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Guest Blog Post

You Never Know Who Might Show Up at Your Front Door

May 19, 2013
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Our guest blogger is Heidi Garrett author of The Flower of Isbelline (The Queen of the Realm of Faerie, #2).

You Never Know Who Might Show Up at Your Front Door

As long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with the truths that my physical senses cannot explain: the mystical things occurring on this planet. Writing fantastical stories is my testament to these other layers of reality.
There are many ways of looking at our world. Imagine sitting at home, perhaps in your living room. There’s a knock on the door. When you open it, a funny little woman is standing there. She is about half your height, and a plaid crimson kerchief—knotted under her hooked chin—covers her head. Her dress is sack-like over her square body. She’s wearing an apron that could use a good ironing and she’s carrying a battered brown suitcase that’s almost as big as she is.
“As long as you’re staring, a glass of water would be nice,” she says.
Despite her gruff manner, you sense something mysterious about this stranger, and to be honest, you’re dying to know more about her. When she crosses the threshold of your home, a strong wind slams the door behind her. You both jump. There hasn’t been a breeze all day. In fact, it’s sweltering and heat waves have been rising from the melting pavement for weeks.
When you offer it, she almost grabs the glass from your hand, and you can’t stop your staring—even though you know it’s rude—as she drinks in noisy gulps.
“What? You’ve never seen a spring faerie before?” she asks.
Before you can answer, she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “Guess not, there aren’t many of us left. And I haven’t been to the Mortal World, since…”
She stops. Her deeply etched face softens. Something like sorrow pools in her dark brown eyes. She waves her hand. “That’s not what I’m here to talk about.” Read more »

Is He Reading?

May 18, 2013
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By Josie Leavitt writing for Publishers Weekly.

Is He Reading?

I ask this question just about every day. Customers come in seeking books for five to seven-year olds and we often ask “are they reading?” to clarify what section of the store to find books. It is not meant as judgment. I am very quick to let folks know that I really didn’t get the hang of reading until well into my eighth year, so there’s no shame in a seven-year-old who isn’t reading yet.

But there always is. I’m not really sure when it happened that it was expected that every six-year-old should already know how to read. The rush to be on grade-level, even if that grade is kindergarten, is rampant. More often than not the answer to the “is she reading?” is met with a very quick, “She precocious. She’s just finished the Harry Potter series.” Really? At six? Hmmm. I bet every bookseller hears this at least a hundred times a year.

Once I was helping a woman get a book for her son’s friend’s birthday. He was five. I was told he was a very precocious child. I asked if he was reading yet and she said, “Well, not yet.” And I countered with, “Well, then, he’s not that precocious.” I waited for her to get angry with my quip. Instead, she laughed and regrouped on the book idea, settling instead for a lovely Bill Peet book. If you’re not familiar with Bill Peet, go get some of his books.

From Wump World, The Whingdingdilly, Big Bad Bruce to The Caboose Who Got Loose and so many more great titles, his books are playfully illustrated long stories. There is nothing more fun than introducing a family to Bill Peet. His picture books are text-heavy, which is a good thing to get for the older child who isn’t reading yet, but feels too old for picture books. Oh, how I hate that moment when kids eschew picture books because they keep hearing that picture books are for babies. Handing a family a 48-page picture book is a gift. Peet’s books are long and that only makes them skew older. Let’s face it, not many three-year-olds can sit still that long.

But the reading question is one all booksellers grapple with every day. We have to ask about a child’s reading level. We are not doing it to judge, we are doing it find the perfect book. Honestly, I think we should steer away from reading levels, but we can’t. If a first grader is reading at first grade level why do some think that’s bad? The kid is in first grade! Let them read at that level and enjoy all the books written for first graders. There is nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with that.

And I love it when people respond to the “Is he reading?” by answering, “No, he’s a regular five-year-old.” That response kind of puts in perspective, doesn’t it?

Library Behavior – Is Running and Screaming Now Acceptable?

May 14, 2013
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Our guest blogger is Lori Verni-Fogarsi author of several books including Unexpecting (4.8 stars, 24 reviews). It is on sale for $1.99 from 5/14-5/2013.

Library Behavior – Is Running and Screaming Now Acceptable?

Times have changed so that it is now acceptable to run and scream in the library. Also to make and receive phone calls, shout across to others, and utilize the public computers to chat on Facebook for hours while people who need to do actual research wait in line. Either that, or I’m getting old and crotchety. Probably both.

As a lifelong library lover, I openly admit that while I do love being surrounded by (free!) books, I don’t enjoy visiting libraries as much as I used to.

For example, when my kids were babies (they are twelve and fifteen now), I used to take them to a story time program. All of the mommies and toddlers would respectfully walk to the children’s area, where we would use our quiet voices. Even after the story when we would sing the Itsy Bitsy Spider, it was done in hushed tones. After all, it was still a library.

Of course, there were plenty of times when my kids or others started crying or trying to run around. However, we mommies did our best to stop them and I can recall more than one occasion when I carried them out… with them kicking and screaming, and me apologizing.

Not so today. Nowadays (see, I told you I’m getting old) the story time songs are belted out at top volume, regardless of the fact that the other 80% of the library patrons are adults trying to concentrate. Afterward, the kids are literally running everywhere, while their parents either ignore them altogether, chatting as if in a coffee klatch, or roll their eyes and shrug as if there isn’t a thing they could do about it.

This phenomenon carries through to other times of the day too, and not only with little kids: Adults having phone conversations via Bluetooth headsets, complete with the significant verbal projection required to effectively use such a device; big kids loudly sassing their parents about the book report they don’t want to do. You get the picture.

Maybe I’m old-fashioned. Okay, clearly I’m old-fashioned. Yet I can’t seem to accept the fact that one of the last quiet places on Earth has now morphed into a place where the volume could nearly compete with an amusement park!

Have you noticed this at your library too? What’s your opinion?

Thoughts on Mothers and Parenting

May 12, 2013
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Our guest blogger is Christina Carson author of several books including Suffer the Little Children (5.0 stars, 18 reviews).

Thoughts on Mothers and Parenting

It’s been a number of years now—what I refer to as that moment of enlightenment— that instant I recognized the way out of the house of pain my relationship had been with my mother. Mind you, it was after 40 years of trying this and that and everything else, as it took me a while to understand that nothing really changes until your intent is solid. It wasn’t on Mother’s Day either but one Thanksgiving morning, while I was making an apple pie (my mother’s Pennsylvania Dutch recipe), that the proverbial light dawned.

She had been dead for eight years by then, and in that interim I had moved back to the States to marry. I was standing at the kitchen counter slicing apples when all of a sudden it felt like someone was in the room with me. I never tried to cultivate those sorts of experiences so it got my attention. First, it was like a punch to the gut and all the remaining hurt and sadness in me where my mother was concerned came out in one last gasp and sob. I thought, oh no not again; I’m not falling in that pit again. But the next moment was the one, the one that ended it all. I heard and felt myself burst out laughing as, after years of lament about what it was like for me to have her as my mother, I suddenly realized what it was like for her to have me as her daughter. And there I stood laughing at the sweetest irony I’d ever known. I wasn’t bad or mean or even thoughtless, but my basic nature would have been her worst nightmare. Yet there I was—her daughter. I stood thinking about what it would have been like living with me, a thought I could never allow in all those painful years. I was too busy being right to notice how unsocial I was, how independent, and how little I wanted any help. My basic nature certainly pushed every button she had concerning her fears of being a good mother, given the hurts and pains of her childhood.

Next came a moment of great sadness, the Mary Oliver line of “if only we could have loved in time,” but the blessing of that moment was its wisdom, and it didn’t let me linger there but for a second. Instead, it pushed me on into the light that Truth always offers, the chance to see things anew beyond regret. In that moment, the sense of someone being present with me whooshed out of the room, and I was free. Free to love her as she was, and free to feel loved by her.

Years later, I heard the universe laughing at me this time, for never having had children, Read more »

Reading Bigger Books

May 11, 2013
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Our guest blogger is Jane Ayres author of several books including Beware of the Horse.

Reading Bigger Books

I’m a slow reader. I don’t think it was always that way. When I was a child I would take 5 books a week out of the local library and they would all be finished by the weekend, after which I would walk the 2 miles into town and spend all my pocket money on three paperbacks.

Somehow, as I got older, my reading became slower. As a result, I was put off by the physical appearance of a doorstep of a thick paperback, the sheer weight of the object, and anything with “epic” in the blurb was an immediate turn-off. I had a psychological response which revolved around, “It’ll take ages to read,” or “I’ll never finish it.” I lost confidence, so I missed out on some wonderful stories.

Of course, when you download a book to your kindle, you can’t visualise the size and length, so you don’t have that tangible obstacle. In fact, I’ve surprised myself recently when I’ve seen the print equivalent of books I’ve completed and enjoyed. For example, I loved The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters, which is over 500 pages; if I had seen the paperback in a bookshop I wouldn’t have bought it, not even tried.

To some readers, 500 pages is nothing, the words to be devoured in a single sitting. I tend to fit in reading with everything else, only occasionally allowing myself the luxury of spending an afternoon with a book. A heavy paperback won’t get taken out with me in the way that my kindle, which can be fitted in my handbag, does. I take it to work, and I can dip in during breaks for half an hour here, ten minutes there, and before I realise it, I’m 300 pages in.

So reading bigger books feels like an achievement, and my confidence in my own reading ability has been boosted. This has, in turn, changed my reading habits in positive ways, allowing me to escape my self-imposed limitations. Another way in which the kindle has opened my mind and challenged my assumptions.

The Accidental Book Parody

May 4, 2013
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Our guest blogger is Leah Carson who writes parodies of books including Fifty Shades of BenGay: A Parody.

The Accidental Book Parody

As a reader, you probably imagine that writers begin each new book with a grand vision plus a twenty-item list for a killer marketing campaign.

As a writer, I’d have to say: Ha! I wish!

I write parodies. Sometimes they’re on mainstream topics like pets, weddings, or home improvement, and I know exactly where the book is going. But recently I stumbled upon a spoof topic purely by accident.

An email popped up for the Amazon account my husband and I share: “Thank you for your purchase of ‘Fifty Shades of Grey.’ ”

Hmmm…I didn’t download that book. I phoned Hubby at his office. “Did you buy ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’?”

“Yeah.”

An instant of relief: Our Amazon account wasn’t hacked after all. Then a new worry: Is Hubby secretly hooked on overheated S&M?  “Um, hon, do you know what it’s about?”

“No, but it’s been on the bestseller list for a year, so I figured I should check it out.”

A moment of silence. Then: “Ohh-kaaayy. Let me know how you like it.”

As it turned out, Hubby never got beyond chapter 2 of “Fifty Shades.” But guess who started reading it on her Kindle? Yup. And when I reached the part about a contract (“The Submissive will walk five paces behind the Dominant, bow when he faces her, and respond ‘Yes, Anjin-san’ to his commands”) it hit me: This book begs to be spoofed.  Read more »

The Individual’s Dream

April 30, 2013
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Our guest blogger is Douglas Robbins author of The Reluctant Human.

The Individual’s Dream

The individual’s dream is never a dream to live on Mars and eat a ham sandwich. But it could be. Dreams are simply potential that was planted in our souls long before birth. And it consists of possibility. Each one of us has a different set of unique characteristics to fulfill for our betterment and the betterment of humanity. It is the way the world moves forward.

It is our responsibility as human beings to water that seed and tend to it. For that is our best self, our most fulfilled self, and in turn, our most radiant world. If we do not tend to that inner calling the soil dries, the answers become distant, and we become regretful of what we could have been as the world suffers. Then we end up watching television nightly and eating too much as the fears grow and our blood and thoughts sour.

Yet the dream has never been to cow-tow or be afraid or miss the shot at the buzzer, but it is to stand honorably and upright with our hearts, minds, and souls, fulfilled.

A Celebration of the Human Spirit

April 28, 2013
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Our guest blogger is David Litwack author of There Comes A Prophet (4.4 stars, 36 reviews).

A Celebration of the Human Spirit

The Boston Marathon course ran past the front steps of the apartment building where I grew up in Brighton. We lived a bit after the twentieth mile, just over the crest of Heartbreak Hill. Since Patriot’s day was a holiday and we had no school, we’d go out every year and watch, a rite of spring, along with opening day at Fenway Park.

Back then, there were a paltry two or three hundred runners, not the twenty-five thousand plus of today. There were no prizes beyond a laurel wreath and the beef stew waiting at the finish. But thousands of onlookers would line the streets and offer complete strangers water and encouragement.

Another connection was when my dad was a kid, his scoutmaster was a man named Clarence Demar. Now, I suspect few of you have heard of him, but he won the Boston Marathon seven times around the 1920’s. He wasn’t a pro. He didn’t win prize money or endorsements. He just loved to run. He worked as a printer in Boston and used to train by running to and from work.

Of course, today the marathon is a bigger deal. Prize money was first awarded in 1986 and top finishers now compete for more than $800,000. The marathon is televised broadly and sponsored by large corporations. But most of that hullabaloo involves only the first few hundred runners, superhuman specimens who run faster per mile than most can conceive of and keep it up across hill and dale for twenty six miles.

They weren’t the ones targeted. The bombs were set to go off around four o’clock. That’s when the nine-minute-a-mile guys come in. These are people that will never win anything, if you don’t count the respect of friends and family and the pride in their accomplishment. Many of them are running for charity or in memory of a loved one. Lots of them have used the marathon as a goal, the pinnacle of a journey back from some hardship—stroke, cancer, addiction or personal loss. For them, the marathon is more than a road race. It’s a celebration of the human spirit.

Into this celebration came some deranged mind. It doesn’t matter whether their cause was political or religious, or they were just delusional. What they sought was not only to kill and maim innocent people, but to steal dreams. Read more »

Stress Reducing Techniques – Motorcycling and Movement

April 27, 2013
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Our guest blogger is Douglas Robbins author of The Reluctant Human (4.5 stars, 31 reviews).

Stress Reducing Techniques – Motorcycling and Movement

When the world eats at my sanity and pisses me off or I just need to stop seeing the same four walls of my home office, I walk into the garage to fire up the red 2006 Suzuki V-Strom 650. Often I need movement to flush the stagnant puddle of my mind.

When the sun is shining and it’s warm enough, I hop on the bike, pull in the clutch, lift the gear arm with my left foot and pop it into first. Like a baby needing to be soothed the movement helps me de-stress and gets me focused on the moment and simpler things.

With the engine revving under me and the handle bar grips held tight the intensity of the movement begins rocking me into a state of focus. With my mind alert and my life on the line, the bills, incompetent politics of the world, my own incompetence and bad decisions, fade away, while frustrations are kept at bay. The senses heighten with each gear and each bend as I leave the neighborhood seeking my favorite windy roads at the state park a few miles away. There are no intersections at the park, no stops signs, no lights. I carve up the mountainside leaning in and breathing deep.

I twist the throttle under my wrist increasing speeds then easing off the gas and popping the bike into another gear moving faster feeling the wind, tasting the air.

It is a meditation and therapy to be on a motorcycle. Ideas are figured out while pure focus and survival instincts lock in. Ideas that were stuck in the brain get clarified while ones that weighed upon my soul just minutes earlier get left on the roadway. Patterns and stuck feelings loosen. There is a feeling of comfort riding the earth’s welcoming bosom.

I must focus completely while riding a motorcycle for my life is on the line. Everything from gravel to sticks to squirrels to bad inattentive drivers is the enemy.

Unlike a car where small mistakes often have no results, or a possible fender bender, a mistake on a bike can be death if I am not riding with eyes wide and mind alert scanning the road surface and sides for danger. Read more »

Authors and Depression

April 24, 2013
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Our guest blogger is Eva Caye, author of several books including Dignity (To Be Sinclair series) which is rated 4.9 stars on 15 reviews.

Authors and Depression

The saying goes, “Write what you know.” I am an author who has suffered depression most of my life, though I was long unaware of it. After being diagnosed and treated for it these past ten years, I believe I can now speak with some authority, though I do not have a degree in health sciences.

Here are some authors who have suffered depression (by no means a definitive list): Samuel Johnson, John Keats, William Blake, Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, Hans Christian Anderson, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Herman Melville, Walt Whitman, Guy de Maupassant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, William James, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, William Carlos Williams, Sylvia Plath, Winston Churchill, T. S. Elliot, Anne Sexton, Agatha Christie, Tennessee Williams, Hunter S. Thompson, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., J. D. Salinger, Woody Allen, Anne Rice, Bob Dylan, Amy Tan, J. K. Rowling.

Just looking over the list will likely give you plenty of ideas on some possible ‘causes’ of depression. Born in dire poverty? Orphaned? Alcoholic parents? Horrific diseases? Lost loves? Brutal and lingering post-traumatic stress from wars? The pervasive abrasion of a culture of hate on a sensitive soul? Political exile? Loss of religious faith, or faith in any institution at all? A tragic accident taking years of recovery?

Regardless of the causes of depression, I feel there are two specific reasons why writing and depression seem to go hand-in-hand. First, what other legal methods can tortured human beings pursue to release horrific burdens and devastating offenses to their soul? Very few. Joseph Conrad’s vivid atmospheres were painted with the gloom and pessimism of his subjective life, like many of the authors mentioned above. William Blake’s poems not only burgeoned with mystical symbolism, he infused many of his personal beliefs in elusive allegories, chock-full of rebellious notions on the authoritarian attitudes of science, religion, and even of marriage laws, fueled by mystical visions and a childless marriage. And who could deny that any philosopher’s views of how life is, or how it is supposed to be, are based directly upon the inconsistencies they see around them, trying to organize them to make sense, once and for all? Read more »

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