The Trajectory of Today’s Topics

• Baltimore book festival falls flat.

• Heartbreaking over Haymitch.

• Jim from Huckelberry Finn gets Pulitzer.

• Updates on a book sequel.

Hot Off The Press

Indie Author Equivalent of the FyreFest

A million little disasters. This past weekend, hundreds of eager, independent authors gathered in Baltimore for the Million Lives Book Festival and were soon met with disaster. The event promised hundreds and up to thousands of eager bibliophiles ready to peruse the wonderful works of talented independent authors. Tickets for the event sold for between $50 and $250, and it was billed as a “Black Tie Affair,” complete with Fantasy Ball, demonstrations, cosplay, and more. What the authors and attendees received in return were fake rose petals, abject disorganization, and crushing heartbreak. 

Where did it all go wrong? According to the Archer Management website, “A Million Lives Book Festival is the perfect event to make more bookish friends! This event will include a vendor hall, panels, a content creation room, fandom cosplay meet ups, a cosplay competition, and a ball.” Attendees got anything but that. Just watch some of the TikTok videos to see what attendees and authors really encountered. Instead of lavish tables, a fantasy ballroom experience, and tons of book loving people, they were met with a nearly empty room devoid of the fantasy experience. Refreshments consisted of cookies on a plate, and decorations were a few books with a line of fabric rose petals! There wasn’t even a DJ lined up for the ball. I’m sorry, what? I couldn’t believe my eyes when the videos started rolling across my feed. 

It isn’t for the faint of heart. As an indie author myself, I know it’s tough to market yourself and make enough connections and money to make it all seem worth the supreme effort to write a book. Every sale feels like a hard won fight, every day you have to figure out new, innovative ways to market your hard work, and events like these can go a long way. They can also be expensive. Not only are tables (booths you set up to sell your wares) expensive, but if you travel, add on hundreds more in expenses. Hotels, gas or air fare, food, the cost to ship books to these events, and the list goes on. Some authors who got burned by the Million Lives Book Fest spent upwards of $3000 just to set up! This is soul crushing for those vendors. 

If you want a more in-depth look, check out the Newsweek story about the Million Lives Book Fest. I want to focus more on the authors and getting their names out there. I fortunately didn’t attend, not because I had any kind of forewarning, but because I didn’t know about it. I was also already booked for the Dulles Expo Center Spirit Fest. I do personally know a great author who did attend the Million Lives Fest, Atlas Creed. To help those affected, he has compiled a list of authors from the failed festival that book lovers all around can support. If you can, peruse through that author list and give them some love. If you can’t purchase their books, just follow them on their socials; every little bit of support helps so much. We, as authors, can’t express how much we appreciate every little interaction from fans. Likes, comments, purchases, and just conversation or questions about our art are so appreciated! 

A special thank you to Atlas Creed for putting in the time and creating the Million Lives Recovery List. I know how much time and effort it takes to create something like this, and I know everyone on the list appreciates this work. And if you, dear reader, haven’t skipped over this part, please check out his debut book, Armitage. It’s a great, fast paced, murder mystery, dark urban fantasy book that will keep you turning pages!    

The TBR Files

Sunrise on the Reaping, Sunset on my Heart!

Where do I start? If you’re familiar with the Hunger Games, have read any Susanne Collins’ books, or watched the movies, you’re no stranger to the Capital and their gruesome fight to the death. In this installment, it’s the 25th anniversary of the horrid games, affectionately called the Quarter Quell, in which double the number of tributes are sent to the Reaping. More carnage! More blood! More subservience… 

He started out as a normal kid. Sunrise on the Reaping is the telling of Haymitch Abernathy’s time in the Hunger Games. It’s no spoiler that he survives, and that does take a little bit of the edge off the book. If you’ve never read or heard anything about the Hunger Games… Oops? Sorry? But also, where have you been? Anyway, even knowing that, Collins still manages to rip your heart in two. 

The reactions are spot on. Before reading this book, I saw people’s reactions and reviews (no spoilers though, thank goodness) and how this one wrecked people’s emotions. I went into Sunrise, I thought, prepared for the trauma… I was WRONG! There is no way to prepare for the hurt that Ms. Collins put me through in this book. It explains so much about why Haymitch is as gruff and abrasive as he is in the Hunger Games, and if your heart doesn’t go out to him, you don’t have one! It’s been a while since a book hit me as hard as this one did.

The only negative, and it wasn’t that bad. That being said, this retelling of the Hunger Games in Sunrise was rather repetitive. I don’t know how to get around that. We’ve seen it on the big screen, read it time and time again, and we know all but one comes out alive. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the slaughter was pretty fast paced. This helped keep the book from slogging along (I don’t mean to say that reading about teens slaying each other is boring, but after so many, there is an element of desensitization). This fast pace also kept me from really feeling anything for the other characters, unlike Katniss, Peeta, and little Rue (😭) from the original.

Definitely recommending it. Overall, I’m giving this one ☕ ☕ ☕ ☕. Somewhat repetitive, though I feel it could have benefited from a slightly slower pace, or time to get to know the secondary characters a bit more. Besides that, it’s a great addition to the Hunger Games franchise, and be warned, your heart will feel the pain. 

…And Then This Happened

A Beloved Classic Gets Pulitzer Prize Winning Retelling

In 1884, Mark Twain published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A tale of a southern youth running away before he gets “civilized” by sailing down the Mississippi River on a rickety raft, with a runaway slave named Jim. Huckleberry Finn is the quintessential reckless youth who lives life by the seat of his raggedy breeches. In the story, “Huck” befriends Jim and the two search for their individual freedoms as they share stories and avoid capture while traversing the Mighty Mississippi.

Jim gets a new voice. Now, the escaped slave gets his turn in the spotlight with Percival Everett’s, James, the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. James has won many awards, and sat atop most “best of” lists throughout 2024 when it was released. This is Huckleberry Finn told by Jim, now named James. 

The masks we wear in public. In this retelling, we find out that James taught himself to read and has been secretly reading books, and takes on two different roles. When interacting with white people, he plays the subservient role, complete with the broken dialect they expect from someone of his stature. Internally, though, he’s well spoken, a philosopher, and the exact opposite of what he portrays on the outside. 

James doesn’t hold back. Percival Everett, through James, not only showed the brutal realities of slavery, but he told what it took to survive in a time when skin color was reduced to inhumanity. He also showed what it took to survive and how to hold on to one’s humanity when the world seemed destined to destroy it.