Telling stories with words, music, pictures and people.
I am an author, publisher, storyteller, producer and creator living in Long Beach. Through MWS Media, I provide creative services including brand building, content creation and WordPress development. My clients include other independent creatives, small businesses, interactive marketing agencies, and production houses and studios large and small. What can I do for you? Find the oldest mass-market paperback you own — the oldest that you bought when it was new. I’m talking the one that’s warped, with yellowed pages, a spine cracked and creased… the one with folds and tears on the front and back cover.
Dig it out, open it up to the middle, and put it to your nose. Take a sniff.
Smell that?
That’s a fossil footprint from the first steps of your imagination.
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I have two books that fill this criteria.
The first is an old copy of Hoyle’s (the game rulebook) from the seventies. This old book has little wasp mudprints on the side from sitting in the one spot too long, inviting the habitation of hornets and such. I have never used this book and yet I find myself keeping it for some reason. And to think, I actually hate card games! Perhaps it is because I find it hard to read people – but that is for another time…
The second is an even older book from the sixties that contains tons of brain-teasers and linear puzzles. The front cover is faded to this horrible matted coir color. I have only opened this book up a few times since picking it up at a lifeline some years ago. It is yet another relic of my hording phase.
Both of these books are remnants of my old hording days but I wish that I had a couple of old books from my childhood that inspired my love of things arthurian.
The first was a second print of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s “Lancelot and Elaine” published in 1908 – a gorgeous book that unfortunately had bunny-ear tears due to folding injuries that occurred long before I owned the book.
The second was a compilation of Arthurian legends that was printed in 1954 but was supposedly printed a lot earlier in the peace. I forget the name of the book but it inspired my love of fantasy. Dragons, headless knights and crazed sorceresses were the order of the day. I loved it!
I have heard somewhere that you can tell a lot about somebody from the material that they read, but I am not sure what that makes me… Perhaps I am a closet ninja… or something like that…
Then again… 
You wrote:
“Smell that?
That?s a fossil footprint from the first steps of your imagination.”
—–
I can’t tell you how those words hit me. I immediately went to my rather large book collection, some dating back to the 1800s, found the perfect paperback (not from the 1800s of course) and did as you suggested. I love the idea of that smell being “…a fossil footprint from the first steps of my imagination”
Thank you for the experience.
psb