Back in the 1990s, my then-husband ran a small postal center, in the sleepy beach town of Paia, located on the North East side of the island of Maui. Complementary services, such as voicemail, pagers, and fax, were offered as well. Paia at that time was a quiet little town with Mom-and-Pop grocery stores where you could buy your groceries on credit, the kind of credit where you left your name and number, and how much you owed with the cashier who then recorded it in a logbook. Many of the customers who frequented the town of Paia lived off-grid, which meant no county water, electricity, and certainly no phone. If you wanted to get a hold of your friend you had two choices, hope to run into them or drive out to where they lived.
Bookstores were few on the island, and it was something I often lamented. In the fall of 1993, my husband asked me to take over the postal center so that he could focus on his other business, which was the financial staple of our family. I balked at the idea of running a boring postal center, but when he suggested expanding it into a bookstore, my heart leapt with the possibilities, and I eagerly agreed.
A few years later, sitting in my little store, I got a phone call from a rep at Borders Book Store to let me know that they would be opening their superstore in Kahului, a town nearby. The rep said she was informing all bookstore owners on the island that they were moving in and that Borders was collecting feedback on any thoughts or concerns bookstore owners might have about their impending arrival. My first thought was, More Books!!! The rest of the conversation went something like this,
“That’s great!”
Silence.
“Hello?”
“Um. Yes. So you’re happy that we’re coming to Maui?
“Absolutely. I’ll be there all the time. We need more bookstores. There’s no way my little place and the other stores can come close to supplying all the books that readers want.”
“Well… I well, that’s fantastic. I’m so glad to hear that.”
“I can’t wait for you to open.”
“Thank you. We’re happy to help.”
I kept my word and was there for the grand opening with all my kids, each of us with a pillow under our arm for the many hours we planned on spending at the store. Did I mention that we were serious readers in our family? We inhaled books. My eldest daughter read a novel or two a day. My husband started his morning with a cup of coffee and a random chapter out of our encyclopedia collection. Books stood in towering stacks in our living room, tumbled from our beds, sat sticky and smudged with the residue of whatever its owner was eating on the kitchen table, and lay spoiling in the sun on our porch. We had to erect another building to hold all our books, built with the help of free labor from another book enthusiast, our friend, Jeffrey, who owned 15,000 books in his collection and was in desperate need of storage. He never went anywhere without a duffel bag full of books.
Like my enthusiasm for Borders, and more bookstores, I feel the same about writing. There is no way that I could ever write fast enough or produce enough books to satisfy voracious readers, which is why I’m happy to share with you other books in the genres I like to write in. So please, have a look around my site and enjoy.
