She was Young, Lithe, Long-tailed…

Jack’s weekly guest blog

The other morning I idly watched our two staff kittens, Owen Meany (male) and Nike (female) rolling around in a clinch (heated embrace) in front of the paperback romances. And I was struck by a thought.

We have far too many romances and are having trouble shifting them, despite every conceivable (hah!) kind of discount or clever bundling. But my wife the author is always laughing about something known as “kitten cover theory.” Basically, the fastest way to sell a book is to put a kitten on its cover.

And we know for a fact that ‘cozy’ mysteries that involve cats or kittens fly off the shelf. . .

. . . so I wonder if paperback romances involving love-struck kittens mightn’t be a sure-fire seller? Nike tends to come off worst from her encounters with Owen – frequently with a scratch or a bruise. Hickies, in essence.

Titles began to appear in my imagination. ” Catermauling Lover,” “Kitten Canoodle,”  “My Highland Wildcat” –  –  –

Then cover art with muscular toms and shapely tabbies rolling around in each other’s paws.

The blurbs on the back of romances have always amused us and so I began to write them in my mind –

“She was young, lithe, and long-tailed. He was lean, mean, a real street tough whose whiskers quivered with desire….”

Well, that will be quite enough of that.

What makes this all a bit academic, though, is that Owen Meany isn’t quite the man he used to be and Nike is, even as I write, having a small ‘procedure’ carried out by Dr. Beth. So all future clinches will be purely platonic for both of them. Perhaps that adds to the romance?