You know how when you’re in a discussion and it’s really animated and you have things to say but you don’t get to because the discussion’s going by too fast and then you forget until you go home and you’re cracking wise to yourself because you really are that witty, but your timing’s shit and you go to bed annoyed because you didn’t think of it when it really mattered?
And you know how you laugh at a joke you don’t understand because everyone is laughing and you don’t want to look stupid, but you forget about it until, like, seven years later you come across the joke and you’ve lived a little between then and now, and now you get it and it’s hilarious?
And you know how you said something really stupid back in second grade and you can still see and hear that moment like it was yesterday, and your face turns red and your sphincter clenches even though it’s forty years later and you wish you could have a do-over on that moment (or any of the thousands in between, all of which you remember)?
Yeah, me too.
Hence, The Proviso, 2nd Edition.
Hopefully some time in October 2015, to pay homage to the one I published seven years ago.
I used to be a writer. I wrote lots of stuff. It never got published and I gave up. I just…stopped…one day. Sometimes I read what I wrote and I get a charge from it, and I catch myself wondering how the author would have finished it if she had finished it. I suppose I’ll never know.
This is not another one of my bookstore-of-the-future/how-to-save-brick-and-mortar-stores posts. This is about a bookstore I dreamed up while writing The Proviso four years ago, the one that spawned the previous bookstore posts. Specifically, it’s Giselle’s bookstore, which was torched, causing her to have to reboot her life at the grand ol’ age of 30 by going to law school. (Because that’s what everybody does when they have to reboot their lives, right? Right?)
In the spring and summer when the trees and flowers are in full bloom, it’s gorgeous.
This bookstore was in the River Market area of Kansas City, Missouri, and most closely resembles this building:
Giselle describes it this way:
I owned a bookstore for seven years […] I shared space with a patisserie on one side of me and a confectionery on the other. Maisy and Coco weren’t my business partners, exactly; we just figured if we knocked down our walls and unified our décor, we’d all make more money and it worked. […] Decadence wasn’t a bookstore with food. It was a destination. I stocked romance novels of all kinds. Couple that with Maisy’s gourmet chocolates and wine, and Coco’s pastries, the events we put on every weekend… I was doing very well; we all were. I was never going to be independently wealthy, but I made a lot of money doing something I loved.
I’ve been percolating this post for a long time, and after many, many Twitter discussions on the relationship between independent brick-and-mortar booksellers and the romance genre (not good) versus Borders’ and Barnes & Nobles’ willingness to step in where the independent booksellers won’t (but Borders, the more romance-friendly store, went bye-bye), I decided to do yet another perfect bookstore post.
Behold, my real idea of the perfect bookstore:
And I still think this combination of products and location would make some serious bank. (Add an Espresso machine in the basement…) (A used books section on the second floor…) (Events at lunch and on the weekends…)
UPDATE: August 18, 2015, over 4 years later…
I was re-inserting pictures that got lost in the move so a friend could link to them, so I figured I’d add a couple of notes.
1. Since YA has become a bigger part of the market now, that section would get expanded.
2. I’m reediting The Proviso, and Giselle adds this to her description:
“Wine, chocolate, sex. […] We had PMS survival kits. Better than Midol. Men came in specifically for those.”
Trust me, I’d send my husband across the metro to Decadence to get me a PMS survival kit.
The original one stunk. I know it. You know it. You probably don’t know that I know. It’s a wonder anybody bought it at all. It’s taken me two years to figure out another one that accurately represented the book in 250 words or fewer (actually, 232). With tons of help from my chat buddies who’d read the book, I finally came up with what I think is an accurate and succinct blurb:
Knox Hilliard’s uncle killed his father to marry his mother and gain control of the family’s Fortune 100 company. Knox is set to inherit it on his 40th birthday, provided he has a wife and an heir.
Then, after his bride is murdered on their wedding day, Knox refuses to fulfill the proviso at all. When a brilliant law student catches his attention, he knows he must wait until after his 40th birthday to pursue her—but he may not be able to resist her that long.
Sebastian Taight, eccentric financier, steps between Knox and his uncle by initiating a hostile takeover. When Sebastian is appointed trustee of a company in receivership, he falls hard for its beautiful CEO. She has secrets that involve his uncle, but his secret could destroy any chance he has with her.
Giselle Cox exposed the affair that set her uncle’s plot in motion—twenty years ago. He’s burned Giselle’s bookstore and had her shot because it is she who holds his life in her hands. Then she runs into a much bigger problem: A man who takes her breath away, who can match and dominate her, whose soul is as scarred as his body.
Knox, Sebastian, and Giselle: Three cousins at war with an uncle who will stop at nothing to keep Knox’s inheritance. Never do they expect to find allies—and love—on the battlefield.
I feel SOOO much better now.
You can buy it at the Kindle store, All Romance eBooks, and (preferably) B10 Mediaworx. Crossing fingers now that’ll give everybody some idea what the book is really about.
