Beth Troy's Blog, page 3

Helping Real People

The early reviews for Louisa are coming in, and they’re good. One reviewer said the story left her speechless, cementing Lu as her favorite fictional character.

Such a review leaves me speechless, and I had about a second to hang out in it before Saturday chores. But, I streamed the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack through my AirPods so I could think about Elizabeth Bennet and my other favorite fictional characters while I vacuumed.

The first was Jo March from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and all because of the scene where she cuts her hair to pay for her mom’s train ticket. Her hair is her thing – or so everyone tells her. Her one beauty. And she cuts it off because it’s also the one thing she can use to do her part. I still remember reading this scene for the first time thinking “No!” and “Yes!” and wanting to grow up to be just like her.

Then came Codi Noline from Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Dreams, a seriously damaged character forced to confront her past, which she’s ill-equipped to do because … she’s seriously damaged. But Kingsolver let Codi be, and in her I saw how a woman can be – smart and stupid, quiet and outspoken, brave and timid, propelled and stuck. There’s no trajectory here, just choices and paths to either follow or blaze as we so choose. Reading this story was both sobering and emboldening for me as a young woman.

I didn’t come to Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice until my 20s, and even then, it was first through the BBC miniseries (my heart, Colin Firth). Elizabeth is as distinctive for her attributes as her faults. Is she pride? Is she prejudice? She’s definitely stubborn, as is Mr. Darcy. Austen put her love interests on an equal playing field. No one is saving anyone here, and I wish more love stories were written this way.

So, it was a bit crowded in my living room on Saturday with Jo, Codi, Elizabeth, and me swapping girl stories while I vacuumed. It’s not as strange as it sounds because they are three-dimensional to me. They are women, not characters. They are also a sign of a story written well and the potential of any work done well.

Bringing ideas to life is more than an expression. It’s the potential that what starts in my mind can walk off the page into yours – maybe even keeping you company while you vacuum.

When Louisa May Alcott wrote about Jo’s haircut, she reached across time and place to me and my frizzy side ponytail. I did wonder whether people still paid good money for hair in the 1980s, but mostly, I saw Jo and I saw myself. I saw how, even a century later, women were still valued by how they look. I saw how a woman could either play that game or break the rules.

One scene, and I saw a problem and a story of a girl who solved it. I saw the same problem facing me and how I wanted to solve it.

I saw who I wanted to be – all from one scene.

How did Louisa May Alcott do it? In part it’s because some what was true then remains true now. In Little Women, Alcott wrote about real problems that women today still face. Her book was an idea for how to solve a real problem, as we talked about last week, by bringing women in through the story of someone else.

But there’s another level we need to consider. I don’t presume to know Louisa May Alcott or her intentions behind Little Women, but I don’t question that she understood the women she wrote about and the women she wrote for, and it’s got me thinking.

Good ideas solve real problems for real people.

If we want our ideas to walk off the page, we need to get to know the people we want to help.

That’s what we are going to talk about this week.

We all have our space. Imagine you, unleashed, working for the glory of God and the good of those around you. This is what we’re talking about on the blog right now as I share the steps I took to envision, write, and publish my next novel, Louisa. Do you have ideas you don’t know what to do with or are you stuck somewhere in the middle? Start at the beginning of this series to get you going!

The Problems You’re Called to Solve

That’s the big question, right – which problems are you called to solve?

This can be tough because there are a lot of problems in the world – too many for one you or one me to know and solve. And for many of the problems we care about, our solution goes no farther than personal decisions.

For example, we might cut a monthly check to a non-profit with a mission we’re aligned with. We’re not founding the non-profit. Or, we might shop at the Farmer’s Market because we believe in the nutritional and environmental benefits of local produce, but we’re not about to plant a community garden to rally our town to do the same.

But some problems compel us to draw a new radius into our community and our community’s community. It’s as if this problem we’ve cared about we’re designed to care about. It’s like it has our name on it.

There’s a lot of unnecessary romanticism around God’s calling on our lives, and this message by Suzy Silk is one of the most practical I’ve found – both in breaking it down and applying it.

Give it a listen and after you’re done, consider:

How are you living out the 95% of God’s call on your life to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly – particularly in ways you may have discounted or felt were unimportant before?Are you getting any closer to identifying that point of intersection where “your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger” meet?

We all have our space. Imagine you, unleashed, working for the glory of God and the good of those around you. This is what we’re talking about on the blog right now as I share the steps I took to envision, write, and publish my next novel, Louisa. Do you have ideas you don’t know what to do with or are you stuck somewhere in the middle? Start at the beginning of this series to get you going!

Problems with Christian Fiction

Disclaimer #1: I admire people who thought to write a book, wrote the book, and published the book.

Disclaimer #2: There’s room to respectfully disagree. I know our culture says otherwise. I respectfully disagree!

Disclaimer #3: I’m a fan of Hallmark movies, meet-cutes, and mountain inns. I like happy endings.

Disclaimer #4: I do not have a problem with bonnets. I played dress-up way longer than was acceptable for a teenage girl.

What I do have a problem with is sameness and the standards of in/out that follow.

For those “in” comes pride and judgment. These are real problems. For those “out” comes envy and shame. These are real problems, too.

“There wasn’t a boundary Jesus wasn’t willing to cross to love others” – a quote from a sermon I listened to recently. The truth of it moves me now as much as it did at 18 when I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior.

I came with a doubt – a sense that the girl I saw in the mirror would never measure up in the way the world wants girls to be.

A lot of days, I tried anyway. Some days, I said I didn’t care. There were days I hated myself, and they were increasing. I didn’t know what to do.

Then, I read apologetics written by thoughtful people defending Christianity. Until that point, I’d thought faith was for only the ignorant.

Then, I read stories of Jesus crossing the line to be with people – people that the culture shamed, marginalized, wrote off, and left behind. People with shady pasts. Until that point, I’d thought faith was for only the innocent.

From here, it wasn’t too far of a stretch to suppose Jesus would cross the line for a girl like me.

So, no. I don’t understand an entire market that promotes clean and convenient stories.

Because when I open the Bible, I see messy people with complicated lives.

Why would we put forth an alternate narrative?

What are we insisting?

Who are we excluding?

My 18-year-old self for one, who on that day in the hall outside my dorm room glimpsed something I hadn’t seen before.

I saw a chance.

I saw rescue.

I saw new life.

Even, and maybe especially, for messy girls with complicated lives.

So, yeah. I have a problem with sameness.

I have a problem with Christian fiction. And, Christian fiction has a problem, too.

We all have our space. Imagine you, unleashed, working for the glory of God and the good of those around you. This is what we’re talking about on the blog right now as I share the steps I took to envision, write, and publish my next novel, Louisa. Do you have ideas you don’t know what to do with or are you stuck somewhere in the middle? Start at the beginning of this series to get you going!

Good Ideas Solve Real Problems

Ideas are not that important. My books – the one I published 3 years ago and the one I will publish in 5 weeks – are not that important. What is important is me, 18 years ago, and the problem I faced in that book aisle.

It’s easy to think ideas are the thing. It’s the ideas people will share with me – their idea for the book the want to write, the class they want to teach, the nonprofit they want to start, and the art they want to create. It’s ideas the media praises. Tesla! Lip kits! Shoes made from recycled plastic! What was that movie everyone was talking about in the 90s with slo-mo acrobatics around flying bullets. Oh, right. The Matrix!

But ideas are fleeting things with expiration dates. What constitutes a good one right now might not next year, or, depending on your industry, tomorrow. And sometimes, they’re more hype than helpful. Laserdisc, anyone?

What does have stickiness are problems – the real problems real people have. They’re also what people care about.

I learned this my first semester of teaching college. The first time we do anything, it’s hard not to make it about us, and that’s what I did … all semester long, apparently. The students’ reviews were not good. I can still see the one written in all caps in No. 2 pencil – NEVER LET BETH TROY TEACH AGAIN – and that student was right. If I continued to teach class as the BT show, I had no business teaching again.

If I wanted to teach better, I needed to set aside my ideas for what made a great classroom experience and see what problems the students were experiencing instead. In an Ancient History class, there were several. Like, history is so boring! How is it relevant to my life? Where does the teacher get off grading me if she doesn’t know my name? Why does my college make me take this stupid course?

I listened, and I learned. The problems inspired the ideas, and the ideas became more about the students and less about me, though I got better at teaching, too. Have I told you the story of the student who came into my class wanting to go into law enforcement and left wanting to be a history teacher? It’s true!

So …

For those of you who want to do something but are not sure what, I have a question. What problems do you care about? Where, if there’s an article on it, you’re reading it? What problem lights a fire in you every.single.time, and you can’t help but add your two cents every.single.time.? I don’t know what form your idea is going to take, but I bet it’s going to come from this problem. Start here!

For those of you who started something but now feel stuck, I have a question. Did you fall in love with the problem or with your idea? Remember, the latter has an expiration date (think: chia pets) and the former has staying power. Tell yourself the story of the problem as much as possible! For example, I’m not always jazzed about my writing. Sometimes, I’m so unjazzed I’d rather file my nails. So, I ask myself – why am I writing again? I better have a reason and that reason had better go beyond the current story to the women who don’t know God yet but might find the trail through this story. There’s power in that “yet” for me – much more than the story itself. It keeps me writing.

For those of you who question whether you’re making an impact, I have a question. Did you define what that impact would be? It’s important to clarify this, and it’s even more important to clarify impact around the problem itself. Impact isn’t necessarily the number of Instagram followers, money in the bank, promotions, and every other upward-and-to-the-right rhetoric we’re fed in our success-obsessed culture. If good ideas solve real problems than impact is problem solved – for 10000, 1000, or 1.

For those of you who seek to get better at what you do, I have a question. How geeked out are you about the problem, circa now? Are you staying current on how people are talking about it, now? How diverse are your sources? Conversations around gender, race, privilege, religion, politics (oh, let’s throw in money, too!) change all the time. We need to keep up. We need to learn from those who agree and those who disagree with us. I know of no way to get better than by following the natural curiosity implicit in learning.

Good ideas solve real problems. Period!

Which of the above descriptions describes where you are right now?

What problems are you experiencing in solving problems?

Comment below and tell me how I can help!

We all have our space. Imagine you, unleashed, working for the glory of God and the good of those around you. This is what we’re talking about on the blog right now as I share the steps I took to envision, write, and publish my next novel, Louisa. Do you have ideas you don’t know what to do with or are you stuck somewhere in the middle? Start at the beginning of this series to get you going!

You, Unleashed

Let’s rewind to 1999.

(And not because it rhymes)

It’s the year the story of Lu began, and many of you know it. As a new Christian, I walked down the “inspirational fiction” aisle and kept on walking – past the lacy collars, bonnets, and buns. I was planning to stop as soon as I saw a cover of a girl who looked like me. I would also settle for a title with words like real people used, but all I saw was saccharine. I had a heart, but did it flow gently to the horizon? I didn’t think so, and I left the bookstore empty handed.

People come to me with their ideas all the time, a happy byproduct of being an author and entrepreneurship professor. I love hearing about ideas, and I encourage them like no other, but here’s the thing …

Ideas are not that important. My books – the one I published 3 years ago and the one I will publish in 5 weeks – are not that important. What is important is me, 18 years ago, and the problem I faced in that book aisle.

Louisa is launching August 10, and over the next month, I want to share the story behind the story in a way that’s interesting and helpful. For me, this goes back to mission, which goes WAY beyond shelf space for my books in that book aisle.

I want to see the inspirational fiction aisle transformed.

I want to see the “inspirational fiction aisle” in every industry transformed.

I want Christians to stop playing it safe, clean, and convenient so that we can reach people where they are, as they are. The Gospel that we are saved through salvation in Jesus Christ alone is the weightiest platform around. It’s the only platform that can hold us, and when we insist on promoting the sanitary over the real, we send a skewed message that people need to clean it up before they can come. There’s not one story in the Bible that runs this way.

So how do we do this?

How do we engage in work that syncs with who we are and what we believe? How do we create stories, art, products, messages, and services that reflect the whole of God and the whole of a person? How do we produce work to help people? How do we create work that helps people in different ways? New ways? How do we refine our work so it’s good? Is it possible for our work to reflect a higher order?

Let’s answer these questions on the blog in this next month. I’ll take you through the steps I used to bring Louisa to life (and also teach in my entrepreneurship classes). It’s a well-researched and flexible process for anyone to use, regardless of your industry or skill.

It’s for those of you who:

Want to do something but are not sure whatStarted something but now feel stuckQuestion whether your work is making an impactSeek to get better at what you doLove all things Lu and want to gather as many tidbits as you can about the sequel (I will share plenty!)

If this sounds like you, sign up for the blog so you don’t a miss a thing. But also – does this sound like someone you know? Do you have a friend, co-worker, or family member who could use some creativity inspo in her work? Encourage her to sign up, too!

We all have our space. Imagine you, unleashed in your space, working for the glory of God and the good of those around you.

This is the blog goal of the next month, which we will go about in a fun and practical way. What questions are coming to mind? What questions would you like me to answer specifically? Are any doubts surfacing? Dreams? What topics would you like me to address?

Either put them in the comments below or contact me. We will get started next week!

The Story of Lu

I almost tripped over my own sequel on Sunday.

Delirium has something to do with it. Summer Sun + Concrete makes a heady mix, and I feel baked like bread every time I walk the dogs. It’s possible Cody & JB sniffed out the envelope from Amazon before I spotted it.

But really, it’s life! I spend most of my daylight trying to keep Troy Boys occupied and off screens. I’m pacing the fall school speculation and planning as best I can, both as a mom and professor. Stomachs want food three times a day, and housework regenerates upon completion. As I type, I’m wondering whether I should thaw beef roasts from the freezer for our July 4 Family Fun, but I’m still typing, so I’ll probably forget until Saturday morning.

Life! There’s a lot I forget, like how last Monday I ordered 3 proofs of the sequel to Lu – for just one more proofread. I bent down to pick up the package.

“I think this is the sequel,” I told Matt.

I opened it, he inserted the ooh and aah at the right moment and in the right tone, declaring he might like this cover better than the first (Is this possible? This can’t be possible. Maybe it’s possible?) And then it was time to go to my mom’s for dinner. I put the sequel back in the envelope – TBC on whatever day I will get to proofing.

Second books are like second babies. They’re no less precious, but there’s a life that can’t halt like it had to for the first because you had no idea what you were doing. It took all of you to figure it out.

It’s a little more comfortable with the second. You know what you’re doing, where you are in the process, and who you are in it all.

And so ..

It’s from a place of both after-thought and intense excitement that I share with you …

Louisa – the sequel to Lu – will be released on August 10!

Yes! Yes!! YES!!!

I’ll be flooding the blog with the details over the next month, but before all of that, I need to ask the question women avoid asking.

Will you help me?

I’m looking for a group of people who are jazzed – yes, about Lu, Dunlap’s Creek … Jackson (ahem) – but really about what happens when we encounter stories of how God is real and deals with real people. Stories that tell this story, in words real people use, carry a limitless potential to reach people where they are and open their minds to who they are in God. At its core, Lu, Louisa, and every other story I will go on to write are about this.

If you’re feeling a YES! building as you read those words, then I’d love your help over the next month. Just send me your name and the best email to reach you and you’ll get …

An e-copy of Lu to read/shareAn advance e-copy of Louisa the week before releaseWeekly videos from me with inside bits about this story + encouragement for sharing our stories as part of the larger story of salvation Spotlights on other Lu readers. It’s such a cool group.

In return, I’ll be asking for your help in small ways – ways many of you have helped already. Letting people know Lu exists and how it affected you makes a difference and will continue to make a difference as we prepare for the Louisa launch.

If you’re feeling that YES! contact me with your name and email.

If it’s not your jam, cool. The blog will offer a pretty good view of what I’ve been up to with writing and will be up to with publishing over the next month, and it all starts next week!

Our Recycled Days

Yesterday, Jesse came downstairs with a book he received for Christmas about making Lego movies. I think it’s the first time he opened it.

Jesse’s newfound interest became Ezra’s, and when the book-share didn’t work, Ezra contented himself with the mish-mash Lego bin that’s always under the radio cabinet but rarely explored.

Tommy has been re-reading the Berenstain Bears’ In the Dark on repeat for the last week. Usually he brings it to me to monologue in his mix of Tommy-isms punctuated with key words from the text, but yesterday as I was drifting into a nap, he plopped next to me and read the story, verbatim.

When the boys came home from school in March, they came with all of their stuff – an alarming pile of pencils, erasers, notebooks, glue sticks, and a thick stack of worksheets. I didn’t want to throw away what I could recycle, and I didn’t want to recycle what I could re-purpose. From March until now, every journal entry, Bible study note, and blog has started on the blank backs of these sheets that I three-hole punched and put in a yellow binder.

Today’s news isn’t good. It’s a confluence of bad and spikes. And yet, our family’s days feel recycled. Restricted.

Matt and I moved to Oxford 10 years ago under pressed circumstances, and one of my biggest regrets from this time was the scarcity mindset I adopted. I felt my lack keenly and thought “more” was the answer. It became an undercurrent that kept me from satisfaction, and though I now see the richness of then I missed a lot at the time by insisting on lack.

These recycled days could go the same way. There’s nothing to differentiate a Monday from a Tuesday, and the reports tempt me to think these days can’t be anything other than bad at worst and boring at best. Maybe I should hold my breath until August … when the kids go back? November … when the elections happen? 2021 … when we have a vaccine?

I’m 10 years older and a smidgen wiser than when we returned to Oxford. I know how to restore a past regret by broadening how I see the days now – not as a cheery overlay but in recognition of an adjacent reality.

I look out my house windows and see kids playing all day long. In past summers, our neighborhood was quiet. All the kids were at summer camp.

I see my boys engaging (and fighting) because they can’t get a break from one another. They’re finally figuring it out.

I see reading, re-reading, and legitimate first-time reading.

I see Matt firing up the charcoal grill most nights because we have time most nights for dinners like that.

I see time and how it stretches long at the start of the day, but then it’s somehow 8:30, and I’m calling the boys to park their hoverboards, bikes, and scooters to come to bed.

I see how tomorrow will be more of the same, a basic recycle of today. And I see sameness in a different way – how it begets tedium, but also patience and ingenuity.

Yesterday, my sister’s family arrived from across the country in a car stacked with provisions for the drive and the next two weeks. Very Steinback. Before I said good night to my niece, she was telling me about the Cops & Robbers game Jesse and her had developed in the twilight. The trampoline plays a key role, it seems. Yesterday, it was same ole’. Today, it has new life. Recycled.

Summer Reading (For Real)

Lockwood & Co. series – I finished the first, The Screaming Staircase, and Jesse leveraged my enjoyment to lock me into reading the rest of the books by the end of summer. The first is a well written, good story of kids battling a ghost epidemic in London. Moms – you should read what you want to read (see Parts 1 & 2 of StoryLiar for more information on that) – but maybe your kiddos would like these.

Vegetable Gardening Wisdom – It’s laughable on all counts that I’m reading a book about gardening, but Matt and I do have 11 acres of land, and a girl has to dream about something other than removing the invasive species from it. Rumor has it, I will need to replace the honeysuckle and autumn olive with other flora. Why not tomatoes? I like tomatoes!

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series – These are as much a character delve as about the mysteries set around the sweet (and murderous!) town of Three Pines in Quebec. I’m pleased to report my high school French continues to show up and help me translate the smattering of French phrases. The books also make you really hungry. Louise Penny’s description of Coq Au Vin sent me prowling the pantry at 5AM on a Sunday morning, where, alas, none was to be found.

How Sweet the Sound – My writing partner’s newest book is releasing this August, and it’s a gem of a devotional that I read (and hum) in those 10-minute snippets between this and that. You don’t need to be a hymn person to read it, but after reading it, a hymn person you shall become (riddle me that!)

Eloquent Rage – This title stood out to me in a list of reads about racism and feminism. Women are raised to be nice, and love can look “nice” but when life is on the line, “nice” isn’t going to cut it. Anger can be righteous. Anger has its time. It has been time for a long time. I want to be an ally, and I have a lot to learn.

I John – I took the dogs for a sunrise walk the other morning, and the colors were beyond my descriptive powers. It was almost too difficult to take in, and at one point, I closed my eyes, wanting nothing more than to be part of the beauty all around me. This is how I feel when I read this letter from the apostle, John. To walk in the light I’ve received from God, to extend that light at every opportunity, and draw the light of the Gospel into every area of my life – Yes. This is what I want.

My Own Sequel – It.is.so.good. Can I say this about my own work? Sure! And it’s almost ready for you. Go ahead and prep with a re-read or first read of Lu!

Please pepper the comments with your recommendations! Summer is already starting to feel a little long with not much to do other than hike and creek, and the boys are kinda over it.

StoryLiar: Part 2

I finished my book the next Sunday morning. Matt and Jess were out, and Tommy was chilling in his room with the Berenstain Bears’ collection he’s pilfered from school over the past year. It was early, but probably not too early if I sent Ezra to the neighbors who’ve been supplying me with one Louise Penny mystery at a time.

“Tell them I need Book 4, and then come right back so I can start reading it before your brother gets home,” I told him.

He skipped across the road, looking neither way, with his bathrobe just so – tucked into his jammy pants with the belt tied in the back so as to reveal a strip of albino white across his skinny chest in the front. Sharp.

Ezra knocked, and our neighbor and his daughter came to the door. They chatted. They kept chatting. Then Ezra was inside the house, and I saw no one. Sum total it was probably 3 minutes, but it felt like 500, and I thought about sending a text, but then I remembered it was early Sunday morning when I wasn’t supposed to be bothering people, which Is why I’d sent my middle son to do it for me. He’d turned out useless.

I wanted to read something, but I didn’t want to start anything interesting when the book I was really interested in was across the road in a house that had swallowed Ezra without tossing the Louise Penny mystery to me first. I sat on the couch, looked left, and spied … you got it! The Screaming Staircase with the bookmark at page 57.

I started reading, and 15 minutes in, I was engrossed enough that I didn’t bother to get up when my phone dinged from the kitchen. It was probably a text from the neighbors about Ezra, but you know? He’s a resourceful kid – a real charmer – and at the moment, I was more concerned about Lucy & Lockwood and the ghost who was trying to kill them. More texts came, and I only looked up from my book when Jesse and Matt returned, the former, elated to see that I was reading his book for reals, and the latter, wondering whether I got his texts.

“I heard them,” I evaded.

“Ezra is across the street,” Matt said.

“I know all about that,” I said, waving my hand in the air nonchalantly. “I sent him there.”

“He’s been in their bathroom for the last 15 minutes.”

That was a plot twist, but as I said, Ezra is resourceful. He emerged – in the way men eventually emerge from these situations – and came back with the fourth Louise Penny book (after he washed his hands, I hope). Jesse confiscated it, declaring he would release it only after I finished The Screaming Staircase, which it turns out, is also a real page turner.

A book in the lap and one in the docket. I am happy. Jesse is happy I am reading and enjoying his book. We are talking about ghosts now.

The end.

StoryLiar: Part 1

My summer reading problem goes something like this:

I love to read. I don’t get a lot of time to read. Jesse loves to read. Jesse has all the time in the world to read. Jesse, like his father before him, wants me to enjoy ALL of the things he enjoys, including his there-are-never-too-many-portals-in-the-epic-where-the-elf-teams-up-with-the-wither-to-battle-the-intergalactic-nether-in-a-post-apocalyptic-world literature. He finishes a book and hands it over. Your turn, he says. Not my turn, I respond, and hand it back, without a second thought until about a month ago when I started wondering whether this was good mothering.

A good mother should be pleased her son wants her to share in his reading enjoyment. A good mother should welcome this inlet into his world. A good mother should lay down her reading preferences in service of her child. You will miss these days, I’ve been told.

Which is why I agreed to read The Screaming Staircase – an epic tale of teenage ghost hunters. And I have. On the couch. When Jess is watching.

And when he’s not watching, I sneak the book I’m really reading.

Jesse was a little put out by how long it was taking me to read his book – 57 pages in a week is not something to write home about – but he was happy I was reading it at all, as was I. I was happy he was happy. I was happy we had something to talk about beyond his other passion (video games). The altruism, meager as it was, also worked wonders for my mothering ego, and I planned to continue at my steady pace and finish the book by mid-July.

The problem was my other book. It was totally engrossing – a real page turner. I didn’t hear Jesse come up the stairs. I didn’t hear him open the bedroom door. He saw me before I saw him, and by that time, his death stare was traveling from my contraband book to my guilty face.

He pointed at me from across the bedroom. “That’s a real jerk move, Mom!”

True, but even Jerk Mom needs to address language.

“First, I don’t appreciate that expression. Second, I get it. Third, you’re right, and I’m sorry.”

He left the room. I kept reading (my book, not his) – a Louise Penny mystery. Have you read these? So good. Reserve the first one at your local library than return here tomorrow for StoryLiar: Part 2.