I’ve always believed that kids were natural born storytellers.

When I was 19, and a counselor at a summer day camp, with a fierce crush on someone that infused all my days, I taught a writing unit to kids who spent the rest of their day tearing around fields and diving in the lake.

And these little moppets and gremlins would shuck off their damp towels, push the brims back on their caps, and hunker down over notebooks.

They’d come up with lines like, In the blackberry brambles, hid a puffy rabbit.

Not a ‘fluffy’ rabbit. That’d be a cliche. A puffy one.

And, My feet were as sticky as day old lollies.

Or, There is nowhere that’s really over the rainbow.

(This from a child we later found out had it kind of rough).

They effortlessly wrote lines that a grown up writer might toil over, slavishly polishing and re-polishing to get the sheen that comes so naturally to children.

I’ve taught writing to emotionally disturbed kids, to ones in the juvenile justice system, and used writing in therapy sessions with child patients, and the result is always the same.

Now I see it with my own children.

My daughter seems like she might have a gift for writing, one that, if I can (please, somebody) do what I should, might fuel all her days. She feels an internal pressure when she’s not making up stories that is the hallmark, or so I’ve read, of something special.

My son is more a scientist, observer (and questioner) of the world. But like his sister, he’s been read to and dragged around to bookstores and heard me muttering lines out loud as I revise. And so even though he’s probably not destined for life as a writer, just today in his game, I caught this gem: The car slammed into a wall as hard as a cloud.

As hard as a cloud?

See? Not going to be a writer probably. But the point is he was thinking in similes, as all children do.

If we can kindle that flame, some of these children will become writers.

Today on our ventures, I found a gem of a used bookstore, called Jupiters. And I met the proprietor, Watt Childress, who went to the trouble of leafing through three old volumes to help my son decide whether he wanted a book on air craft, trains, or sports cars.

Watt also is a keen political writer–with a new/old online paper coming soon–and something of a scribe for the community.

And he’s done something with this shop that is the essence of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day (whose word we are still spreading).

On his business card, his two daughters are listed as apprentices.

That’s what TYCBD is all about. Not introducing kids to a love of reading–better minds and organizational bodies than I have already addressed that.

But introducing them to a love of bookstores. Of being in a store filled with magic and knowing what to do with it.

Some of these kids may fulfill their potential as storytellers. Some may become booksellers. Some may just narrate their car games, well or not so well.

But they’ll all find that over the rainbow lies some place just for them.

Anyone remember the children’s book CAPS FOR SALE?

It’s a good one. But not quite as good as a whole teetering stack of BOOKS for sale, which is what Lorie Ham is offering here.

Please contact Lorie at mysteryrat(at)gmail(dot)com if you’d like to buy any of the titles she is offering!

Mysteries:
Hardback:
1.The Moor by Laurie King-book club edition-little dusty & some tiny tares on the dustjucket, but otherwise good $5
2.Sticks & Scones by Diane Mott Davidson-library copy but in good shape other than the page in front that had the library info $3
3.The Hard Way by Lee Child-some wear on dustjacket but otherwise new-$5
4.Strong Poison by Dorothy L Sayers-library copy $2
5.The Ridge by Michael Koryta brand new hardback $5
6.Your Heart Belongs to Me by Dean Koontz-like new $5
7.The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers-book club copy new $5
8.Dead in Dixie by Charlaine Harris-book club copy almost new (just one tiny tear on the back bottom dust jacket) $5
9.Winter Haven by Athol Dickson-new $5
10.The Darkest Evening of the Year by Dean Koontz-book club copy new $5
11.Deadly Decisions by Kathy Reichs-slight wear on dust jacket/tiny bit of yellowing $5
12.Dying for Chocolate by Diane Mott Davidson-some wear on dust jacket and corners $5
13.The Cypress House by Michael Koryta-tiny bit of dust jacket wear $5

Paperback-
1.Morality For Beautiful Girls by Alexander McCall Smith-new trade paper $4
2.The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith-new $3
3.Murder On a Girls Night Out by Anne George-reader copy but pretty good shape-$2
4.Reservations Are Murder by Tim Myers-some wear-signed $3
5.Giotto’s Hand-An Art History Mystery by Iain Pears-library copy $1
6.Thicker Than Water by PJ Parish-some wear $2
7.Death Du Jour by Kathy Reichs-reader copy $1
8.Forget About Murder by Elizabeth Daniels Squire-library copy but pretty good condition $2
9.Jack the Lady Killer by HRF Keating-trade paper-this is a detective novel in verse-library copy-pretty good condition $2
10.Edith’s Diary by Patricia Highsmith-trade paper-library but good condition-$2
11.O Jerusalem by Laurie R. King-library copy/reader condition $1
12.Santa Fe Rules by Stuart Woods-reading copy $2
13.The Poet by Michael Connelly-reading copy $1
14.The Children of Men by P.D. James reading copy $1
15.Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich-reading copy $1
16.Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris-almost new-very slight spine wear $3
17.non-fiction mystery writing book-Don’t Murder Your Mystery by Chris Roerden-trade paperback some wear $5
18.Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice-reading copy pretty worn-$1
19.The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice-reading copy pretty worn $1

Fiction:
1.In Office Hours by Lucy Kellaway-hardback new $10
2.The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown-hardback new $5
3.The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison trade paperback reading copy $1
4.A Thousand Suns by Khaled Hosseini-hardback book club edition new $4
5.Nightmare Academy by Frank Peretti-paperback reading copy $1
6.Hangman’s Curse by Frank Peretti-paperback like new $2

Non-fiction religious:
1.God’s Politics by Jim Wallis trade paper some wear $5
2.Secret Things of God by Dr. Henry Cloud-hardback new but signed to me $5
3.Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World by Joanna Weaver-hardback some dustjacket wear $4

Non-fiction:
1. Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace by Gore Vidal-trade paperback new & signed $15

Books and bookstores were some of the finest treasures on the westward leg of our journey, but there were a few other things worth mentioning, too.

First of all, traveling with kids–even with ones who consider a trip to a bookstore a high point of the day–necessitates scheduling in some stretch time, or time to get their sillies out as my daughter’s first grade teacher puts it.

We learned our lesson on this front last year on the drive. It’s not that the kids wouldn’t be perfectly happy by hour six, it’s that me and my husband would be pounding on glass to get out of the car.

The back seat was at that point turned into a combination funplex/football field/comedy club–comedy being a generous term for jokes pitched at the five-seven year old set.

This year the kids could do even more hours in the car, so long as we planned in some playground stops. And swims. And even an all out hike.

It’s funny, our youngest learned to ride a bike this year and we are about one tight turn and getting-the-thing-started away from being able to ride as a family. Both kids are getting more comfortable in the water, although I wouldn’t call them swimmers yet. But I can imagine being able to do some of the more rugged stuff we had to put on hold during the baby years. It’s not here yet, but it’s coming.

Which is an identity shift of sorts. I still need to assist with shampooing after swim lessons–but I won’t for long. Not for always anyway. Once it was impossible to picture *not* needing to do these things; now it’s impossible to pretend that I always will.

I’ve nurtured them, and now we’re reaching a point where they’ll soon bike faster than I do. They’ll be pushing to take the longer hike.

---

Across the country we listened to Taylor Swift. I like her–and was glad to read Stevie Nicks’ view that she’s really much more than a creation of the pop music machine–but my kids *love* her. One activity that kept them occupied on the road was learning the lyrics to the songs on her latest album.

Album. A word for something my kids have never even played. Another sign that one day what I know will be outdated–and the next generation will come in. Hike in.

Here’s one that pretty much sums up our voyage out–and maybe even sums up all of our voyages.

if we’re lucky, we got nurtured along the way, or we nurture our little ones, or maybe somebody else.

But only for a time.

And now for something completely different. While there may be nothing to do for Borders but mourn, I am happy to say that what we found on the wider bookstore front, traveling cross country, is that things are not only thriving, but proliferating.

I don’t mean that bookstores are opening second–and third–branches, though that is indeed happening. But also that the purpose of bookstores, their role in the community, is becoming more complex and multi-faceted.

In Midway, Utah, a small gem of a town in which I would love to vacation, a bookseller named Judith runs ReBook. The setting is a turn-of-the-last-century house that’s been added onto at least three times, and Judith has books in all of the additions as well as the house proper. The former kitchen is filled with cookbooks and volumes of cooking lore! It is a truly marvelous place.

Judith told me that not only does she host author events and book clubs, but she also has a mahjong circle, which meets regularly for an ongoing competition in her store. And in this largely LDS community, community meetings are held at–where else? The bookstore.

When a large bookstore recently closed, I was told that its owner hung a sign in the window: Need a bathroom? Try Amazon.

But as a commenter yesterday said on this blog, in order for bookstores to survive, they must do more than offer a clean bathroom.

Amazon has its place, and bookstores have theirs.

Booksellers like Judith–and Whitney and Bruce at Rediscovered Books in Boise; Rachel and Jennifer at The King’s English in Salt Lake City; Paul and Meg at Prairie City Lights in Iowa City; the folks at The Tattered Cover in Denver; Murder by the Book here in Portland (more on these good folks and others to come)–understand this. And they are making their stores into places where people come together over not just a shared love of reading–but a shared love of living.

I was corresponding with a writer recently, and he feels that from the number of e readers he sees on planes, plus his sense of the industry, digital reading will vanquish print fairly soon.

My take is a little different. Perhaps Kindles abound on planes–a pretty good use for them, I’d agree, though as you know from yesterday’s post, I travel with books even when they weigh me down some–but bookstores all across the country abound with something else.

Not readers (e or otherwise). People.

Each night, once we’d unloaded the car of its many, many bags (we haven’t mastered the art of traveling light, especially given the bags of books we accumulated along the way), and got the kids into their pullout sofa or rollaway bed or sleeping bags, I would write notes about the bookstores we’d seen that day.

I was just looking them over and found a scribbled line–written in a moment of jubilation after a day of visiting a total of six chains and independents–that almost made me cry.

The line said, Long live Borders!

At the Borders in Champaign, IL, I met a manager named Amanda. Amanda was so enthusiastic about Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day that she began making plans for how her store could celebrate it later this year while i was still talking to her. And she went to the trouble of finding this blog and leaving a comment after we’d left.

Later in the trip, I went to the Borders in Provo, UT, and met Kirsten. Kirsten took the bookmark for my forthcoming novel and said with an expression that I can still see, a look of earnestness and worry and plaint, “I really hope I’ll be ordering this 18 months from now.”

What is going to happen to all these people who don’t just sell books like they might sell tires, or groceries, but who have a genuine affinity for their product? (Some people might love to sell tires, or groceries. Kirsten and Amanda love to sell books). Will they find jobs at other bookstores? Will they feel disillusioned by an industry that can wipe out 11,000 employees in a single stroke?

A student wrote me the other day to ask about the impact of the loss of Borders on his publication dreams. I mentioned that once there was a Waldenbooks in virtually every mall, and now there isn’t, but other bookstores abound. I said that this industry is constantly in flux, but the one perpetual seems to be that books keep getting sold and everyone is always looking for the next big thing, which should give all authors hope and sustenance.

It’s not that the loss of Borders makes me worried for books, or even bookstores, let alone publishing. It’s that it makes me worried for a slice of our…humanity.

Books more than other products–tires, to my mind, not that there’s anything wrong with them–seem truly connected to people. The people who write and read and sell them. When a massive branch in this industry is cut, the trunk bleeds a little, too.

Maybe the one constant isn’t books or bookstores, but storytelling, as human a need as our need to eat.

This is a sad chapter in our story.

Well, we have finally landed in (that is, driven up to) OR and after several adventures and misadventures, including what I feared would be a flash flood in Denver–you know someone has a big imagination when she’s envisioning flash floods in a city that boasts 300 days of sun a year, but it was raining *really* hard–and an almost-breakdown in Park City, Utah, I can weigh in with one sure and certain conclusion.

Bookstores and bookselling are thriving across this nation.

I want to do each store, each manager, owner, and salesperson we met, their due, so I’m going to compose a series of posts that will take you across the country with us, rather than try and sum up our trip. This may take a little while, so please bear with me.

And in the meantime, know that in every store we went into there were always other customers, no matter the day or the hour. There were young people and old. Asking questions, buying, browsing, waiting for events. Rooms were painted, often with quotes that tingled the imagination; shelves were laden; coffee perked or muffins baked. There was a weight to the air, a sense of both contentment and occupation.

Don’t tell Americans in Pennsylvania, or Illinois, Indiana, Salt Lake City, Utah, Des Moines or Boise, Idaho that bookselling is on the wane.

Reports of its demise have been greatly exaggerated.

When I was unpublished–I mean, I still am unpublished, since my novel won’t be out for about 18 months–but before I knew I had a prayer of being published, I used to dream of Loretta Lynn.

I remember one day driving home from my parents’ house, in one of the bleakest moments, when I was banging my head against a brick wall that had no intention of breaking, and thinking, why? why? when plenty of wonderful writers are publishing independently and going great guns. Anyway, Coal Miner’s Daughter came on the radio–and I don’t listen to country, not when I’m in the crowded northeast anyway; it’s indie college radio for me there–and so of course, I took it as a sign.

Well, here we are driving across the country, and that sign has come to fruition, but better than any way I ever expected it. But doing what Loretta did so stupendously–trying to get yourself known–is incredibly hard, whether Ballantine is backing you, or whether you’ve launched the coolest new press in town. We’re inundated with content in this country, overwhelmed by it on a daily basis. It’s hard if not impossible to know what’s worth valuing.

So when I go into bookstores, Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day bookmarks in hand, and try to describe what we’re up to–how it started last year, over eighty bookstores involved, I was a mom of young children, taking them to story hours on an inordinate basis, and all of a sudden thought, Some kids don’t do this–I always wonder if I will be seen as just another purveyor of unwelcome content.

It’s not really my personality to do this. I love meeting new people, but it’s hard for me to try to sell, even if what I’m selling is something like getting kids into bookstores. And of course during this trip in addition to Take Your Child Day, I’m mentioning that I have a novel coming out one of these days. I even have these clever little candy tins–designed by my tech guru husband (without whom this blog would probably not be)–to hand out. Is that selling or giving? Is there any difference these days when content is given away for free?

Only one thing has saved me from struggling with how Loretta did it–asking to be on radio stations when no one had ever heard of her and didn’t know if she’d ever make them one penny in return–and that’s the warmth and welcome of the booksellers I’ve met. How enthusiastic they are about getting kids into bookstores, not because it’s good business, but because it’s good life. When I push myself to move onto mentioning my book, and get to see the light in the eyes that’s unique to all book lovers, my doubts melt away.

I’m here, I think. It’s okay. I’m home.

This post is in tribute to the great Loretta Lynn, and to the booksellers I met yesterday, Amanda at Borders in Champaign, IL, whose enthusiastic reception and obvious love for the game gave me visions of fun nights to come, and Jeff at Barnes & Noble.

Here we are in Richmond, IN, having only gotten one hour and seventy miles behind in the Plan (you know…that great plan of travel, the most fun of which happens when it gets a little bit lost). Having done this once before now, there are already familiarities to it. The land opening up in Ohio. Road food. The sun setting and my children, who are normally asleep long before, gasping at what the sky can do.

We’ve stopped at four bookstores so far and it’s been wonderful on three counts.

• Bookstores are alive, well, and filled with customers.
• Our reception has been warm and welcoming at each one. One proprietor complimented us on how “alert the kids were”. I thought this was code for running around the store asking to buy everything in sight, from a book listing the names of every single passenger who had boarded the Titanic to no fewer than eight Rainbow Magic books, but when I thought of the 11 year old girls I had just seen, waiting for a movie to begin, each individually absorbed in their own electronic devices instead of interacting with each other, I sort of got what he meant.
• Although the focus of each visit has been telling booksellers about Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, I’ve also had the inordinate, eleven-years-in-the-making gift of getting to murmur that I have a novel coming out, and dropping off a little early, early swag. It’s not every day you get to tell a complete stranger your dream has come true.

Here are the bookstores we’ve been to in case you’re nearby and looking for a great place to stock up or wile away a few hours. Tell Greg, Jeff, Dana, and Glen (respectively) that I was raving about ‘em.

The Midtown Scholar in Harrisburg, PA–where you can get a delicious snack or cup of coffee while you’re poring over the mixed up jumble of used books

The Whistlestop Bookshop in Carlisle, PA–whose owner has seen an astonishing parade of literary lights, including Edward Albee, Mario Vargos Llosa, and this November, Margaret Atwood, into his gorgeous event space. If you come to see Margaret, look for me–I will be there!

Books-a-Million in Triadelphia, WV–which represents the best a chain bookstore can be: bright, shiny, enormous, and stocked with every book you’ve ever heard of and about a zillion you have not.

The Book Loft of German Village in Columbus, OH–this might be the most stupendous sight we’ve seen yet on this trip. You enter down a path of uneven brick, with roses overflowing fences, and fountains burbling to the side. Once you get there, you find that ‘there’ is a warren of thirty-two–yes, that’s 32–rooms of books divided roughly by readership and genre. You could get lost in here–and what fun that would be.

Enjoy your travels this summer, everybody, and please keep your emails coming! Already we’ve got new stops to make and new friends to meet.

But no pithy nomenclature for readers of this blog yet.

SYDers?

Hmm, that doesn’t sound good. I’ll stop now.

Hi, Suspense Your Disbelief readers! (I need a pithier greeting–any ideas??)

We are off on our second annual trip west, this time with the added benefit of being able to stop at bookstores along the way, spread the word about Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, stock up on some car reads, and even–drop off some early, early swag for my novel!I’ll share what we did in case anyone’s planning something of the same.

I’ll also be visiting friends I’ve met through this blog and the web for some F2F meetings…an added, added bonus.

Please stay in touch here as I’ll be posting updates and tales, and if you have big news of your own, just write me and ignore the away message! I’ll be back in touch as soon as I can–you know those long expanses in the west.

Oh, am I excited for that emptiness again. 10 months in my beloved east and I am ready.

Be well, Disbeliefers! (Nah, don’t like it. The person who comes up with a winning idea gets three free books in the mail).

And here’s the route we’ll be taking, more or less:

I’m so happy to have Carolyn Rose back again–Carolyn is practically a mainstay of the blog! Her Made It Moment appeared here and her last guest post here. And today she is sharing her thoughts on how math might really help us in this writer’s life–hint: it’s not just the ole balancing-our-checkbooks saw we heard as students–and concluding with a decision she made that is so in-the-news right now, the Wall Street Journal recently weighed in.  Please read on–and leave a comment if you’ve been considering the same momentous leap, or possibly have made it already.

Why the rules of math don’t apply to the past – and how that will change my future as a writer.

Okay, so I wasn’t much good at math back in high school. Math didn’t allow for much of what I call the BS or fudge factor—an answer was either right or wrong.

I’ve always been fond of the gray areas, of arguable choices, the morally ambiguous questions, those fascinating either/or situations.

And let’s face it, math has changed since my cheeks last hit a classroom seat. And so have the tools. Adding machines and slide rules are gone, replaced by calculators so complicated that you need an owner’s manual to find the “on” button.

A few days ago, while trying to help a student, I ran aground on the reef of parentheses and the order of operations. Because I neglected to perform the multiplication function before addition and subtraction, we arrived at the wrong answer. By performing operations in the order they appeared, I got an answer of 14. With parentheses setting aside the multiplication function, I got 18. Only four points off, but the answer was as wrong as if I’d been off by 1000.

Pondering that later, I wondered how different my life would be if I could set aside portions of it inside parentheses and divide or multiply by other portions. Where and who would I be today if I had been able to minimize or maximize specific episodes or incidents?

For example, I might take a particularly embarrassing episode and divide by a letter of recommendation or an award. I might multiple disappointments by glorious vacation days.

How would that affect my writing?

Let’s say that I could take the trauma of the day the elastic broke on my underpants in second grade and divide that by the exhilaration of bobby-pinning a silk scarf to me head in third grade when I was chosen to play the coveted role of Maid Marian in a spontaneous playground production of Robin Hood’s adventures. Would that leave me with less empathy? Would that, in turn, affect my ability to create complex characters?

If I took the experience of watching my father die and divided that by a sunset at the ocean or gentle snowfall in the mountains, I might reduce the pain of losing him. Would that make me less sympathetic to others’ grief and loss?

Conversely, if I multiplied the experience by other losses, I could intensify the agony until my nerves were raw and my mind was a swirling vortex of torment. Would that give my novels a more bleak and hopeless tone?

If I took my first teenage crush and multiply that emotion by the thrill of getting a news crew to a breaking story before the competition, would I be able to write a love story that would resonate with all readers?

If I took my one frightening rock-climbing experience and multiplied it by that terrifying white-water canoe trip and then by the day I hit 130 in my grandfather’s Buick on a straightaway in Texas, I might produce the excitement level necessary to craft a nail-biting thriller.

Now, say it was possible to take the short stories I published and multiply that small success by my PNWA prize. Would I then be more devastated by rejections, or would I have so much confidence in my writing that the slings and arrows of rejection rolled off my psyche like water off a duck’s back?

Going a step further, if I could take the skills I developed as a writer and multiply those by my work ethic and determination, would I have a  bestseller by now?

But the rules of math don’t apply that way, so none of that is possible.

Yes, some experiences outweigh others, but each experience remains unique and alone, the memory of it painful or thrilling, satisfying or unfulfilling, delightful or tinged with guilt.

Experiences accumulate, memories pile up. Time, like drifting snow over a long winter, obscures some memories, softens the shape of others, and leaves a few bare. And time, like a relentless wind, scours those memories, dulling and smoothing the jagged edges of loss and disappointment, polishing small successes until they gleam like silver, and honing needle-sharp points onto betrayal, remorse, and regret.

I can change nothing in the frozen landscape of my past; I can only learn from the landmarks and make different choices in the future.

This spring I re-examined my goals and found # 1 was the same as ever—to have the thrill of sharing my stories with readers, ideally with many readers.

With that in mind, and with the realization that time seems to be passing at an ever-faster rate, I made the choice to break the cycle of hope-submission-rejection-despair-wound licking-ego healing-hope again. I self-published a suspense novel, An Uncertain Refuge, and put it up for sale at a bargain price.

Was that the right decision? I don’t know. This isn’t black-or-white math, this is the gray area of real life. All I can say is, “It was a different decision.”

Carolyn J. Rose grew up in New York’s Catskill Mountains, graduated from the University of Arizona, and spent 25 years as a television news writer and producer in Arkansas, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. She has published many mysteries and lives in Vancouver, WA, with her husband, radio personality Mike Phillips, and a motley collection of pets. Her hobbies are reading, gardening, and not cooking.