Today I discovered that John Saul is a time-travelling, mind-reading plagiarist.

Commuting to my new job by public transport would take me twice the time driving does. Unfortunately, I don’t have the company car anymore my previous employer gave me; my new employer offered me a car, but I was stupid enough to do the math on what it would cost me in taxes and other deductions. So since February, I’ve been driving my wife’s car to work. (Try to picture in your mind a 6’7" body folding itself into a Suzuki Alto.) (And now try again without laughing.) Last week, the loud purr of its engine drowned in an increasingly deafening growl. As I could see with my own eyes that the Alto hadn’t suddenly morphed into a muscle car, it had to be the exhaust. So today, I drove the Alto to the garage to get the exhaust fixed. And by the end of the afternoon, I walked back to the garage to pick it up.

My route to the garage takes me past a lovely little second-hand bookstore, and of course I can’t just walk by without at least a little bit of browsing. A spine in the English-language orange crate caught my eye and dropped my jaw. I grabbed the paperback and took a closer look. But my eyes hadn’t cheated me: this bent-spine, torn-cover, ancient John Saul paperback had been published under the exact same title I had in mind for my original NaNoWriMo project. And not only has he stolen my title, he had managed to do so at leat 30 years before I thought of it, and without my ever having spoken the title out loud, except to my wife (who swears she hasn’t told any time-travellers).

But I got even with him. I bought the paperback, and got great satisfaction from the knowledge that not a cent of the transaction would find its way into Saul’s pockets. Heh heh heh!