Serpentooth

Here's an odd, but true, story...

When Guardians of Xen first came out, I sent a number of free copies to certain friends and family members. Apparently one of them didn't make it through.

That particular friend inconveniently moved a day after I put the package in the mail, and didn't leave a forwarding address. After a while, the package came back to me, stamped with delivery failure notifications and such.

Now, that part was expected. Now we get to the interesting part. I noticed the package had been resealed with packing tape. I didn't think anything of it, since I figured the original seal was just weak and needed to be reinforced.

Then I opened the package. Surprise, surprise. I expected to find a copy of my novel, but I instead found a stack of 4x8 paper, three-hole-punched as if it was taken out of a manual... Or several.

Looking at some of the pages, I saw diagrams of aircraft landing gear. What? Technical diagrams! After thumbing through the stack (Which weighs about the same as the book), I found a title:

Technical Manual
Daily Maintenance Requirements Cards
Model E-6B Aircraft

Now that's frightening. I looked up the E-6B on wikipedia, and it's a military command and control aircraft, the kind NORAD would use if their land site was blown away. Someone actually stole my novel and replaced it with a stack of possibly-classified military documents. About ten of these manuals, give or take.

Needless to say, I'll be trashing these, as I want nothing to do with the military, but I also found a ripped-in-half advertisement addressed to "Lisa Sha..." (Rest is ripped) in Oklahoma, with a name and address for a company called C&H Distributors in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

I wish I could say I was making this up, but I have to admit I'm not quite this creative.

So, I don't know who stole the novel, whether it was a postal worker, a factory employee, or just some random person who picked up the envelope... But thanks for at least making this newsworthy.