Ain't that a kick in the _____ ______?

Not long after I started BOOKGASM, I noticed something peculiar that kept popping up in every other thriller or mystery that I read, and I don't mean the obligatory inclination between the male and female leads to proclaim their undying love within two days of meeting one another. No, I mean the term "solar plexus."

Is there a fight scene in the novel you're reading? Odds are, someone's going to take it right in the solar plexus. Not the stomach, not the groin, but the solar plexus. Of all the dozens of places it really, really hurts to get hit on your body, this is the go-to spot, apparently. These two words are so omnipresent that I began writing down every instance of it I came across.

Now my list-in-progress has been revealed as the "Solar Plexus Watch." The sheer number of its instances is amazing, in both books good and bad, from authors talented and otherwise. Don't believe me? The proof speaks otherwise. Most even read interchangeably.

While we weren't busy counting up clichés, we also managed to take in some books, including Christa Faust's MONEY SHOT, Rudy Rucker's POSTSINGULAR and Dan Koeppel's BANANA: THE FATE OF THE FRUIT THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, among others.