March Is National Reading Month

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What’s on your nightside table? I always have several books I am working on. Right now, it’s Eve by WM. Paul Young, Euphoria by Lily King and Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson. I have always loved books and reading because it is fun, but the bottom line is it makes us smarter!

March is National Reading Month, and it’s important to not only grab a great book and read, but to also share those great works that have moved us with others so they can experience it for themselves.

Today, the book industry has changed so much as we go toward a more digital world that there’s been talk of a day when libraries will shut down and bookstores will be a thing of the past. I sure hope not! One positive thing that has really changed in the publishing world is the ability for anyone
to write and publish a book. With solid content and a few clicks, one can be an author who offers free e-books and print on demand.

With that said, I have had a lot of friends who have done just that. Rick Gillis has published five books with his latest Promote! Likewise, Minerva Pérez and Damali Keith, both well-known faces in our homes for years, have taken their talents as journalists to write books and share their experiences. Pérez’s I Gotta Story has been so successful that as she signs and tours, she is currently working on a second body of work entitled More Stories. Keith’s A Great Day to Live is a wild journey through domestic abuse and raises awareness to a problem often overlooked and left to fix itself. Too often, women die at the hands of those they think love them.

It probably won’t surprise you to learn that, years ago, I hired an agent and actually sent out countless queries pitching a children’s book collection and a cartoon series. Both are still neatly compiled in my drawers
unpublished as I don’t take rejection very well and wasn’t willing to self publish because the industry was so sketchy.

Today though, things are very different. I have been working on several books for a while now, and the first will come out this fall. I’ll go ahead and answer the question, “What’s the title?” with a resounding and confident, “I’m not sure yet.” When I asked Keith about the title of her next book, she smiled and said Accepting Her Life. Not me though. I am winding through some pretty traumatic stuff of my childhood, and writing those pages are like peeling back an onion and traveling through layers of my life. I know it will come to me. I can only liken it to
those new parents who come see me for their maternity portraits. I ask them, “What are you naming the baby?” Some know immediately, and others contemplate and say things like, “We are waiting to meet him or her.” I know that like birthing a baby – which by the way is what this is starting to feel like – a title will come in time.

It’s exciting that we are now in an age where we all can be authors. Each of us has stories to tell, and some have dreams that one day they could have careers like Stephen King or J.K. Rowling. Like David Sedaris, who is one of if not my favorite, along with Fannie Flagg, those books coming out of us all are little pieces of our souls. What makes for great reading is when writers are passionate about what they are trying to say. I hope that each of you will find a great book for your nightside table this month. If the idea of becoming an author has ever been a fleeting fantasy, I hope that this month you’ll not only be reading, but you’ll start writing too!

Take Care of YOU!