First Book Signing! Next week! (Oct 19th, 2024)
This will be a shorter article. It’s mostly just an advertisement and reminder to drop by and see me Next Week in Bowling Green, Kentucky. I will be at the Barnes and Noble on Campbellsville Lane at 1p.m. and signing books until people stop showing up, I run out of books, or they kick me out. (I’m scheduled to be there until 3p.m.)
So. I guess I’m saying, this weeks blog is an advertisment. So Here it is! (again for those who haven’t seen it already!
With the image this big, you can really make out the photoshop mistakes. Those are on me. Bailey has a more professional mock up of the books... I just couldn't find the file.
Please drop by, to pick up signed copies of The Specters of Mammoth Cave, and/or Treasure off the Coast. Or just drop by to talk National Parks, Geology, or anything else!
Now that the advertisement is out of the way, Indulge me, briefly in a short reflection on this opportunity. I’ve been writing my whole life, (well, from at least age 4 or 5 when I came up with such imaginative stories about A dinosaur eating leaves, riding dinosaurs, or a triceratops being friends with a brontosaurus. . . a lot of my early stories were about dinosaurs.
I moved on from dinosaurs, eventually, sort-of. Lost to time is a tale of adventure and daring about a young team of adventurers and a base hidden inside a volcano, and I’ve been building a world full of aliens and planetary defense in my head since at least third grade. I progressed, eventually, to mostly writing sci-fi and fantasy. And I’ve had marginal luck at winning honorable mentions for a few of those short stories over the years, although, except for Coffee Chronicles you wont find any of them in print. (Yet)
I’ve also been a steady and consistent reader. Boxcar Children, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Animorphs, Dinotopia, the entire universe of Star Wars novels. Dune, Asimov, Vonnegut, Ursula K Le Guin, Robin McKinely, and oh so many more. I think, while I was in Lesotho in Africa, thanks, in part to the large library donated to the school where I worked, I managed to read more than 300 books in 2 years.
Yes. Africa. Reading and writing isn’t all I do. I actually spent a while studying Geology, Chemistry and Biology, and then teaching them, mostly abroad. Also I run. And drop pokemon in gyms in the parks I write about to see how long they will stay. Pokemon Go. What was I saying?
Oh, yeah! Books. I read a lot. I write a lot. And one of the places which has most facilitated both of those interests (and not so much the running or pokemon going) is the Barnes and Noble in Bowling Green Kentucky. I remember begging my mom and step dad to take me there so we could buy every new Animorph book when they releasedwas released. (And I remember finishing them on the ride home) I remember browsing the shelves for New Dinotopia novels, and my excitement when a Lambeosaurus was featured on one of the covers. Their sci-fi shelves were where I found new authors, like Timothy Zhan, Kevin J. Anderson, Connie Willis, Karl Schroeder, Jack McDevitt, Kristine Katherine Rush, and where I found more titles from authors I’d discovered in the Allen County Public Libraries, like Robin McKinley, Carl Sagan, Asimov, Mercedes Lackey, Anne McCaffery and Le Guin.
Barnes and Noble is where I picked up my first sci-fi and fantasy anthology, and how I discovered the world of short stories. And this discovery was what got me back into writing. I wasn’t confident that I was ready for a novel lenth feature, but 3-5 thousand words, sure… So I thought. (I have a hard time with limits like that, and my short stories tend to run 12-16 thousand.)
And Barnes and Noble is where I would go to write these stories. I’ve learned, with time, and effort, to write in any environment. But I really began writing again, in earnest, in college. That was when I began writing the early version of Coffee Chronicles on public computers at the UK Student Center Starbucks. And after a while, I took a few literature and creative writing classes mixed in with all of my science. (one of which was a class on detective lit which has played far more than the role I had expected for it on my writing career.)
*(another fun stupid anecdote about college, I got a Lexington Public Library card, and I used to walk to the public library on weekends and check out Terry Pratchett’s Disc World Series, and all of Douglas Adams works. and read those while walking around campus… maybe if I’d spent a little more time on my calculus homework, I would actually know what calculus was.)
Anyway…
When I graduated, I still needed to get outside of my home to write. Wherever I was staying was a place where I would find other things to do instead. So I would drive to the Barnes and Noble in Bowling Green, set up my clunky laptop, and write there. I’ve wrote several terrible short stories that I’m still haunted by today (the premises were great but the execution of most of them was aweful.) Then, with a few more adventures in between, I went to Lesotho to teach Chemistry and Biology. When I returned, I had some free time, and I returned to that Barnes and Noble, this time I manages to write several sci-fi stories which got honorable mentions or nice rejection letters. Then I went to China to teach Biology and Chemistry * (ESL the first year, but trust me, I can teach you chemistry, or biology, even if English is your first language, Duolingo is a better friend if you want an English teacher.)
When I returned from China, I had a more substantial goal with my writing. I haven’t mentioned it yet in this article, (after the Ad) But The idea for the Junior Rangers Investigative Club had been cooking since I worked on the Ferry which takes people out to the Dry Tortugas. (it took a long time in the head… um… oven? to bake.) I had a relatively strong idea of what I wanted the stories to be, which characters I wanted to meet in those stories, and how I wanted the books to look.
I was unconvinced that I could pull a novel off. But I was determined to try. (in the mean time, post China, I racked up a few more short story honorable mentions, and even more rejections) And where did I go, to write the first novel, (and those shore stories mentioned only in parenthesis?) Well, actually, I was moving around a lot, and working a couple different jobs in the process. But After a China sized Hiatis, I would return, on occasion, to the same Barned and Noble to write.
I doubt that the people there would remember me. (I’m much more disciplined, and can write at home now… usually.) I didn’t travel there as often. Also I’m kind of compressing an extended period of time into a couple paragraphs. But several more rejected short stories were written or revised there, and several of the early chapters and much of the first round of revisions of Treasure off the Coast were written there too.
So I have a long history with Barnes and Noble, and this shop in particular. It will be a very different experience to go there, set up a cool table, - (Trust me, you’ll have to come see it! … Actually, don’t trust me I have grand Ideas, but It’s still in the planning phase. Hopefully it’s as cool as I want to to be. Come see whether I pulled it off.) - and sign copies of the books I have published.
There are a lot of people who have supported my writing and authorship journey. And I know that there are several groups getting word out about this signing. I am grateful for them all, and for anyone who shows up, and everyone who reads this. But mostly, I’m just excited to see something like this in my search results…
Yes this is a screen shot, and yes my laptop background is the cover of The Specters of Mammoth Cave. However, pay attention to tha announcement in the top left of the image! That's me. (and the next two are links to the books!
Fun!
So, come Join me Saturday October 19th, 2024 as I celebrate the publication of my first two books. (The third really is on the way!) But if you can’t make it, know that I will probably be back in that Barnes and Noble again, laboriously typing away on another Junior Rangers Investigative Club story. Season 2 of Coffee Chronicles, or something else entirely.