I scrolled down further and found that two sellers are selling copies of You Better Knot Die for - hold your hats for this - $999.99 and $8,989.71 each. And they want $3.99 on top of that for shipping and handling. There were reprints of some of my books, too. The prices weren’t as ridiculous as the ones I just mentioned, but they were more than the cover prices. I don’t even know what they mean by reprints. And they claim the reprint weights 5 pounds. Are they selling any copies at these crazy prices?

I found another surprise. Amazon already has Yarn To Go listed and it doesn’t come out until July. Amazon doesn’t show a cover because it is still in the process of being done. I just saw the first sketch the other day and it’s great, but everybody wanted to add a cat to it. The problem is there wasn’t a cat in the first book. I was going to add one in the second book, but since I haven’t done the revision of Yarn To Go yet, my editor asked if he could be introduced in the first book. So, Julius, the black cat with an attitude is going to be part of the series from book one.

The real Julius lives down the street. I hope he doesn’t expect to do autographs.

4 comments:

Planner said...

I noticed last night that something bizarre happened with the book pricing on Amazon--it wasn't just your books. It looks to me like the issue is fixed now.

I'm glad you mentioned Yarn To Go's availability on Amazon--I preordered my copy. In fact, there's a deal that if you order 4 books, one is free, so I ordered 4! They'll make good gifts. And, Julius can autograph my books if he wants to.

Are you going to go back to the film site to see what's being filmed and whether Molly and gang are there?

Betty Hechtman said...

Thanks for telling me it was an Amazon issue, Planner. Cool that you already ordered Yarn To Go. I will check the shoot site out again, though I think it might have just been for last night.

There's a fuss going on amongst all my and my son's cats. They're upset I'm using an outside cat instead of one of them.

Linda O. Johnston said...

Hmmm, Betty. How fun that your story foretold reality!

Betty Hechtman said...

Linda, it is so amazing to see something in three dimensions that I thought only existed in my imagination.