I Am a Cheater

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

Intrigued by my topic heading, no? Let me explain how I'm cheating on you this very minute. I'll even tell you why.

Today I'm supposed to blog here at GBC about genre. There's just one problem. Monday, my husband woke to problems on his computer. So we called an expert in. As of this writing, Thursday evening, the computer expert is still working on the problem - making this the computer-problem equivalent of the "Gilligan's Island" three-hour tour - only now it's become my problem. Two nights ago, a minor tweak was made to my computer that was supposed to make things run smoother...and now I have no computer at all - or at least not the one I'm used to, the one that has 17 years of books and stories and essays stored on it. (I'm typing on someone else's computer right now.) So since I still don't know if that will all be recovered, and I'm badly in need of a glass of wine, I'm going to cheat on you, and here's how.

Rather than write a fresh piece on genre, I'm going to direct you to something I wrote on the subject about a year ago for the wonderful online literary magazine Bibliobuffet. It got a lot of online buzz when it originally ran and I hope you'll take the time to go read it and then come back here with your comments so I won't feel like you hate me for being the slacker that I am. It's called The Book Pyramid.

I hope you enjoy it, I hope you never go through the computer agita I've been experiencing this week, and now for that wine.

Be well. Don't forget to write.