Author Nick Bantock understands the human urge for voyeurism intimately.
Twelve years ago, his urge to read his neighbor's mail turned into six novels of epic proportions that allow his readers to literally peek into the lives of his characters, Griffin and Sabine. Bantock not only writes, but designs these 3-D books in which the reader, with much excitement and a touch of shame, can open envelopes installed in the book and actually read letters the lovers write to one another.
"It seemed obvious to me that there is something exciting about taking a letter out of an envelope and reading it," Bantock said. "And if it was someone else's, all the better."
When Bantock started this adventure, it was really only a personal project he never expected would be published as a book.
"I saw my neighbor's mail and I thought, 'I've got garbage and he's got a gorgeous letter' and I was immediately jealous," Bantock said. "I started thinking, 'What's the best letter you can have?' and in three and a half minutes, it all came together in my head."
He said an editor at Chronicle Books, where he worked designing book covers, literally had to drag the first draft of it away from him. A week later, he received word that his first book, Griffin and Sabine, would be published and 10,000 copies would be printed. Soon the number skyrocketed to 1 million after readers everywhere fell in love with Bantock's wild idea.
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"I realized the story that I wanted to tell would take more than one book," Bantock said. In the next two years came Sabine's Notebook and The Golden Mean. Bantock decided to put his characters to rest, but after seven years he realized Griffin and Sabine were not gone.
"I decided to scribble down some notes and after 30 minutes I said, 'This isn't notes, it's another bloody book,'" Bantock said.
And so The Gryphon and Alexandria were born. This year, Bantock decided for good that Griffin and Sabine would come to an end in his book The Morning Star.
This book, as the ones before it, is really a marriage of striking images and tantalizing text.
"It fascinates me about what happens when you use both sides of the brain at the same time," Bantock said. "By bringing the two together as the images tell the story equally, you end up with something that makes you look at the book with your whole being."
The series, which combined has spent over 100 weeks on the New York Times best- sellers list, is written in a way that doesn't seem like each is an instillation, though Bantock hopes the mystery and magic of the books will make the reader go in search of the rest of the series.
"There's a deliciousness about it," he said. "It's like a cross between sex and Christmas."
Bantock will be reading and signing The Morning Star at Bound to be Read, 6300 San Mateo Blvd. Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. For more information call Bound to be Read at 828-3500.
