Of COURSE the most powerful magician lives in a bookstore

I had a lot of fun at the New England Independent Bookstore Association gathering yesterday, and had a lot of fun talking to booksellers. Someone mentioned the idea that a cool local bookstore is like artisanal chocolate, or craft beer—it’s local, it’s special, it’s hand-crafted. Reminded me of when I organized a Bookstore and Chocolate Crawl in San Francisco a few years ago, and 100 of us went around visiting local indie bookstores and getting super-nice chocolate along the way.

One of my favorite parts in All the Birds in the Sky is Danger Bookstore, the weird little shop where the most powerful magician in town, Ernesto lives. Partly because it’s a way of poking fun at book categories—the books are all shelved in sections like Scary Love Stories, Things We Thought Were True and Parties That Already Ended. And partly because it just makes so much sense to me that of course the most powerful witch in town lives in a bookstore. Where else would he live?