For writers, you never tire of seeing your books on the shelves of bookstores around the country and around the world. My friend Andy, who I met because of my books, sent me a great shot he took at Powell’s in Portland. There, kept company by almost the entirety of the Ray Bradbury oeuvre, are two my own Bradbury-related titles, Listen to the Echoes and Shadow Show.
I think back to the first Bradbury story I read. The book was The Illustrated Man and the story was “The Long Rain.” The old paperback belonged to my Dad. I read that story in the basement of our old home in Minnesota and I was hooked from that point forward.
Today, to see my own books shelved alongside Ray Bradbury’s books is about the greatest Christmas gift I could ever receive. I will never tire of this thrill.


You earned your place there, Sam.
I met a woman looking for books for her teenage boys there. She was a Bradbury reader in her youth so I pulled a copy of Shadow Show off the shelf, placed it in her hand, and she went home with it.