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When I first started writing Mysterious Ways, Sam Adams book three, I was ready to have some fun again. Writing the previous book, Rising Shadows, had often proved a struggle, and I couldn’t wait to write a novel that had some scenes I’d been looking forward to since the beginning of the series, one that was a little more standalone, a little more detached from the story the previous two books had been telling, and was my loving salute to the spy genre. (Observant readers may notice “blink and you’ll miss it” homages to Alias and The World Is Not Enough”). I started working on Mysterious Ways in the spring of 2023, though it was the fall before I began devoting serious time to it. I made slow but steady progress, and by May of the following year I had knocked out the majority of the book. Then writer’s block came crashing into me like the swinging paint can colliding with Joe Pesci’s face in Home Alone. Some authors claim that writer’s block doesn’t actually exist, but I’ve never believed this, and if I’d ever been tempted to change my mind, the gloomy months that followed made sure I wouldn’t. To put things in perspective, I write about a thousand words a day on an ordinary day. After my writer’s block hit, I wrote four thousand words in six months. There was simply nothing in the tank. Even small tweaks became a struggle, and there were times I dreaded even opening the document. From a narrative perspective, the perfect ending to this tale of woe would be that inspiration struck, the ghost of J.R.R. Tolkien coming to me in a dream or something, and I roared back to life, smashing out the remainder of the story in a triumphant blur. Unfortunately, the truth wasn’t that dramatic: around November 2024, I began finding the writing coming easier again as I spotted the things that needed to be fixed. By the holiday season, I was on a hot streak. By the spring, I was finally ready to send it to my editor, Sarah Chorn (who had kindly offered some encouraging words when I opened a vein to her about all this), and the book finally dropped in December. I offered to do a guest post for the lovely people at Bazoo Books some time ago, and I soon realized my ill-starred third novel was what I wanted to talk about. Since the writing of Mysterious Ways became such a dark period of my professional life, I found I wanted to do something to celebrate, to look back on it all and remind myself of why I liked the story so much to begin with, and to show my readers how it all came together. After all, Mysterious Ways holds something of a special place in my heart, simply because it’s been on my mind for so long. The basic premise, that a magic-hating death cult would invade the town and our teenage wizard hero would have to save the day, was one of the very first ideas I came up with, back before the series had a name, or I’d even decided to write it. Of course, I soon realized an article about the writing of a book does not make for particularly interesting reading, unless you want to hear a graphic account of me glaring at a blank screen and muttering. So instead, I decided to confine my “making of” post to the origins of Elise, the girl who threatened to steal the whole show. First introduced in book one, she comes crashing back into Sam’s life in Mysterious Ways with a stolen suitcase nuke in tow, turning Sam’s life upside down once again. A ferocious vampire assassin and Sam’s ostensible ally, Elise’s journey to literary bloodsucking was rather circuitous. Elise got her start in a completely different story, one that I never took seriously and probably wasn’t even very good. It did pop into my head from time to time, though, and one of the main characters bore a distinct resemblance to a certain fangy blonde we know and love. Of course, she wasn’t really Elise yet; indeed, she was pretty much just Katherine Pierce from The Vampire Diaries, but she was a fierce vampire girl who caused all sorts of trouble, and she captured my imagination. And when, some time later, I began writing the first Sam Adams book, Credible Threats, I suppose that’s why proto-Elise wandered out of that story that wasn’t, made her way through the murky swamps of my imagination, and deposited herself squarely into the middle of the Sam Adams series with throat-chomping aplomb. Of course, her story still wasn’t quite the same, and this is the part where I have to make a confession: Sam and Elise were going to fall in love. Well, maybe “confession” is the wrong word. It makes it sound as though I were doing something shameful, and I wouldn’t want the romance writers I know to get the impression I think that would have been something to look down on. It’s just that in hindsight, it seems very strange, knowing the direction the story ultimately went. I abandoned this early on, after becoming more intrigued by Sam’s relationship with Alexandra Tyler, previously only a minor character. In truth, it wasn’t something I’d ever thought much about anyway: the older version of Elise was the main character’s love interest in that book I didn’t write, so I had taken it for granted that she would be in the Sam Adams books as well. That’s why romantically-inclined fans might notice Mysterious Ways includes the “only one bed” trope that finds its way onto so many mood boards these days, when Sam and Elise take refuge in a cabin after a brutal battle. I couldn’t simply cut the scene; it was too integral to the plot. This was where we learn Elise’s dark and bloody backstory, after Sam wakes her from a nightmare, a scene that was originally intended to read as romantic. So, I had to make a few creative tweaks: originally, they were going to be awkwardly snuggled in the bed, but in the finished product, Sam exiles her to the floor, the only thing he can think of to get back at her for ensnaring him in her schemes. I also threw in a line meant to douse any suspicions of a romance between her and Sam, when Elise explicitly declares she’s too old for him, having lived for centuries. You’ll see Elise again, a little further down the road, and it’s no spoiler to say she’ll be bringing mayhem in her wake. I can’t wait for all of my readers to see what happens when she does. So, here I am, with Mysterious Ways unleashed at last, ready and waiting for my readers to get their paws on it. I can’t deny I’m still a little gun shy about writing: after being dogged by writer’s block for so long, it’s hard to shake the fear that it might ensnare me once again. But ultimately, I have to ignore those fears, because Sam Adams book four, Death Follows, is next on the assembly line, and it won’t write itself, to say nothing of a brand-new series I want to dive into. So, it’s back to ye olde keyboard, and back to work once again. 

Melissa Cave is a writer and veteran who has spent most of her life traveling, first as a military brat and then as active duty. She has always been fascinated by new places, cultures, languages, and history, and there is no better place to indulge that interest than in fantasy writing. She currently lives in Virginia, where she is failing to grow strawberries for the third year running. Set to be a five book series, Empire of the Stars , is due to release book three, Last of His Blood this November. The series follows Ophele, the Emperor’s illegitimate heir and exiled princess, and Remin, the Empire’s greatest hero and the Emperor’s largest threat. Fantastical demons and unconquered frontiers are just the start to the obstacles that lay ahead in this marvelous series. Travel has been a big part of your life being a military brat and a member of active duty forces. How have your travels influenced this series? What locations have been your biggest influence for the Empire? -I was lucky enough to spend some time in England and Ireland, and just seeing the ancient architecture in these places is inspiring. It's not just the buildings that people lived in; those buildings reflected how they lived, from the cramped quarters of Remin and Ophele's cottage to her solar in the manor. The folk park at Bunratty Castle in Ireland had some thatched-roof cottages that definitely inspired Remin and Ophele's cottage, and I was thinking of Rochester Castle when I described the city walls. (That's why Remin built on bedrock; no greased pigs in tunnels will be collapsing his walls.) There is such a range of characters in this growing series. The personal growth and development for Remin and Ophele has been exponential. How have your personal experiences affected your characters? Who do you have the greatest kinship with? - I think the most direct connection between me and my characters is that I gave them my flaws. The mistakes some of the characters have made are mistakes I would have made, at their age and position. It has been a really interesting and...dark, honestly, to see exactly how dangerous a little bit of arrogance and inexperience can be. That's probably why I feel the most kinship with the villains. 😅 I love Remin and Ophele with all my heart, but I'm not much like them. Mionet's determination to do things properly or die trying, however...that is all me. I’m grateful to have been an arc and a beta reader for you in this series thus far. I’ve found that when I get to the end of the novel and I’m looking for answers and realizing I have to wait for the next release, that I’m not getting them today. As a writer, how do you know when the end has come for the novel and the series? Do you have it all mapped out before you begin writing? - I'm a plotter, so I always need to know the ending before I can write the beginning. I need a target to aim for. Usually there are major milestones and climaxes that will naturally separate the books along the way, resolving one arc while setting up the next one. Knowing when to end the series is harder. On the one hand, I have very clear endings in mind and have taken Remin and Ophele all the way to the end of their lives. But I have so many ideas for side stories and spin-offs that I don't know if that really constitutes an ending, as such. Their story will go on through other people, even when I leave the Empire and wander off elsewhere in the world. The sweet Ophele is lovingly referred to as an owl throughout the series. Often, she is up late and up swiftly awoken in the early morning. Do you tend to be a night owl, writing til the wee hours of the morning? When does your inspiration often hit? -Yeah, I am a complete night owl. Remin's early risings would kill me. I usually do my rewrite of the previous days' work in the early to middle evening, and then late at night (like 11 PM to 2 AM) is when I write the new stuff. I am usually the most alert and creative starting around 9 or 10 pm. Which is very inconvenient for everything else. I honestly have loved every minute of reading the series thus far and am excited to see where the characters go next. Thank you, Melissa, for taking the time for this interview! To find more out about Melissa and this intriguing series, check out her site at https://www.melissajcave.com/. Become a subscriber and be the first to see the monthly newsletter and exclusive subscriber content. Don’t have your copy of the Empire of Stars novels yet? No problem. You can find Melissa’s works at Bazoo Books or on Bazoo’s own Bookshop.org site https://bookshop.org/shop/bazoobooks.

with Cassie E. Brown August 20, 2025 S.T. Gibson is the #1 Sunday Times and USA Today bestselling author of A DOWRY OF BLOOD and other gothic romances and dark fantasies. Her work explores the intersection of the sacred, the sexy, and the mystical. Saint has been nominated for a Goodreads Choice Award and British Fantasy Award, and longlisted for a British Science Fiction Award. Cassie Brown: It’s such an honor that S.T. Gibson has agreed to sit down with Bazoo Books. Your work is so dark, sexy, and fascinating… I devoured A DOWRY OF BLOOD and haven’t looked back! I just finished ASCENSION (which is Book II of The Summoner’s Circle Series), and am absolutely breathless. Thank you for your time! S.T. Gibson: Thank you so much for having me! It’s a pleasure. Cassie Brown: You’ve written in detail about ancient cities across Europe in A DOWRY OF BLOOD. In AN EDUCATION IN MALICE, the college of St. Perpetua’s itself is so lushly described as to be another character. And the Boston of EVOCATION and ASCENSION feels both modern and crowded with secrets. Is there a place you go that consistently fills your cup of writing inspiration? Where do you do your best writing? S.T. Gibson: Setting is one of strongest inspirations when it comes to writing; many of my books are inspired by places I’ve visited or lived! It’s impossible for me to grasp the shape of a story until I know when or where it’s set. Every new location has its own heartbeat and magic to me, its own stories and secrets, and travelling and learning about history is one of my favorite things, so I’m always glad when I can incorporate those experiences into stories. It’s why EVOCATION is so tied to the personality and seasonality of Boston, a beloved city where I lived after graduate school, and SAVAGE BLOOMS is inspired by the Southwestern Highlands of Scotland, specifically Arisaig Manor in county Argyll. The story was inspired by a friend and I hiking out around there looking for our own legendary cave, and it's also the region my Scottish ancestors are from. So, that setting is especially dear to me. Cassie Brown: You have given us vampires and sorcerers. But your next novel, SAVAGE BLOOMS, is set in the Highlands, and it seems we will be encountering faeries! Tell us who will we have the pleasure of encountering in SAVAGE BLOOMS! S.T. Gibson: As the first book in the trilogy, SAVAGE BLOOMS is most concerned with four young people tied together by a web of ancestral sins, faery enchantment, and burning desire that they themselves only partially understand. We follow Adam, an American golden boy with commitment issues who is still grieving the loss of his grandfather, who raised Adam on stories of a mysterious manor home in Scotland. Adam ventures out to the home - Craigmar - to find closure, and his best friend Nicola, an amateur folklorist and children’s book author, follows him out there. The pair spent all of college pining after each other and are both hoping to finally hook up on the trip, but things get complicated when they’re stranded at Craigmar by heavy rain. There they meet Eileen, the capricious and mysteriously eccentric “lord” of the manor, and her devoted groundskeeper Finley, who holds more power in his relationship with Eileen than anyone suspects. The four become embroiled in each other’s mind games - and each other’s beds - quickly, and it’s all gothic melodrama from there. There are faery creatures in and around (and under) Craigmar, inspired more heavily by pre-Roman folk practices and medieval beliefs than by naturalist Romanticism or the fae lovers of modern romantics. Which isn’t to say that they aren’t sexy or deeply tied to the land, but whatever you’re imagining, they’re probably Worse. And they take center stage as the series goes on. Cassie Brown: Books, education, and writers feature prominently within your works. You name many poets, alchemists, scholars, and magicians. Whose works do you find have influenced you most who are not fiction writers? S.T. Gibson: I’m passionate about learning and always have been. I loved college and graduate school, and if I perhaps didn’t have the diligence and focus for longer-term research projects, it was usually because I wanted to get my hands dirty doing experiential learning, or jump to exploring some other topic. Being an author is the greatest fun for me because I’m always basically doing some kind of weird extended independent research project for the sake of telling a tale. Thinkers who have heavily influenced my work so far are psychologist Carl Jung, occultists Alan Moore, Rachel Pollack, and Caroline Lovewell, folklorists Francis Young, Robert Kirk, and Richard Hutton, philosophers Byung-Chul Han and Simon Critchley, theologians Richard Rohr, Ellen F. Davis, and Saint Ignatius of Loyala, and diarist Anais Nin, just to name a few. And I’m sure I’m forgetting so many more! Cassie Brown: In ASCENSION, we see Rhys falling deeply into a tragedy of his own making. I am consistently impressed at how you write characters who often make bad choices, engage in toxic behavior, or lean into flaws, while still pulling the reader through with them on their journeys. As a writer, how do you balance flaws and challenges to make characters who are not tidy and neat yet are empathetic and compelling to read? Is that sort of writing skill natural to you, or did you cultivate it? S.T. Gibson: So many readers always tell me how much they love my messy, toxic characters (they mean this as a compliment and I take it as one) but I see the mess as part of writing characters with depth, characters with big feelings and big ambitions and big desires who swing big for what they want and sometimes miss catastrophically. I love melodrama, in opera or musicals or Greek tragedy or camp movies, so characters doing things that make you gasp is part of the pleasure of writing to me. And I think it makes them human. We all have light and dark within us; none of us are beyond participating in evil and none of us are too far gone to ever decide to do the right thing. I just love to explore the grey area friction point where those two forces meet and demand more of us. Cassie Brown: The Summoner’s Circle Series has always masterfully woven together three POV characters: Rhys, Moira, and David. You have focused a novel on David and Rhys, each of them dancing with their respective demons. Will we ever get to see Moira’s dark side? S.T. Gibson: Yes, of course! The next book in the series is Moira’s book, and I’ve been building to her “dark side of the moon arc” as I call it for a while. Sometimes, even the kindest and most giving and compassionate person is exactly so sweet because they’re trying to something their unruly desires or darker emotions like anger or ambition. And sometimes, the only way for a character as love and light as Moira to integrate into a powerful, full force of nature is to embrace her darkness. Besides, she didn’t end up married to cutthroat, Machiavellian Rhys for no reason. Sure, opposites attract, but sometimes like subconsciously attracts like! Cassie Brown: Thank you again. What a true pleasure! Bazoo Books looks forward to the upcoming release of SAVAGE BLOOMS on October 7th! S.T. Gibson: This was a blast! Thanks so much for having me, and for your thoughtful questions! Find S.T. Gibson’s work at Bazoo Books or on Bazoo’s own Bookshop.org site https://bookshop.org/shop/bazoobooks. You don’t have to go far to find all the dark, sexy, and magical things we’ve talked about here. Just support your local independent bookstore! Connect with S.T. Gibson at @stgibsonauthor or follow her Substack (https://saint.substack.com).

Maybe it’s just me but, have you noticed how certain words seem to get worn out until they barely mean anything anymore? This semantic satiation that happens with words like slammed, scandal, outrage, freedom, patriotism, woke, crisis, radical, tradition, family values, extremist, radical or even truth itself is a characteristic of propaganda. These words carry questions that go unanswered. That’s not an accident. When words get vague, they’re easier to weaponize. They can be filled with whatever meaning the speaker needs, and suddenly language stops being a tool for clarity and becomes a tool for control. This is what I mean when I say “degradation of language.” It’s not that people today are dumber or that anything is ruining language. Language has always evolved. But lately, it’s evolving in a way that strips away nuance and rewards repetition, bluntness, repetition, emotion, and repetition. It’s evolving with intent and potency. The intent more often than not, turns out to be to conceal or obfuscate the truth. The potency of any message is now higher than ever thanks to social media. It’s this generation’s Magnavox Speaker. Think about the way social media works: character limits, hashtags, memes. The simpler and punchier the phrase, the more it spreads. That’s great for a joke, but terrible for critical thinking. Critical thinking requires time and contemplation and debate. It’s an excellent environment to spread emotionally loaded language. By the time the debate is had the narrative has moved on and there’s nothing left to debate. Propagandists know this and they count on it. Using loaded language that lights up our emotions. Loaded language is the use of terms or phrases that are designed to bypass your brain and go straight to your gut, instead of more neutral terms. You don’t stop to ask, “Wait, what do you actually mean by that?” because the emotional reaction is already doing the work. Words like bureaucrat instead of elected official. Or elitist instead of expert. Illegal immigrant instead of asylum seeker. Radical instead of opponent. One rebellion’s freedom fighter is another empire’s terrorist. Right, Star Wars fans? We’ve seen this play out before. Euphemisms (less offensive synonyms for unpleasant terms) make horrors palatable. Repetition makes lies familiar. So they turn words into euphemisms and repeat them. And nostalgia is the sweetest bait of all. Whisper “things used to be better” and half the work is already done. Governments and media love to use doublespeak. They swap out harsh truths for soft language: “collateral damage” instead of “civilian deaths.” “Enhanced interrogation” instead of “torture.” “Efficiency improvements” instead of “budget cuts.” “Metadata analysis” instead of “mass spying.” “Protecting national interests” instead of “suppressing dissent.” “Resource Optimisation” instead of “exploitation.” It sounds sterile, almost clinical, but that’s the point. If the words are clean, you don’t feel the blood on them. The intention is to obscure the truth and manipulate. Perhaps the most dangerous misuse of language is dehumanization. The moment you start hearing humans described as “animals,” “aliens,” “vermin,””Illegals” or anything less than human, you should hear sirens in your head. When you hear terms like “infestation” or “savage” or if words gain negative connotation when targeted at a group of people, your sirens should scream. Again, we’ve seen this play out before. Once the words sink in, the unthinkable starts to feel normal. We’ve seen before that the language of dehumanization is often followed by violence. Don’t believe me? “Do your own research” and READ about dehumanization. In April of 1946 George Orwell published an essay titled, “Politics and the English Language.” Addressing the political volatility of the time and what he saw as the misuse of language, Orwell warns that this lack of attention to the words we use has an eroding effect on our civilization. An effect he details by writing: Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. In that he describes a self fulfilling cycle of harm that I think makes it easy to understand our current political climate. It takes a lot of energy to try to hold the flood of opinions disguised as facts to account. Most humans can’t keep up and so we put our heads down to keep from being overwhelmed by it all. But here is George Orwell, 80 years ago, with prescience, because history repeats itself, telling us how, individually, we can overcome it. ..”Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don’t know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language —and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists— is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase —some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse— into the dustbin, where it belongs.” So the good news is, you can fight it simply by noticing it. The moment you pause and ask, What does that word really mean? Why are they disguising things? You take the teeth out of the trick. When you hear slogans repeated over and over, ask yourself why? When someone leans on emotional euphemisms or words taken out of context and undefined concepts, recognize these things for what they are: an attempt to play you. Language is powerful because it shapes the way we think. Words mold our reality. Don’t let someone else define that reality for you. Don’t let someone else shape the way you think. To protect yourself all you have to do is be mindful of what you hear and repeat. If we stay sharp, demand clarity, resist vagueness, and call out the use of euphemisms, propaganda loses a lot of its power. In the end, protecting our language is protecting our freedom to think. Be careful when they come for that, though. “A word to the unwise. Torch every book. Char every page. Burn every word to ash. Ideas are incombustible. And therein lies your real fear.” - Ellen Hopkins, Burned

Laurie Halse Anderson’s words ring true now more than ever. In a world of 8.142 billion people, where technology should connect us more than ever before, we often find ourselves divided—by fear, by misunderstanding, and too often, by deliberate silence. History shows us again and again that when knowledge is restricted, societies stumble into the same mistakes, repeating old wounds under new disguises. We live in a time of immense privilege, with access to art, music, film, and literature at our fingertips—tools that nurture empathy and curiosity. Yet despite this access, entire stories are still being hidden from us, stripped away under the banner of “protection.” The fight over banned books is not simply about shelves and syllabi.It is about the preservation of truth, the protection of curiosity, and the refusal to let fear dictate our collective story. To allow censorship to stand unchallenged is to risk exchanging progress for ignorance. As a child, my mother often reminded me that you can’t control others; you can only control how you react. If something offends you, you have the power to simply turn away rather than engage. Of course, offense and actual physical harm are very different matters. Yet when we look at the criteria for banning books, it is rarely about preventing harm and almost always about avoiding discomfort. Books are most often challenged for their historical or racial themes, LGBTQ+ representation, political or religious content, sexual topics, or questions of age appropriateness. But if a book’s subject matter feels offensive to an individual, has it ever been considered that the solution could be as simple as choosing not to read it; rather than removing it from everyone else’s reach? In what follows, I will highlight some of my favorite banned books, exploring the reasons they have been challenged and what we lose when their voices are silenced. And if you’d like to judge for yourself, you can find these titles in our store. Whether to educate yourself, to satisfy your curiosity, or to decide where you stand in the conversation. 1984- George Orwell Published in 1949, Orwell spun a riveting tale warning the general public about the dangers of totalitarian government and censorship. Funny enough it was banned for those very reasons. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott Written in 1868, Little Women has been challenged time and time again due to its empowering feminine characters and its deterrence from normal gender roles. *Hot take: If reading about women choosing careers and passions makes you uncomfortable, perhaps it’s time for some self-reflection. Animal Farm- George Orwell An interesting take on communism from a farm animals point of view. This interesting story was banned because of its anti- communist undertones as well as violence. Thirteen Reasons Why- Jay Asher Asher’s novel has been banned for its exposure on mental health, bullying, and in the end suicide. Touching on topics that are very real, especially for the age group in which it was intended. The Giving Tree- Shel Silversteen What started as a cautionary children’s tale on how to treat others has been banned due to its themes of abuse and unhealthy relationships and self- sacrificing actions in order to please others. The Parables of the Sewer- Octavia Butler Set in a dystopian “future” where the characters are faced with climate change, poverty, and racism. In which the main protagonist is forced to survive and rally amongst the trials that have been thrust upon her. This book has been banned due to tough subject matter (racism, classism, and drugs) as well as its controversial take on climate change. Fahrenheit 451- Ray Bradbury The title itself is the temperature in which paper burns. This dystopian novel takes place in a futuristic society in which books are banned and burned due to provoking emotion in the readers that the government can not control. Extreme censorship that takes hold by the eradication of literature as a whole. Harry Potter- J. K Rowling This story follows a young boy who is forced to live with relatives who abused and degraded him and then gets thrown into a magical world and all of the things that that entails at the age of nine. He creates family out of friends and mentors and fights the powers of evil. This book series has been banned due to magical undertones as well as being “potentially harmful to children”. Alice in Wonderland- Lewis Carrol A familiar tale of a little girl who got curious, went down a rabbit hole, and had a wild adventure. First banned due to the hookah pipe the caterpillar used; more recently flagged due to disrespectful undertones to society. A Brave New World- Aldous Huxley A futuristic novel based on genetic engineering in order to produce a “utopian” society by streamlining generalized happiness over the individual themselves. Banned due to drug use, religious overviews, and violence. Handmades Tale- Margrett Attwood Written in 1985 this story takes place in modern times during a decline in birth rates which leads for women's rights to be stripped to the bare bones minimum for the “greater good” of overall society. Banned frequently world wide due to gender oppression, religious control, and sexual content/ violence. This book has been banned over again in school districts recently and has gained a lot of popularity due to similarities to current times. Where the Wild Things Are- Maurice Sendak A story about a child who wishes not to follow the rules so he goes to the forest, hangs out with some monsters, and eventually realizes he misses his home and structure. This book has been banned due to “encouraging disrespect to authority”, encouraging rebellion, and also been said to have dark undertones and psychological deficits on children. The Color Purple- Alice Walker An African American woman writes to God about her tragic life experiences that ends in empowerment and a strong sense of self through triumph in terrible life events. This book has been banned due to explicit violence, sexual content, racism, and religious objections. The Perks of Being a Wallflower- Stephen Chbosky Follows Charlie through his high school experience as a young boy choosing his path, dealing with his mental health, and finding friends. Challenged due to explicit drug use and language, as well as sexual undertones. Has also been banned due to its lack of positivity and for "romanticising bad mental health”. The Giver- Lois Lowry A seeming utopian society begins to produce problems very much like Huxley’s A Brave New World. Banned due to social control and rebellion to authority, as well as violence and language. The Hate U Give- Angie Thomas A young African American woman navigates the current world and its conditions. Banned due to its “negative opinion on police and its influence it may have on anti- authority” as well as violence and drug and alcohol abuse. These are a few of the many books that have been banned time and time again across the globe with the intent to “protect” the future from the negative repercussions of participating in good fiction literature. The keyword being fiction, or is it? Why is so much weight being added to these titles? To these situations that protagonists find themselves in over and over and over again, just to be silenced? What is supposed to be a form of connection, a vessel to another world or, a shoulder to cry on is weaponized and sent to the banned shelf to collect dust. It is all incredibly sad to see. Luckily there are people who care enough to keep them in stock or available to order and in a week (or two) within your reach for a lucky individual to pick up and take home and love. To see the stories as they intended. Banning books has never protected us. It has only ever left us unprepared for the world we actually live in. Pick up a banned book, read it, share it, and let it do what stories do best: remind us we are not alone.

A little dark romance just in time for the spooky season! Award winning author, Brynne Weaver, is quickly taking over the dark romance genre with lovable characters and a bit of comedy thrown in. Her newest series released book one this month.Graciously, Brynne answered a few questions exclusively for me and our indie bookstore! KL: The first novel Tourist Season in your newest trilogy, Seasons of Carnage, releases September 23rd. On tiktok, you said that Tourist Season is your favorite book you’ve written and that your connection to these characters and experiences is very deep. Would you expand on that and give us a little taste of your relationship with these characters? BW: Sure! Part of my feeling of connection comes from having lived in small towns on the east coast of Canada that are similar to Cape Carnage in many ways (minus the murder—hopefully!!). These are the kinds of places where everyone knows everyone else, and they look out for each other. There are people with quirky personalities and there are strange little local histories that you only learn when you’re accepted in a place like that. I wanted to make Cape Carnage its own character, with depth and trauma and resilience all its own. But another part of that connection I feel to Tourist Season comes with the character of Arthur, the elderly “retired” serial killer who is Harper’s best friend and mentor. Arthur has early to moderate Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and Tourist Season explores not only his struggle with the symptoms of his illness, but Harper’s caregiving responsibilities. Both my maternal grandparents developed dementia, and I was very close to them, so I had a lot of personal experience with the loss of personhood that comes with AD. I later went on to work in neuroscience clinical R&D, specializing primarily in AD. And now, my stepfather has early AD, so it continues to be part of my life. I really felt ready to tackle the topic in a book, and I wanted to show the multifaceted nature of an elderly character going through this process. I feel that modern Western society is often quick to infantilize the elderly, and having been raised with my grandparents, I’ve always felt that was morally wrong. Arthur is fierce, brilliant, funny, grumpy, loving, and most importantly, deeply human. KL: In The Ruinous Love trilogy, you enjoyed ruining some favorite foods for your readers. Orzo, I get it, cookies and cream, nice, cotton candy, sweet, pizza and beer though, that got me. Can your readers expect to have their palettes ruined more, or is there a different set of surprises we can look forward to? Any hints? BW: There are a couple of lines about hamburgers that might get to some readers! It’s really only two lines, but they’re pretty gross if you have a vivid imagination. There are maybe a couple of things that appear in the second book as well, but again, they’re not as bad! At least, not to me haha. KL: Book one of The Ruinous Love trilogy, Butcher & Blackbird has been picked up for a film adaptation. What has that been like for you? Has it impacted the way you write your upcoming novels? BW: Probably unsurprisingly, it’s so exciting to be in this process! I’m an executive producer, so I’ve been very involved in the process so far. It’s been amazing to see it slowly coming together (and one thing I’ve learned is that it takes a while as it’s truly a monumental task!). I personally am not super prescriptive in what I want to see brought through from the book to the screen. The film team are artists, and they’re creating their own art from mine, so I want to see how they interpret certain aspects of the characters and different scenes. It’s incredibly fun for me to watch it unfold as a result. It hasn’t changed anything about the way that I write, however. My style has often been described as ‘cinematic’—I have a kind of hyper-visualization of scenes, and I try to put them down onto the page with the hope that readers will be able to see what I see. I think my voice just lends itself well to adaptation as a result (at least, I hope so haha!). KL: With your love of velociraptors and alien movies, can your readers expect to see any comedic dinosaur dark romances in the future? BW: HAHA who knows?! I do think there should be more dinosaur shifter romances out there! KL: Thank you so much for your time, Brynne and your support for our indie bookstore! We are excited to have signed up for the Authorless Launch Party with bookplates for your upcoming release, Tourist Season. If you haven’t already, call, come by, or order your copy today with Bazoo Books! Goodie bags with party favors are available while supplies last! You can find out more about Brynne and her works at www.brynneweaverbooks.com .

What Dystopia? By Matt Petree Do you ever feel like the world is coming apart around you? Are you watching real and terrible events happen daily, feeling powerless? Are you exhausted by the constant barrage of bad news? Do you find it difficult to relate to family and friends who glorify that same bad news? Are you tired of being told that war is peace, that freedom is slavery and that ignorance is strength? Now, this isn’t a debate about what is and isn’t. I just want to provide a better outlook for whoever needs it. While we at Bazoo Books love to offer escapism to get away from the trials of real life, I feel that these books face the world as it is with acceptance and provide an honest track to contentment in tough times. A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers In only 147 pages Becky Chambers makes me care for and love a world, Panga, and characters Dex and Splendid Speckled Mosscap. I also love that name. She imagines and builds a world where kindness, curiosity, and care shape daily life. Through the journey of a tea monk and a robot, the story asks what it means to live well and with purpose. It’s not shy to say to us that connection and compassion can guide the way. The book is filled to the brim with warmth. It’s a cozy Sci-fi story showing that hope can be found in small acts of kindness and shared moments of vulnerability. It’s a tender vision of a future where humanity and nature learn to thrive together. For in Panga, humans have figured out how to live in balance with their natural world. And, of course, there are robots!

Local Author Daniel Meyer Interviewed By Kaela Lockard