Hmm . . . Steven L. Layne

I came across a guy named Steven L. Layne on the SFS forum under a thread about things that make you stop reading. One person used as an example the inside jacket copy of Layne's book, Mergers, as an example. In a nutshell, Layne introduces the book by saying it's a story of "four exceptional teens from four different races," then proceeds to name the caucasian guy, and refers to the others as his friends. Right there, he establishes the white guy as the ring leader.

Naturally, I had to have a little look-see to find out who this Steve Layne guy is. Seems he writes for the youth market when he's not gallivanting around lecturing at schools and conventions. After poking around his website, a few things struck me as remarkable, and not necessarily in a good way.

• he looks like a high school basketball coach
• he's a relatively new writer, with his first book published less than 10 years ago, and his second published five years ago
• he has a masters in reading, whatever that is, and a doctorate, yet on his page about his "writer's background," he has some proofreading errors that appear consistently throughout a paragraph

"February of 2004 brought a special Valentine’s gift to Dad’s across America - Steve’s gift book Verses for Dad’s Heart. Longtime friend and colleague Gail Greaves Klinger produced the artwork that brought Steve’s verses farther than they could have ever gone alone. Together these two friends produced a one-of-a-kind book that required three separate print runs in the first three months the book was released! The book seems sure to be popping up in stores for years to come as a seasonal favorite for Dad’s."

First, it should be "dads" with no capital D and no apostrophe. It's plural, not possessive, it doesn't start a sentence, and he's not addressing anyone in particular as Dad. Second, the same error appears in the last sentence as well as the first. That makes me wonder whether he recognizes it as an error at all. Whether he maintains the website himself, or has someone else do it, I have to think he approved the copy for that page, and others about himself.

The copy contained on such sites is by nature self-promoting, but his copy seems a bit self-aggrandizing. It also seems to be more than I want to know about the guy. Thankfully, he doesn't give us the ages of his family members and pets--just their names. I didn't really even want to know that, let alone how "fabulous" his children are. Do I really want to know how much cash he was awarded for winning some prize? No, I don't. It's okay to mention the prize, I suppose. Do I really want to know about every article the guy's ever written? Do I want to know what his favorite foods and restaurant chains are? Seriously--he mentions them! It reads like a multi-page resume. There's too much detail, and more than a little too much preening.

I laughed out loud reading the first sentence on his home page:

"When you hear the words Passionate About Reading spoken in a room filled with teachers and librarians, the name Steve Layne is likely to roll quickly off of someone’s tongue."

I don't doubt the guy's passion for reading. For all I know he may be a really big fish, but his fishbowl is awfully tiny. I'd never heard of him before today, and I'm not likely to ever hear his name bantered about in everyday conversation. I wonder if his name would roll off the tongue of any staffer at my local public library, or that of any teacher in my local public school system.