Let’s start out with a word of warning: Today’s post contains a photo. If the photo does not appear, try scrolling down through the comments and then go back up to the photo. I’ve heard from at least one reader that that strategy works for her. As a last resort, please send me a request at jajance@me.com and I’ll be happy to send along said photo.

And why is this photo part of today’s story? Lot’s of people are under the mistaken impression that writers spend their lives scribbling away in a small room in some upstairs attic. In actual fact, this is me—three hours on Monday and four hours on Tuesday—hanging out in our garage signing eight hundred books.

Yes, I said eight hundred. That amounts to twenty-seven and a half standard shipping boxes of books. I believe I’ve mentioned before that authors are encouraged to write books that are approximately 100,000 words long, give or take 5,000 words in either direction. Den of Iniquity weighs in at 95,907. Even with those missing 4,000 words, the loaded shipping boxes weighed in at 35 pounds apiece, and dragging them around on the floor of the garage was no joke.

Although the books were already unpacked and flapped (opened to the title page where I sign.) it still took me seven hours to get the job done.

While doing so, I expended a whole lot of red ink. Why do I sign books in red ink? Early in my career, I visited literally hundreds of bookstores large and small—Little Professors, B. Dalton’s, WaldenBooks—where I did what’s called “stock signings.” That means going into stores and signing whatever books they happen to have in stock.

I remember one Little Professor in Orange County, California, where the clerk went into the back room and called out to his manager, “There’s a lady here who wants to sign her books. I have no idea know why.”

During those visits, I signed books with whatever pen happened to be handy. The problem came later on when someone who had purchased one of those books wanted it personalized. At that point I’d have to go searching for a pen with matching ink. By the time book number three came out, I had wised up. I began signing in red ink with one particular brand of pen. As a result, no matter how long ago I may have signed a particular book, I can still make it look like it was personalized to begin with.

In other words, in the process of signing 800 books, I expended a lot of red ink. As I was doing so, I remained grateful to those marketing guys at Avon Books who, back in 1983, insisted I change my pen name from Judith Ann Jance to J.A. because, as they told me, “Male readers won’t accept police procedurals written by someone named Judy.”

So Monday and Tuesday, I would have been stuck out in our rather chilly garage a lot longer than seven hours if I’d had to write out Judith Ann Jance instead of JA Jance.

Forty years later, that suggestion from those marketing guys still has consequences, and boy am I grateful for that!