Lemony Snicket is the new Harry Potter

''It's aimed at the older fans, but kids are curious about Lemony Snicket,'' says the writer, who lives with his wife, Lisa Brown -- an artist and graphic designer -- in a hip San Francisco enclave. ''It's certainly the first book in a while where I feel nervous about its reception.'' HarperCollins is shipping a sizable 200,000 copies, and if ''The Unauthorized Autobiography'' misses, fans will have to wait for the next installment: When not promoting, Handler's working on the movie (which will telescope the first, second, and third books), a hort-story collection, a new pirate novel, and a movie musical with friend and frequent collaborator Stephin Merritt of the band the Magnetic Fields.

'''The Carnivorous Carnival' will come out October 29 and then it'll be one book a year," he says, swirling the dregs of his soda mournfully. "It was really hard to make that decision. I have a very clear memory that as a kid I would go to the library once a week to look for books by Zilpha Keatley Snyder [author of ''The Egypt Game''], who wrote pretty quickly, but never quickly enough for me.... It's hard when kids ask when the next book is coming out. You want the answer to be 'Oh, well, it's right here!' So to say next year is a bummer, but it also feels good to, uh, sleep, which I wasn't doing for a while."

Just imagine how he'd feel if he actually wrote the books.