Damn, What A Bummer

I’ll admit I was initially disappointed. In what? Well, in the mid-January print release of WANTON WINTER, an Ellora’s Cave anthology containing five winter-themed novellas from authors Cheyenne McCray, Daisy Dexter Dobbs, Katherine Cross, Shelby Reed, and moi…disappointed, that is, because it was released after the winter holidays. To me, the timing was too late—I wondered why anyone would be interested in a winter-themed book after the holidays.

But then I got to thinking about my own book-buying habits. I clicked over from author mode to reader-only mode and realized it wasn’t such bad timing after all…

See, here’s the deal. I’m a very fickle person, and I often yearn for what I don’t have. For instance, where I live in northern Wisconsin, it’s freezing cold right now. In the midst of all the snowdrifts, ice coating the roads, and biting winds rattling my windows, I find myself reaching for books on my shelf set in the sultry heat of the tropics, or stories during spring or summer holidays like 4th of July.

BUT (yeah, there’s always a “but” with me *grin*) the key phrase here is “reaching for books on my shelf”, books that are already there on hand, because since I’m lazy, I tend to buy ahead. I don’t want to have to go out and purchase an item when I need it—I'm impatient and I want it to be there when I'm ready. So just like in a department store where I might buy bunches of winter items off the clearance rack in, say, February or March and save them for the next season, I kind of use this same pattern when shopping for books. (Clothes out of style by then? Eh, I’m not one to care.)

Are you getting my twisted line of thinking yet? Confused? Heehee, me too. But let me explain it this way… The summer-set books I’m dying to read in the dead of winter are already sitting on my shelf from previous summer (online usually) buying sprees, while the winter books I’ll be hungering to read come summertime, I might buy now during the cold season in anticipation of the heat. Yep, I lubs me some book hoarding. And since I typically hate to shop, I do a lot of it in one huge seasonal spree, and then when the mood strikes me, there’s no need to drag my ass out (or online) and *groan* shop. All I have to do is peruse my overloaded, sagging bookshelves and pick out a book that will instantly transport me from, for instance, this freaking Arctic I’m trapped in, to the scorching heat of Hawaii.

So see, as a reader, I decided WANTON WINTER’s mid-January release isn’t all that bad because I’d typically buy a holiday- or winter-themed book while it’s still cold. I’d then stockpile it for summer when it’s so sweltering hot I can’t breathe, and I’m longing to escape into a story where the hero and heroine are making wild love in front of a crackling fire, or skiing down a chilly mountainside in pursuit of the villain.

What sort of book-buying habits do you have? Are they hit-and-miss without rhyme or reason? Do you buy based on current seasons or holidays? Or do you ruthlessly plan ahead like I do, buying and then saving books in anticipation of cold winter days or sizzling summer nights?

Titania Ladley is a multi-published author writing for Ellora’s Cave, Samhain, and Red Sage. Upcoming books include FIRES WITHIN (Red Sage - April 2008), BREATHLESS (Ellora's Cave Exotika - April 4, 2008), and KABANA HEAT (Samhain - TBA). Please visit her at http://www.titanialadley.com/ or at http://www.roxanablaze.com/ , her other naughty half's website.