I remember my wife got some free books from someone, and she brought them home. She took what she wanted, I took what I wanted. One was a horrible, horrible book, apparently about people from the center of the earth kidnapping and killing people from Australia, and the hero just happened to be descended from Aborigines.
Horrible book.
But I couldn’t put it down.
To this day, all I recall is that I finally, about a third of the way, just threw the thing into the trash. It was the only way to break from it.
Because I couldn’t stop reading it!
I wanted to hang onto it, so that someday I could figure out how to write a book like that. not the horrible part – that part I figured out in my first few attempts – but the “Couldn’t put it down” part.
I’ll never know, because I threw the thing away, and dumped coffee grounds on it, to keep myself from picking it up.
I’ll always wonder. I see why he got published. I hope the publisher and his agent told him, “You know, this is truly a horrible book in every way. Just pathetic. But you’re really mastered the ‘can’t put it down’ thing.”
But I’ll always wonder how he did it.
