The Trajectory of Today’s Topics

• Hot off the press, Traveling Book Merchants.

• Suffer the Children is Chilling

• Waiting on the Editor

• Halloween Facts and Trivia

Hot Off The Press

Book Bikes, Book Trailers, and Book Trucks, Oh My!

Coming soon to a city near you? Did you know that there’s a small, specialized sect of bookmobiles quietly rolling across the nation? I haven’t witnessed this amazing spectacle yet, but I hope to someday soon! Book-lovers and entrepreneurial spirits are creating mini, mobile, bookshops, and I can’t be more excited about it. How about you? Apparently, these mobile bookstores can be as large as a bus, or as small as a basket on a tricycle! The owners pack up their little mobile libraries and travel to cities, community centers, parking lots, or wherever else they can set up and sell their myriad of stories. I don’t think they play music like the ice cream truck and travel through neighborhoods, but if they did, I’d be waiting at the window like a dog awaiting their human from work. 

I love hearing about new, imaginative, entrepreneurial ventures, especially when it comes to small business, and of course, BOOKS! With the state of the economy these days, and how AI and robots are taking over jobs, and how corporations treat employees, I’m glad to see things like this. Now I need to find a few of these people and see if they will stock my books. I know there are plenty of readers who don’t know they need my stories, and this is a fun way to get them out there. If anyone reading this right now has or knows of mobile bookstores, hit me up. I’m ready to wheel and deal… See what I did there??

While mini traveling stores aren't anything new—traveling salespeople have been going door to door since the invention of the wheel—there aren’t that many mobile bookstores. One site states there are approximately 647 operational mobile bookstores across the United States. That isn’t enough, because I have yet to see any! I see traveling coffee shops, bbq joints, lemonade trailers, and even the old time ice cream trucks all over, so this tells me we need more mobile bookstores. Maybe it’s because I don’t go to the city enough, and most travelling bookstores stay in their local area. I’m willing to be a sacrifice and fill that gap if there’s anyone willing to help fund me… Who’s ready to start a gofundme to get my own mobile bookstore on the road? Any angel investors? How about someone who’s independently rich and needs to make a tax deductible donation?? 😁 I’ll take it and make sure it goes to a great cause. Alright… Who brought the crickets?

The TBR Files

How Could A Parent’s Worst Nightmare Get Even Worse?

This book took a look (at a hook and forsook a nook… sorry, started going all Dr. Seuss there) at that thought and went in a whole different direction. It’s getting close to Halloween, and since you’ve got all those scary movies queued up, let’s pivot and take a look at one of the most disturbing horror books I’ve ever read. 

What would happen to society across the world if all the children died at the same time? This is the scenario posed by Craig DiLouie’s Suffer the Children. Every child across the world, who had not hit puberty yet, suddenly stops and drops dead. Chills started at my scalp and ran to my toes just reading that. And yes, this book had me gnawing my fingernails down to the cuticle. Back to the story. It didn’t matter whether they were running around the playground, eating, dancing, sleeping, or even in the womb, they all stopped like someone hit a global switch that turned them all off. 

This book follows three couples as they deal with the grief of losing sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, and the unborn. They find that though the entire world grieves, they are grieving alone. They have no one to hold them together, to be strong, to be a comforting presence because everyone is going through the same loss. I appreciate that it wasn’t a single POV, but I think it could have had so much more impact if we peered in on people from around the world. It doesn’t have to be forever long like The Stand, but seeing groups from other countries would have been interesting. The book is still great, I’m not knocking it, it just would have added some extra depth.  

It only gets worse from there. Days pass as everyone grieves, tries to understand what happened, and what the future holds when then the children start showing signs of life and returning home (those who were buried in shallow graves or hadn’t been buried yet). At first, people are ecstatic. It’s a miracle, they think. But the children are hungry for blood. Not just any blood, but human blood. Then we see what people will do to keep their children alive when such a precious commodity is required. If that wasn't a problem enough, the children only stay alive for an hour per pint of blood. When time is up, the children return to their stasis and begin to decompose. 

There’s only so much to go around. This is absolutely unsustainable, and it forces the characters to see how far they would go, and what sinister deeds parents would do for their children. This is a horrific, dystopian story that will chill your heart whether you have kids or not. ☕☕☕☕☕ The alternate points of view, the way each family deals with their loss, and the sheer terror of the story will have you not wanting to put this one down.

…And Then This Happened

Waiting to (Exhale) Hear From my Editor

It feels like I’ve been editing forever! Writing processes vary from person to person, but here is what I do (in case anyone has ever wondered why it takes so long to write a book). Once I have an idea, I frantically put as much down as I can. My goldfish mind makes things up faster than I can type and then if I don’t slap them on paper immediately, it dumps them into an idea meat grinder. There they get chopped, churned, and ground into a primordial brain goo. So, I write the story and random ideas as fast as possible, often with scenes for past or future chapters randomly plopped down mid conversation. This is just to get the idea down before they’re thrown into the hotdog factory. If you don’t get the analogy, you should watch how bologna and hotdogs are made. Disclaimer… It’s not a pretty sight. 

Next, I go through the story and actually write the book. I add details, descriptions, strengthen conversations, and put more of the jigsaw puzzle together. Once that’s finished, I go over the book again to make sure there aren’t any glaring plot holes, or other major blunders. Here I also fine tune conversations, beautify the setting, and just make sure everything in the story works smoothly. Don’t want a random character showing up and causing chaos before they randomly disappear for 14 chapters.

Edit, re-edit, and edit some more. Then, when that is completed, I proofread it, fix more mistakes, polish it a little more, and try to fix as many grammar mistakes as I can. This usually means adding about 4395 more commas than are necessary. My sister once told me I was the “Comma, comma, comma, comma, comma chameleon.” (Yes, that needs to be sung to the tune of Culture Club’s song Karma Chameleon) Now that you’ve got that earworm wigging inside your head, you’re welcome, I can send the manuscript to my editor, so she can find all the things I’ve become blind to, and yell at me for all the extraneous commas… 🎶You come and gooo, you come and goooo-Oh-OH-Oh.🎵

Not to toot my own horn, but TOOT TOOT! 🎷So far, a few beta readers have told me it’s pretty great. Yeah, I needed to fix a few things, and I have. Beyond the mistakes that are getting ironed out, they tell me that the book has great emotion, continuous action, and they are enjoying the characters, and how the writing feels. It will be complete soon, and I can’t wait! I am ready to stop editing and get back to the fun part which is the chaos of writing!