Story Time with Miss Nancy!

Back in the day, when my mom was the lead librarian in the children's department at the public library, she would host story time several times each week. Because I'm her daughter, I'm still privy to story times every now and again. I didn't write a blog last night because I was at her house, participating in a story time of sorts.

My mom made a classic "Mom Meal" (salmon cakes, insanely good scalloped potatoes, and salad). I took a bottle of chardonnay. While we waited for dinner to cook, we took turns reading aloud chapters from my latest novel, Uptempo, Down. It was great! Because the chapters are sooooo short, we made it through about ten of them! (I think there are ninety-four chapters in the entire novel; isn't that fun?) The book is also divided into days, so we read "Saturday."

It had been a while since I read the start of the book, so I had a good time going back and revisiting the opening chapters. They're intense! My mom cried. She's gotten really attached to Bas and Bert and Lucy over the years, and she appeared to be falling pretty hard for Finn and Russo too. I mean, Finn and Russo have been around for a while, but they've always been minor characters. In Uptempo, Down, however, Finn is a MAJOR character. And I love him.

I love Russo as well (obviously), but this book isn't so much about him as it is about Finn and Bas. And Edna. NEW CHARACTER ALERT! Weirdly, Bert is a fairly minor character in this novel. He's usually very prevalent, because I adore him and I love writing about him, but his part isn't huge in this book. For the Bert-lovers out there, though: Do not fear! He's still one of the narrators.

I have more to say about Uptempo, Down and my use of song lyrics in the text (and other texts), but I think I'll save that for later. Maybe Saturday's post, as tomorrow will be devoted to trivia.