His first impression of them was they belonged to a therapist or an artist, writer maybe. Thoughts noted down about lotsa folks. Private stuff. A lot of it nasty.

People oughta mind their business.

He learned a long time ago, no good comes of sticking your nose where it don’t belong.

The books had an odd feel when he handled them. Kinda like someone glued rough sparkly stuff to the cover. Made his fingers tingle and the hairs on the back of his hand stand on end. Static electricity he figured, and over-sensitive, old nerves that lied.

After checking over a few, he decided he didn’t want to know what the others contained. But hey, who was he to argue with profit? Paid his wages. Yes, indeedy.

He picked one up and sensed a tickle in his palm. God damn. When handling them next, he would use a cloth. The feeling was unpleasant. That static could give a nasty shock to his system. Who knew how the ol’ ticker’s wiring was these days?

He turned and shuffled from the room, past the cartons and stock, which he’d sort through when he got to it. At the counter he stopped and stooped.

Pushing open the glass door, he rearranged the books inside before placing the green volume beside the others. This time he gave the odd, little collectible pride of place in the center.

He might even hunt around for a stand to sit it upright. Better chance of catching another collector’s attention.

“Woo-wee! Hundred and twenty bucks, my friend,” he said to the book as he closed the cabinet. “That fella was a fool. Yes, siree, he didn’t know much about nothing.”

I don’t believe in luck. That’s what he’d said after paying enough to cover two days’ wages.

Well, the books might be ancient like him, but if he could sell these others for even half that price, they sure seemed lucky to him.

THE END

February 22, 2018

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From the Imagination Vault

When I typed The End after completing the last draft of this novel, I cried. This has been the toughest book I’ve written so far. At times I didn’t believe I’d even finish. Three things fought me every step of the way: life balance, a character, and technology.

Best Seller had been conceived as a novella in June 2016, simply to get a story idea out of my head. This was meant to be a one perspective tale about William Barnes and his envy. A stalker story. Not a complex interweaving of two different characters with a paranormal talisman. Only late in the first draft did I figure out that the green book, briefly mentioned in the first chapter, was the mechanism of William’s bad luck.