Bell Bridge Books

PUNDITRY OVER PERFUNCTORY

by Deborah Smith

I Eat, Therefore I Yam.

The Lard Cooks In Mysterious Ways

I’m Not A Biscuit, Don’t Butter Me Up.

I love slogans and sayings. For one thing, they turn words into a toy box full of colorful blocks, sort of an old-school Rubik’s Cube, and it’s fun to arrange the blocks until CLICK, you’ve figured out the angles and discovered some nifty patterns. But also, pedestrian though they may often be, slogans and sayings often contain serious kernels of truth. They’re one-line poems. Haiku for the half-hearted. Shortcuts to Deep Thought.

But they touch us. The three above are from The Crossroads Café and its spin-off novellas—The Biscuit Witch (now published) and The Pickle Queen (coming in August.) By the time I get to the third novella in the trilogy, The Kitchen Charmer (this fall,) I’ll have more pithy perceptive packets of punditry  than a politician in a pickle.

Ah, alliteration. I love you.

Since discovering the world of Pinterest, where EVERYTHING EVER THOUGHT OF is posted with links to the source material, I’ve begun collecting memorable, witty or simply silly words to live by. Or, at least, to laugh by.

Here are some of my favorites, all of which are inspirational, particularly when it comes to writing a novel:

“She loved mysteries so much that she became one.” (Literatureismyutopia.tumblr.com)

“Sometimes you miss the memories, not the person.” (sayingimages.com)

“I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy, I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.” (Unknown)

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” (Sylvia Plath)

“When I first met her I knew in a moment I would have to spend the next few days re-arranging my mind so there’d be room for her to stay.” (F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby.)

“Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life.” (Stephen King.)

“There are certain fiction character’s deaths you will never recover from. Ever.”

(problemsofabooknerd.tumblr.com)

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” (Margaret Atwood.)

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.” (E.L. Doctorow)

“At any given moment you have the power to say: This is not how the story is going to end.” (artistlaraharris.tumblr.com)

“Forget all the reasons why it won’t work and believe the one reason why it will.” (Unknown.)

And last but not least, a TRULY IMPORTANT saying inspired by Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, as contributed by redbubble.com:

“Marry the beast. Get that library.”

Yours in pithy profundity … Debs

Today is the LAST day to get NY Times bestselling author Deborah Smith’s THE CROSSROADS CAFE for only $1.99 at Amazon Kindle!

DO PUBLISHERS AND EDITORS READ BOOKS PUBLISHED BY OTHER PRESSES?

By Danielle Childers

Do publishers and editors read books they didn’t publish?  You betcha!  After all, we’re in this industry because we love good books. We’re such reading harlots. So I have no shame in presenting you with A Library Trollop’s Reading Recommendations!

I’m absolutely obsessed with retro fiction right now.  The stunning covers. The world events. The vintage feel. When I pick up these books it’s like they whisper “I’ve lived.  Read my wisdom. Experience my days.” And lately I’ve been reading new books about old summers.

I am super late to the party to read Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter (Harper Perennial). But I was so excited that I purchased it in hardback. A luxury when you have to fund my reading habit.  A story within a story. A movie within a novel. The azure coast of Itlay. The 1960s.  An actress. An innkeeper. The filming of Cleopatra.  “The only thing we have is the story we tell.”

Yes.  It was beautiful. The writing. The imagery. The book.  Yes, this is literary fiction of a sort, but as a former librarian, I am bone tired of the limited genres we have to describe books that are just…more.  It’s vintage fiction. It’s retro-glam fiction.  It’s geographic fiction. It’s gently epic and strangely modern. It’s amazing. Read it. But don’t read it as a guilty pleasure. Read it like the clever and cultured book that it is. Read it with a touch of awe and leave your critique behind. Just…enjoy it.

Still on a high from Beautiful Ruins, I discovered (because books simply happen to me, for me.) Palisades Park by Alan Brennert (St. Martin’s Press). An Amusement Park. The 1930s.  It’s like The Great Gatsby gone wild but brighter, and the grit is not hidden by the glitz.  A book full of dreams from back when safety nets did not exist. Complete with frozen lemonades and the warmth of day that lingers in the asphalt.  It’s something you only notice as a child, I think. But it’s magic. I read it on my Kindle with a fan blowing in my face and the sun shining. Yes. Read it. Now. Read it and reflect on the happiest summers that were magical because you lived and breathed thirty years of summer at an amusement park. You didn’t? Well sometimes I can’t separate books from my life.

Now, when I’m feeling really sentimental or have found a book I know I’m going to love so much, I always turn to some old, faithful book friends. I like to read them and introduce them to their new book friends. They won’t sit beside each other on my shelves unless they have the good luck to be written by authors who are alphabetically compatible, but when I glance over their spines, I’ll know they’re related.

So, it felt completely natural after these thoughtful, retro books, to pull out The Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood (Harper Perennial). Don’t judge me. I feel very protective about this book, and I can’t explain it. I have a soft spot for Rebecca Wells because she can tell a great southern story spanning decades that will have you tasting pecans, dissolving in the summer heat with your friends, and sounding just like my Great Aunt Sherry. And it’s a great, mostly light hearted finale to this summer reading list.

There you have it. Three absolutely perfect summer retro reads. Where the time is just as much of a character as the beaches as the roller coasters, as the people.  Read Palisades Park and make lemonade. Beautiful Ruins should be read after watching Cleopatra.  And the Ya-Ya’s?  Just make a shoofly pie and drink the lemonade mentioned above. Sugar is sugar, and there’s just enough salt in the pie to enhance the tartness of the lemons.

Happy reading.

Bell Bridge Books presents these fabulous summer reading titles for only $1.99 on Amazon Kindle Today! 

Welcome to our first Doggone Good Read. Every week we’ll post a short excerpt from a new or upcoming title.

Our premiere Doggone Good Read is . . . HOW TO SLAY A DRAGON, Bill Allen’s funny middle-grade fantasy.

Enjoy an excerpt!

HOW TO SLAY A DRAGON (brief synopsis)

They call him Greghart, The Dragonslayer

But Greg Hart can’t slay a dragon. He’d be lucky to win a fight against one of the smaller girls at school.
His only real skill is that he can run faster than any other twelve-year-old boy in his class, a necessity, since that’s who he’s usually running from. Oh, it’s not like he’s never been the hero at the center of an adventure. It’s just the kind of adventures he’s been involved with have always been the made-up kind he’s written about in his journal.

Now the magicians of Myrth have yanked Greg into a strange new world, where the monsters he must run from are far scarier—and hungrier—than anything he’s ever run from before. He tries to tell everyone there’s been a mistake. Ruuan is a very large dragon, while Greg, on the other hand, is neither large nor a dragon. He’s barely much of a boy. Unfortunately, such trivialities could never stop the people of Myrth from believing Greg will rescue King Peter’s daughter from Ruuan. After all, Greg has been named in a prophecy, and no prophecy has ever been wrong before.

Why, Greg wonders, does he have to be at the heart of the first one that is?

Greg Finds Himself In A Very Odd Place

“Is he alive?”

“Of course he’s alive. Give him room. He may be a hero, but he still needs to breathe.”

When Greg opened his eyes his first reaction was to close them again instantly. This turned out to be his second reaction as well. He might have given it a third go had one of the hooded figures hovering over him not poked him with a sharp stick before he could get to it. Instead Greg yelped, and his eyes popped open.

He was no longer in the woods. He lay on a hard flagstone surface lit by a dim, flickering light. What little air managed to squeeze its way to him reeked of something familiar, though Greg couldn’t quite put a finger on it, and wasn’t sure he would if he could.

Greg shrank back as the surrounding figures drifted closer. Everywhere he looked, nothing but black robes and sticks. Inside the many hoods, only darkness. Finally one figure leaned over and peered down at him, and Greg felt a glimmer of relief at seeing the shadowed face of a man, even if that face was scowling.

“Doesn’t look like much of a warrior to me,” the man said in an icy voice that would have made Death himself envious. “Are you sure you got the right one?”

“Of course, Mordred,” said another. “Look at his eyes.”

“Those are warrior eyes, all right,” said a third. “My Uncle Cedric had eyes just like ’em—only his were blue now that I think about it, and more bloodsho—”

“Yes, yes, Dimitrius,” Icy-Voiced Man nearly spat. “We all remember Cedric. Why do you suppose his feet are wet?”

“Uncle Cedric didn’t have wet feet.”

“Quiet, everyone,” said the man who had poked Greg. “Stand back, you’re smothering him.” He jabbed Greg again, but Greg sent him shuffling quickly backward by yelling twice as loudly as before.

“Careful, Agni,” someone shouted. “I think you hurt him.”

“Are you kidding? Do you know who this is?”

“I say we find out,” said Icy-Voiced Man. He raised one hand, causing Greg to flinch, but he was just drawing back his hood. His dark eyes stared without compassion past his stringy black hair as he locked gazes with Greg. “Who are you, boy? Tell us your name.”

“W-what?” said Greg, his voice two octaves higher than normal. He surprised himself by wishing it were Manny Malice staring down at him. Only, where was Manny? Or Kristin? For that matter, where were the woods behind his house?

“See. I told you the boy was no hero.”

“Wait,” came a voice from behind. “Give him a chance, Mordred. He’s probably just disoriented from the trip. Go ahead, sir, tell him who you are.”

One by one the remaining figures lowered their hoods. Greg was relieved to see that beneath each was a face, some gleeful, others excited or anxious, a few that might have even been wary, but none as disapproving as the one from the man named Mordred.

“I-I’m Greg,” he told them. “Greg Hart.” Throughout the room men gasped.

“Wait,” Mordred commanded, holding up a hand for silence. He leaned closer and stared, as if daring Greg to lie to him. “Tell us, boy, are you from Earth?”

Greg swallowed hard before replying. “Do I look like an alien?”

Mordred’s expression gave no hint of what he might be thinking.

“Where else would I be from?” Greg clarified.

One man slapped his knee and laughed. “I knew it!” A few others clapped, though they stopped rather abruptly when Mordred directed his stare their way.

A voice called out, “You did it, Lucky. You did it.”

A boy about Greg’s age stepped forward and hovered over Greg, his mouth drawn into a wide smile, his green eyes gleaming. Unlike the others, he wore a bright orange tunic and tights that clashed badly with his even brighter red hair. “Of course,” he boasted. “Did you have any doubts that he’s the dragon slayer?”

“Plenty,” someone shouted.