JENNY DAVIDSON: Here’s one sentence that caught my eye early on, as your protagonist Joe’s first trial of his sexual-release program for high-performing employees leads him to tweak the product he’s offering: “It meant another head-to-head with Beginning Programming for Dummies, but the thing that separates the sheep from the goats is the willingness to go that extra mile.”
This wild mixing of metaphors is wonderfully characteristic of a certain kind of management self-help book. (I remember watching an episode of “The Apprentice” once and being perplexed as to why all of the would-be apprentices so frequently used the expression “step up,” as in “step up to the plate”—would so-and-so “step up”? So-and-so really “stepped up” in that challenge.) Did you read any books of this ilk as you began working on Lightning Rods, and if so, which are your favorites?
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