DJ Mansker lives in southeast Arizona. By day, DJ puts her twenty plus years of experience in the trenches of social work to use in the protective services. By night, she is a closet novelist and wait staff to her cat Trinidad. As a member of several local and national writers organizations she continues to hone her writing skills as she works to complete her first novel.

This is a lucrative corner to be a talking confessional. I’ve kept my rates low (where else can you get anything for a buck?), and business has been good. Readers, writers, book people of every ilk pass this way eventually, needing to unburden the woes of entanglement with the literary business. The knowledge absorbed through the very fabric of this confessional has enlightened my already heightened sense of awareness of the inherent misery of the literati.

I’ve been challenged, tempted, and trampled all for the sake of helping others break the bindings of their bookish captors. Through it all, I’ve held fast, stalwart in my goal to put them back on the path to enrichment through literature.

I’ve taken stock and stored a lifetime of literary genius and folly. I’ve seen and heard from both writers and readers. I know what writers lack and readers want. I have the ultimate equation, the proto particle, that fundamental element missing from the chemical makeup, the very DNA of our literature. I am the next Nobel Prize! Besides, everyone is always telling me I should write a book. Why not? I’ve read several. How hard can it be? Er, uh . . . ahem.

I am compelled to impart my wisdom to the world. With the accumulation of knowledge comes the innate duty to educate. And educate I shall. I’ll not be bested by “a dark and stormy night” from some beagle and his bird. There’ll be no antiquated typewriter atop a doghouse. No, sir. I’ve got plenty to say and it’s coming straight from the mouth of the world.

Ah, the choices: mystery, suspense, romance, thriller, the human condition, or my own condition. State of the world, state of the art—I’ve got it all.

Oooh, the ideas are swarming, buzzing around in my brain. I’ve been a veritable control tower, safely launching and landing pilots of the book business. There’s no stopping me now. I must be gifted to have so many good ideas. It’s a rare thing to have such advantage, so much advice and encouragement. Listening to and counseling writers and readers all this time is about to pay off.

The ebb and flow pulses through me, commanding me to write. It’s intoxicating. I must do this. I’m obliged to share this with the world. I can’t control this—only release it.

Oh, man, this is good stuff. It’s pouring out, puddling all around me. Not on-rushing waves but concentric circles, even and measured, echoing out from my very foundation.

How can I harness this genius? It swoops and soars, rolls and dives with engines that roar then stall, leaving

me breathless. Not flights of fancy but genius, purified through the filters of time and experience. The world will be at my feet. I’ll no longer be confined by these walls, reaching out to only those who pass my way. Now my written words will reach the masses.

This is gonna be big; I can feel it. A quick update to my technology and I’m a shoe in.

Oh, man, a fifteen-inch wireless flat-screen computer. I can see this thing from Mars and access it, too. Hee, hee! There’s pure power in the bits, mega-bites, K's and ram.

Look at the clarity of the image. It’s literally transformed through the technology of, of . . . what is that? Pixilation? Pixilationacity? Pixilification? All those little dots that make up the picture. Clearly, advanced technology can only enhance my genius.

Grandiosity you say? My foot. I do have what it takes. It’s not vanity when you know all, rather only when feigning ignorance for the sake of fawning. I need only pen the first word and all else will spill forth. With the push of one button, I have the power to illuminate the world. With a strike from one digit, I can set the pedestrian prose of today’s written word hurdling through space on a collision course with the eternity only those achieving greatness can attain.

One little digit, one simple finger, one button and I can change the world. I, a simple confession booth, can set the book universe back in its rightful orbit.

Now, if only I had a finger.

Raaaats.