Afternoon Movie & a Book

Sometime ago I wrote about how much I love to read. You can read about it here. Anyway I will read just about anything. I am however not much of a fan of the Fantasy genre. I used to be. When I was young I gobbled up every book I could find that took me to another world. I loved it so much that I even took an English class titled “Fantasy and Science Fiction Literature”. We read and dissected everything from Ray Bradbury to J.R. Tolken. We broke down the plots into symbolism and structure. I truly enjoyed that class and read many great books. I even read some of L. Ron Hubbard’s early works. You know before he invented Scientology and had Tom Cruise jumping on couches.

I have lived much of my life in books. It was my escapism, my vacation from the real world and my companion when I was sick, alone or scared. I spent many hours under a tree or by the Varsol enhanced fire reading. I enjoy reading to this day but don’t read as much Science Fiction or Fantasy. My son-in-law Pud reads about a bajillion of them a week. He is hugely into both and when Tadpole and I were organizing her books we found a treasure trove of first edition Star Trek and Isaac Asimov books.

What lead me to this story has nothing to do with any of those things. It started with a snowy day and a movie. It had been snowing for days and we were just waiting for it to calm down enough to go outside. I had seen the previews to “Marley and Me” and we have a little cinema in town where it just happened to be playing.Kahuna and I bundled up and went to the little mall that has like 4 shops. I hate the mall but this one doesn’t really qualify as a mall unless you consider one cell phone store, an outdoor store, a beauty salon and a Ben Franklin a mall. We got there a tad bit early, like 2 hours early because we, Kahuna, wanted to look at the boots and skis. We had lots of time to kill and were walking around in circles when Kahuna spotted a young girl at a folding table with books on it. Knowing I love books he drug me over to the table. Here sat a young authoress trying to sell her books.

We chatted with her for awhile and learned that she had started writing these books when she was 15 years old. Fifteen people! When I was fifteen I think I was still playing with Barbie and talking on the phone. I was still in the “do you think he likes me? I think I like him. Should I talk to him?” stage of my life and writing a book was the furthest thing on my mind. Anyway this young girl has written a series of Fantasy type books and because getting published is extremely difficult, she published her own book. That takes a lot of courage, tenacity and money.

Kahuna listened to this young woman’s story and though he is not a Fantasy genre reader I could tell he wanted to help her out. I knew that we had limited funds since neither of us had been to the bank or the ATM machine in weeks. Hey what can I say, we just don’t spend money. Anyway we went to the cinema and pre-purchased our tickets for the movie, figured up how much extra we had for popcorn and since neither of us drink soda we decided it was in our budget to purchase a book. We went back to her little table and purchased a copy of her book and chatted with her some more.

It turns out she has lived in 21 different places in her young life. She has been all over the country. She told us she lived most of her life pretty rugged with no running water or electricity. She was a quiet soft spoken girl who told me that she has always loved to read. This spurred her to write down her own stories that she imagined. I mean think about it if you have no electricity you have no television, no internet and no video games which in turns amps up your imagination. This in turn feeds your creativity and next thing you know you are writing down all these wonderful adventures. I respect and admire this young woman for her endeavor. We wished her luck and moved to a bench outside the theater to await the movie. I of course started reading.

She has done a very good job of developing her characters and her plot. I read the first 5 chapters before it was time to enter the theater and then finished the book when we got home. I would like all of you Fantasy fans and those of you who are not sure to e-mail this young lady, order her book and help a new author get started. The name of her book is “The Hiding Queen” by R.J. Gregersen. It has elves, queens, heros, heroines and love and adventure. You can order her book here: R.J.Gregersen@hotmail.com. Go on I’ll leave the light on for you.

Oh and just so you know I loved Marley and Me. I’m going to warn you though if you go see it take 47 boxes of tissues and make sure you have on waterproof mascara.