Sometimes I wonder about people. At work I am in charge of answering all the emails that are sent to our website. A lady emailed us today wondering when she should expect to see our Christmas book in stores. When I get emails like this it takes everything I have not to write answers like, �Our marketing department was initially planning on a Valentine�s Day release, you know get a jump on sales, but we have ultimately decided to have book stores display our Christmas book at Christmas time�imagine that�. (This reminded me of something David Sedaris said to a lady when he was working in Santa Land as an elf. When asked which line was for the women's bathroom he relpied that he thought it was the line with all the women in it!) Since I am the only one that answers these emails, if someone complains I am in the dog house and, seeing as though I need my paycheck to pay rent and buy food, I am not about to rock the boat.

The best emails I get are the hate ones. People are so angry, or more to the point, people are so angry about stupid things. People love to write and rant about books they didn�t like for a variety of reasons. Either they were too Christian or not Christian enough; they were patriotic but not patriotic enough etc. etc. The phrase �you cannot please all of the people of all of the time� has never held deeper meaning for me. Now, I can mess with these people a little. I usually send them our standard "Thank you for your kind words" signiture thinking that if someone complains about the sassy-pants that sent them a thank you for their hate mail I can always say I copied and pasted the wrong response-oops.