Current mood: adventurous

I just sent an email to author Neil S. Plakcy about Mahu Fire, the third installment of his Mahu book series featuring gay Honolulu cop Kimo Kanapa’aka. I love these books and I am having trouble lifting my nose out of this one to finish my own work!

And I have good reason to stay focused. I just contracted with eXtasy books to write a new Kimo & Lopaka book - another fantasy game story (approx 7,500 words) to be published July 1.

This one has the provocative title Rent Boy. Don’t blame me, blame my muse Kimo who pokes me in the ear as I am writing other books my patient publisher is waiting for...Kimo demands being the center of my universe and this tantalizing little tale pours out of me as my two tarot series books sit in impatient silence insisting on their own equal time.

The thing about books and characters is that writers and readers have their own special relationships with them. I realized that as I read Mr. Plakcy’s note back to me when I asked him a question about his second book, Mahu Surfer. He began his response with, "The way I view that scene is..." 

It is a sort of channeling we do, a literary pipeline we enter as writers and hopefully readers get swept up on the wave with us. It’s for this very reason I am thrilled to be an active participant in my local library’s Edible Book Tea tomorrow. We run this tea party every year and local children, adults and even professional bakers enter edible versions of their favorite books.

These are usually cakes of course, but there are cheese entries, bread, fruit, you name it. we had two Martinis on a silver cocktail tray served one year for Breakfast At Tiffany’s which annoyed the children since they weren’t allowed to sample it. The crowd you see, gets to sample everything. My favorites are the ones where a lot of thought has gone into the creation, for example Green Eggs And Ham last year, was exactly that. A tower of green eggs and ham in the shape of the Cat’s hat... 

The Harry Potter cakes are always intricate and yummy and I am always intrigued to see children making such amazing creations from books they love. I never cease to be enthralled that kids today love books and that they have parents who encourage that love. The kids who come to our library are simply fantastic.

I am happy a new generation of book junkies are being nurtured and fed on books. Not movies and MP3s and Game Boys. But books. And that they gobble them up the way I did when I was a kid and the way I still do when I snap up a copy of a book I have been coveting.

I wrote to Neil S. Plakcy telling him I went to great lengths to track down his new book and drove 12 miles to buy it. In an era when most book stores are now encouraging pack and ship purchases, I wanted to walk into a bookstore, pay for the book and start devouring it the second I left.

And tomorrow, there’s gonna be more yummy books to read and enjoy. Eat. Love. Read. Repeat.

Aloha oe,

A.J.