Bookshop and library shout out and more spooky show ideas

October 15, 2024 — I love spooky season! The colors have really started to pop around the Ann Arbor area. We bought small pumpkins to place around our patio wall last weekend and even had our coffee out back with our fire pit lit one morning. So cozy. I haven’t blogged for a couple of weeks — we were on vacation in Italy. Seems a bit unreal now — we had a beautiful time. 

For some of you who have asked where you can purchase my book, aside from being available online through Amazon and Bookshop.org, How Happy Is a Lark has joyfully winged its way into several book shops, including the following: 

Adventure, Ink, downtown Milan, was featured in my previous blog post, so I’ll leave it at that. 

Vault of Midnight, downtown Ann Arbor, is the most recent shop to pick up my book and I wrote about them and Schuler Books, Ann Arbor, in the same previous post. 

I’m really appreciative of these stores who support local authors! Additionally, for those in the Grosse Pointe/Detroit area, I’m delighted to know that my book is on the shelves of Coreander’s Children’s Bookshoppe, a charming two-story book store dedicated to children of all ages. It’s beautifully decorated — from the paintings on the walls, to dazzling solar-themed ornaments, and book-themed stuffies adorning the shelves. I’d definitely say this book shop is worth an outing to check it out. A friend of mine in the area recently texted to tell me there’s only one of my books left on Coreander’s shelves, which I was pleased to hear. I’m hoping they’ll restock. Not too long ago, I did my first public reading at Coreander’s and had a great time. Of course, I blogged about that, too.

One of the first local places to put my book on their shelves was Brewed Awakenings, Saline. They support local artists and authors and have started featuring them at events in their cafe. I have an author event/book signing coming up on Saturday, October 26 from 3 - 5 p.m. That is one of those days “when it rains, it pours.” I’ll sadly miss my niece’s baby shower on the west side of Michigan. But we will make it to the wedding reception for the son of good friends of ours. Anyway, Brewed has amazing food, desserts (lovingly baked in the cafe), coffee and shopping for unique gifts. My personal favorite dessert is their scrumptious chocolate-covered peanut butter bar, especially from the refrigerator. 

I’m especially pleased to know that my book is available at a number of libraries including: Ann Arbor, Plymouth, Troy, Ypsilanti (including their book mobile) and most recently, Milan. Interestingly (oddly?) my hometown of Saline has not agreed to carry my book. Although, I just noticed that my book is available through the MEL (Michigan eLibrary) and can be borrowed from Saline (and any other participating library in the state), on request. That’s good to know. If you can’t tell, I’m a bit annoyed with my own hometown, since many adjacent cities were more than happy to carry my book. I’ve donated my book to these libraries, to make it more widely available. When I first approached Saline, I was told I didn’t meet their requirements, such as having literary reviews of my book. It actually helped me, as I was figuring out so much about self-publishing and what to do. This was how and when I went about soliciting literary reviews and I acquired a couple of them. I let them know, but still nothing. It’s OK, just a bit irksome. We’ve lived here for over 27 years. We are in a funny little pocket that is officially Pittsfield Township, with Ann Arbor Schools (as we wanted) and a Saline mailing address. It’s small stuff in the grand scheme and so, I hereby let it go! 

I mentioned in a previous post that I’d heard from an editor at the Ann Arbor Observer about doing a profile on me in their City Guide for Chelsea/Dexter/Saline. Well, it arrived in mailboxes last week and is online. In order to read the whole article, we’re asked to sign up. I had some difficulty with my own log in, I think because my sign up was with a previous email address I no longer use. I need to contact them. But, it should be easy to do. They were wonderful to work with, from the deputy editor who initially reached out to me, Brooke Black, to the writer, Shelley Daily, and photographer, J. Adrian Wylie. Kind, professional, talented. I am used to being on the other side of this process, interviewing people and writing about them, something I loved doing throughout my career. It was fun and a bit strange to be the interviewee. But they made it very comfortable. A HUGE shout of appreciation to the Observer for making me their Saline profile (ahem, did you hear that, library? OK — now I’ll really let it go ;). 

I started recommending spooky-ish shows a few weeks ago so here are a few more for your viewing consideration. Mwa ha ha. If you have Disney + I’m still really enjoying “Agatha All Along.” (Prepare for some frustration with a new log in through My Disney, but if we can figure it out, you can too).

It’s not Halloween without a watch of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” Non-subscribers can watch the classic cartoon for free Oct. 19 and 20 on Apple TV +. Same goes for the Thanksgiving and Christmas Peanuts specials. Google for dates. A movie to watch that springs to mind is “A Nightmare Before Christmas.” Creepy fun for the whole family. Hauntingly delightful music, entertaining and original characters and story. Finally, a fun idea, is to Google for Halloween episodes of some of your favorite TV shows. We love the TV show “Psych” and there are some pretty scary episodes! If you like 80s references, solving murders, great characters, chemistry and comedy, you might love Psych too. You will recognize the “psychic” detective, Shawn, as Gary, if you watched “A Million Little Things,” but you will be surprised at how young James Roday Rodriguez (love him) was in “Psych.” We all were young once, huh?

I’d still love to hear some of your spooky season favorite shows and I’ll include them in upcoming posts. I’ll end this with the lyrics to a Halloween song I learned in kindergarten, I believe, and remember to this day. “Halloween’s coming, Halloween’s coming. Witches, ghosts and goblins, too. Ooo - ooo - ooo - ooo - ooo - BOO!”