'It Was a Dark and Stormy Night in Louisville...'

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For fun, the 35-plus authors participating in the Winter Institute's (Wi3) Friday evening Author Reception were asked to add 25 to 50 words to the sentence "It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country."

Here are the 19 very entertaining responses to date -- which clearly demonstrate just why these authors are among independent booksellers' favorites:

"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country. As is traditional, when booksellers gather, square dancing broke out -- a wild gyre of do-si-do-ing. The authors -- notoriously bad dancers, as a breed -- watched in awestruck silence. "Is it always like this?" a first-timer asked. "No," said the author beside him. "They don't usually wear clothes." --Jonathan Miles, author of Dear American Airlines, Houghton Mifflin
"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country. I don't know how many booksellers want to be writers. But every writer I know wants to be a bookseller. So for me, this is like a weekend among movie stars. Except better read. And less botox." --Stephen Evans, author of The Marriage of True Minds, Unbridled Books
"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country. Jeff Bezos made his way to the parking garage directly below. He pulled a bundle of TNT from his duffel bag. "This ought to do it...," he said with a sickening grin." --Mary Roach, author of Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, W.W. Norton
"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country. I was astonished to find myself in a room filled with people who know about books, who want to talk about books, who can think of nothing more fun than to tell other people about what books to read. And I thought to myself, Now we know: heaven is in Kentucky." --Marisa Silver, author of The God of War, Simon & Schuster
"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country, all yearning to bring back the good old days when books were the most preeminent, influential, insightful, and inspirational communication vehicle in the world. Indeed, the booksellers were filled with optimism and hope that despite the tidal wave of competition, the electronic explosion and the rise of the impersonal and anonymous book store chains, the tipping point for the independent bookseller was on the horizon when personal service, quality of content, the enduring value of the written word, and great stories created by talented authors would once again reign supreme as the one-on-one communication system of choice for those seeking to make sense out of a tormented world. They left the room, just as the clouds broke and the full moon lit up the troubled night, broadly hinting that a bright sunrise would soon follow. And they rejoiced." --Warren Adler, author of Funny Boys, Overlook Press
"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country. Suddenly there was a sizzling sound, the smell of sulfur, and the lights flickered and went dead. There was a moment of pure blackness, of deep silence. Then, as suddenly as they had gone out, the lights flared on again. And the booksellers saw what had happened in the split second of darkness..." --Kate Morgenroth, author of They Did It With Love, Plume
"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country, each of whom was like family to the writers in the room. Without them, we might as well send our dumb-bound books (as Ezra Pound called them) into that storm and expect the worst. What we've learned to expect from this family -- People of the Book, as Geraldine Brooks recently dubbed us, this tribe that makes up the heart of every culture in which it evolves -- is respectful care for what often takes years to create and produce. What we've learned is that we are all in this together." --Alan Cheuse, author of The Fires: Two Novellas, Santa Fe Writer's Project, Literary Ventures Fund
"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country ... Together they worked up to an edge-of-your-seat, page-turning climax, tied up loose ends in a satisfying denouement, and lived happily ever after. Then they went home." --Kerry Cohen, author of Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity, Hyperion
"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country, from whose frayed pockets participles dangled dangerously, from whose lips infinitives split spitefully, and in whose minds gerunds jangled jealously, all the while wondering if the blond woman in the corner with the charming British accent and high cheekbones might really be J.K. Rowling." --Jim Noles, author of A Pocketful of History: Four Hundred Years of America -- One State Quarter at a Time, Da Capo Press
"In the sea of booksellers, I was swimming like a whale splashing through the waves, only to remember that whales were the most hunted creatures of the sea. I quickly began to swim like a sardine!" --Keiko Kasza, author of Badger's Fancy Meal, Putnam Juvenile
"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country. These people were hard-core consumers of chocolate, as the state of the cheesecake buffet confirmed. I snagged the last piece of mocha and attempted to scarf it before anyone noticed I wasn't supposed to be there -- but no luck." --E. Lockhart, author of The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, Hyperion Books for Children
"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country. My first book, Without a Map, was recently published by Beacon. At 58, I audaciously applied for and won a $50,000 writing grant and was tossed into this new life. I slid into my writing tunnel, that intensely isolated and exhilarating place where I am set free to carve thoughts and images into the page. I thought I was writing a quiet little book. Instead, Without a Map is a national bestseller, a success due to the extraordinary commitment of my press and of independent booksellers like Books Etc., Longfellow, Water Street, and River Run Books: New England booksellers who have hand-sold a lot of my books. I have learned that a successful book comes into the world through the hard work of a vital triad: the writer, the publisher, and the bookseller. On this stormy night, I am very happy to extend my thank you to that team." --Meredith Hall, author of Without a Map: A Memoir, Beacon Press

"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country. She was wearing a short yellow dress. It was the wrong thing to wear in January, especially in the rain. The color was silly, almost, for a woman her age.

'That was why,' he said later. 'It was your wrongness.'

'Perhaps it was just a good dress,' she said." --Katie Crouch, author of Girls in Trucks, Little, Brown

"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country. In far-away places like the Land of Seattle, Amazons and other great beasts were selling books too. They were well-intentioned creatures, but they were solitary, never meeting the townspeople who read the tales, nor the storytellers who wrote them. In the ballroom in Louisville, things were different. There the writers and the readers and the sellers mingled, and their lives and tales intertwined. It didn't hurt that the drinks were better too." --Jeffrey Kluger, author of Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple, Hyperion
"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country. Deathly quietness followed the loss of lights. Suddenly in the gloom a glow flared, drawing all eyes. 'Swordbird!' a lady bookseller gasped. Perched on the windowsill was a shining dove. 'A righteous heart can beam a light in the darkest place... I learned it long ago, in my Sword Quest.'" --Nancy Yi Fan, author of Sword Quest, HarperCollins Children's Books
"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country. When the night was over, however, her plan having worked to precision, only a single bookseller was left alive. And as that bookseller gazed about the deathly quiet room, a malevolent twinkle in her eye, she knew that, come midnight, she would never be seen again... " --Jason Pinter, author of The Guilty: A Henry Parker Novel, Mira
"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country. The lights went out, but no one panicked. Instead, the booksellers got talking about dark-and-stormy-night scenes from favorite books. They laughed and argued, and when the storm died down and the lights came back on, they remembered why they were in Louisville in the first place -- their love of books." --Carla Neggers, author of The Angel: A Novel of Suspense, Mira
"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country. It was between presentations, so a hum of conversation rose from the assembly, gradually increasing in volume as more people stood up or turned to talk to others nearby. And then, suddenly, inexplicably, a deep hush fell on the room, almost everyone ceasing to speak at precisely the same moment, the two or three lone voices that continued following suit a moment later. People looked at each other in bewilderment, and then, as if by the same magic compulsion that makes huge flocks of starlings wheel and dive unison, began to turn towards the stage. There, in the pallor of the spotlight, luminous and alone, stood the woman none of them, even in their dreams, ever expected to see this side of death...." --Katie Hickman, author of The Aviary Gate: A Novel, Bloomsbury
"It was a dark and stormy night in Louisville, and the room was filled with 500 independent booksellers from all over the country. 500 book-reading, book-buying, book-loving, book-recommending, book-selling people, all under one roof. The authors present were overcome with emotion. Some wept openly; others fell to their knees, murmuring fervent prayers of thanksgiving. Surely, thought one first-time author, her face aglow with rapture, this must be paradise. " --Hillary Jordan, author of Mudbound, Algonquin