The greeting card street has expanded past control, which is a bit of a problem in the rest of book-town. Sure, it's all in response to market demand, and the tourists love it, they just absolutely love being able to wander a street filled with houses built of cards, and being able to see the card characters pouring each other tea and telling each other that they don't know what they'd do without close friends like you, and then the tourists go and buy the card to take home with them, maybe to put in an album, maybe to show their friends as a "you won't believe what I saw," or maybe to actually send as a card to their friends and family, as appropriate. The problem is that the whole town was designed to respond to demand, although with a few reserves in case of genres going extinct and being unable to reproduce once conditions improve. New genres rise up all the time and expand into deserted neighborhoods--you don't want to visit the urban fantasy section, that's all I'm saying. We insist that the tourists take someone with them from the police procedural section (and *not* one of the villains!) if they go to visit there. It’s almost as bad as the serial killer non-fiction, truth tho tell, at least in terms of minor characters (like the tourists) getting damaged without any warning or foreshadowing that can be easily detected and avoided by our experienced guides. But where was I? Oh, yes, greeting cards.


Inspiration: Googling "greetings to the great king" -> greeting cards in Great Portland Street
Story potential: Low.
Notes: Eh. Fforde does it better.

Their fates were interleaved with those of the books, but the books were what was most important, the structure without which their lives would flutter into the flame. So they sacrificed a few of their number, or allowed them to be sent into danger, to protect the books. Most of the monks fled through the tunnels when they heard tales of the arm on the horizon. They took the books with them, as many as they could carry--and that was a great number, for there had been plans in place for such a thing for centuries, since one of the minor monasteries had lost its library during an earthquake, where the second shaking had opened the ground and swallowed the library. They'd salvaged--

Inspiration: alisgray writing "interleaved."
Story Potential: High
Notes: High potential for somebody else, or if there's a book-specific story contest/anth. I generally steer clear of stories about books, or writers, because I find self-referential writing boorish. So--books hidden, ferreted away, brought out when the heir of the conqueror needs them? Or is the hiding itself the story?