“Everybody has a story. It’s like families. You might not know who they are, might have lost them, but they exist all the same. You might drift apart or you might turn your back on them, but you can’t say you haven’t got them. Same goes for stories. So,” she concluded, “everybody has a story. When are you going to tell me yours?’

It’s been a while since I have read a really good book. The kind you get lost in. The Thirteenth Tale was exactly that type of book for me.

World renowned author, Vida Winter, has been telling tales for six decades. All of which have brought her much fame and fortune. However, none are as sought after as the missing thirteenth tale. For years reporters and would be biographers have hounded Ms. Winter for this mysterious story or for the story of her life, but all have walked away empty handed. It isn’t until she is old and frail that Ms. Winter seeks out the daughter of a bookshop owner, Margaret Lea, to tell her story to; the real story.

The Thirteenth Tale is a perfect book to curl up on the couch with on a rainy weekend, enjoy a cup of tea and get swept up in an old fashioned tale that will have you guessing until the end.

All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes — characters even — caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.

A couple of nights ago I ran into the following headline that was in the ‘Top in 24 Hours’ list: Best First Page of Any Book Ever? [PIC] With over 4,000 diggs I got curious.

The link takes you to a picture of exactly what the headline describes; the first page of someone’s book. After reading it my first thoughts were, “This can’t possibly be real”. After all, one wouldn’t need to be a graphics genius to whip this up in Photoshop. Being skeptical about the authenticity of this amazing work of literary brilliance, I scrolled down to read some of the comments. The comments on Digg can oftentimes be funnier than the stories and you can count on someone to call out a fake usually within the first few posts.

What I found instead was a post containing some links to apparently vouch for the book’s authenticity. One of the links was to yet another page of the book. While funny to read it still could have easily been Photoshopped. The second link was to the author, Dale Courtney’s, blog on a Barack Obama web site. The site is real enough, however, it wouldn’t take someone too much time to set up the blog account. In fact, in the amount of time that I have already wasted on this post, I could have easily created a Dale Courtney blog.

The third link on this post was to Amazon. The thought that this is some sort of elaborate hoax was beginning to dwindle at this point. Although, anyone can sell items on Amazon (How to sell your stuff on Amazon.com) I find it very difficult to believe that someone would actually put in this amount of time and energy for a joke. By the way, the reviews on the book are quite amusing. I especially like the collectible edition available for $1,000.

While visiting Mr. Courtney’s blog one can’t help but notice a link to his book’s page at Xlibris. For those of you not in the know, Xlibris is a self-publishing book company. This means that anyone can write a book and Xlibris will publish it for you cutting out all of those pesky middle men, such as editors. My theory of this being a hoax, albeit a rather elaborate one, was pretty much destroyed at this point. While it’s true that someone could have planned out this whole thing, Xlibris doesn’t publish your book for free. In fact, the cheapest package they offer is $299. While I can buy the idea that someone or a few someones had an abundant amount of time on their hands to create a very clever hoax, I can’t fathom that someone would pay a few hundred dollars for it.

At this point it gets hard to wrap your head around. If this isn’t a hoax that means we have to believe that Dale M. Courtney really exists (read his bio), he wrote Moon People, and paid Xlibris a few hundred dollars to publish it. But wait – this story doesn’t end here. Mr. Courtney has published a sequel; Moon People 2.

I have one final thought on this entire Moon People saga. Due to the viral nature of the Internets it is actually possible that this book may sell a handful of copies. It is also possible that it may end up on-line in its entirety (the book only has 77 pages) for all to enjoy. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a video adaptation using LEGOs show up on YouTube. Hmm, now there’s a way to waste some time…

The HBO series is rumored to be starting up again in June. It will be fun to see what direction the show takes after reading the books.

The eighth book in the series, “From Dead to Worse“, is due out in paperback on March 31st and the ninth book is slated for May in hardcover. I might as well keep on reading.