The Lingering Smell of Lavender

Let’s face it. Lavender smells soapy. Whether this is because so many people put lavender in soap or people put lavender in soap because it smelled like it belonged there, I leave for science to figure out.

But I cut some lavender this morning so I could dry it for the Professor, who claims she’s coming back someday.

And I can still smell it, very faintly on my skin, hours later. The soap smell has faded and all that’s left is this faint thick dark smell, like, if you met a man who smelled like that, you’d be unable to resist him.

I should start opening up my lavender for men who’d like to sleep curled around it on Thursday nights so that, by the time they go out on Friday, they smell irresistible.

Then I could mount a webcam and sell internet access to the livestream to appeal to people who have a fetish for men who sleep curled around lavender, which, as sure as I’ve typed it here, must be a real thing in the world. Imagine them, people of the internet, bare and sleepy in my front bed, the hairs on their chests and thighs wrapping slightly around the woody parts of the lavender, one arm curled under their heads for pillows, the other draped in the plant. They wake, wet from dew, to the buzzing of the early bees.

The most highly prized of them all would be the gentleman who slept nearest the steps. His hair would always smell like rosemary and, when you pulled his shirt off him, you’ll find the small scratches of the new rose on his back.

That Poor Author

You know, I like a good Amazon kerflufle as much as the next person, but when I read stuff like this… I mean, don’t get me wrong. I hear where that independent bookseller is coming from and I can appreciate him not wanting to give that kind of financial information or support to Amazon.

But man, does your heart not go out to that author? Finally, there’s the publishing contract. And with it, the marketing money. You are a real author! And now, a bookstore won’t carry your book, not because of something you did, but because of Amazon’s war with independent booksellers. I mean, I expected A City of Ghosts would never get into bookstores, so I didn’t think it was somehow hurt by being published by CreateSpace.

In fact, quite the opposite. I’ve had a great experience with them. Found them very easy to use and very helpful when I needed it and occasionally, I get a check.

But that’s the trade-off with self-publishing–you have a lot of control, places like CreateSpace have set things up to be super easy, but you’re never going to be in a bookstore. Fine.

But man. When you think you have a “real” publisher only to discover bookstores view you as almost worse than self-published, since you’re helping to sow their destruction?

Ouch.

This, though, is a bigger problem for Amazon. If people start to feel like they can’t trust your reviews, it starts to impact the credibility of the company in the mind of the public. A lot of Amazon’s issues most people don’t care about. They’re not paying close attention to the tax stuff and, if they live in a place that doesn’t have bookstores, they could really give a shit about the plight of bookstores.

But if they just have the uneasy feeling that a place is lying to them?

That’s not good.

I’m not sure how Amazon goes about fixing that or even if they can, but that seems to me to be a bigger Achilles’ Heel than “some bookstores won’t like you.”