Luke emailed me the first round of sketches for the Seven Deadly Sins t-shirt, and I thought they were pretty darn good. Of course, I'm so eager to start my e-commerce empire that Luke could have sent me Rorschach blots made by inking his ass and sitting down hard on a sketch pad, and I would have been excited by the signs of forward progress. But this convinced me that the shirt will really be pretty appealing and desirable, a veritable must-have accoutrement.

Recently I got an email from R.S. Gwynn, the author of the poem Snow White and the Seven Deadly Sins. Gwynn had been kind enough to grant me the right to reproduce the poem on this site, and he was following up to let me know he had a book of collected poems coming out in June. With his book and my shirt, I figured that there was the opportunity for some marketing quid pro quo. I obligingly set up a new link to his book on the page with the poem, and on a whim I sent RS Gwynn an email saying that he should really buy about a hundred of my t-shirts for friends and family. I figured it they be just the thing for the book-signing party.

Then I thought, this is a really good idea, getting authors who've written about the Deadly Sins interested in my upcoming line of Sin-related merchandise. So I sent an email off to Charles Panati, the author of Sacred Origins of Profound Things. His book provided a great deal of the information that I slapped up in the History section, which helped stem the flood of emails I received from people who were doing term papers and needed historical info "by tonite please becuase my papers due." A month ago, Mr. Panati was kind enough to send me an email thanking me for hawking his book on my website. His message started out "Hi, I'm Charles Panati" which I thought was very nice. It was also necessary, because the name on the email was not Charles Panati, it was Charles something-else, which I imagine is Charles Panati's real name. I suppose he has reasons for wanting to protect his identity, which I will respect, unless of course he fails to tell his book agent to sign me, in which case his privacy is toast. Ha! Just kidding, Charles. If that's your real name.

I told Charles all about the great new Deadly Sins T-shirts, and suggested that they would make great gifts. I was going to point out that, at a mere $12.50, they will be less expensive than one would pay for his book Sacred Origins of Profound Things, but I thought he might take that the wrong way.

This was starting to feel like a bona fide marketing strategy. Let's see, I mused, what other groups of people will have an interest in Seven Deadly Sins merchandise? Of course: priests! I began to perceive the awesome appeal of marketing, with its stunning potential to shape the very fabric worn by the public.