Barnes & Noble, the largest bookstore chain in the U.S., is closing a third of its stores over the next decade, they say.

In 2011, Borders Bookstores shut down all their stores.

Up here in Canada we haven't heard any mutterings—or not many, anyway—about closing our Chapters Bookstores, but can it be far off?

I find this whole scenario interesting. People are furious, sad, or even celebrating, but no one is without an opinion. I was sad at first. Nostalgic, really. Then I started to think about it a little deeper.

Yes, I think that when these huge box stores shut down, there will be fewer books sold. And as an author, that's obviously not good. I think the books bought in these stores are mostly impulse buys, not planned ones. That is neither here nor there, but here's the thing. When I go to Chapters—and I love to spend a couple of hours there, just wandering, perusing, latte in hand—I never leave with just one book. I grab the one I came for (if I came with one in mind), then … well, it's like popcorn. I can't stop. Everything's so pretty and exciting and colourful and inviting! How can I just walk away and leave all those books? What if I miss the ultimate adventure of a lifetime?

But let's look at another story.

… there was a little bookstore near my home. Actually, it wasn't all that near. It required that the whole family get into the car and drive, then look for a parking spot (because there weren't any big parking lots around there), feed the meter, etc. But all that effort was worthwhile, because we were out doing more than just buying a book or two. It was an event, almost.

Beside that store was a little hardware store and a Chinese grocery store (where they had a "pet" snapping turtle in their basement who was over 75 years old! They let me visit it when I was small), and an adorable little store that sold loads of special cheese and a bunch of little figurines that I collected. A couple of doors down from them was a children's clothing store. There was even a butcher on that little street. I loved when we went out to visit those places. We always knew the owners—sometimes even their families. They were always happy to see us, whether or not we bought anything. We usually did, though. We understood it was their business, their livelihood, and we were more than happy to be a part of their success—and in return we got both good products and personalized service.

Then one day a major sports store took over half a block. We'd never seen anything like it, so we popped in … and left with our arms full of bags, even though we really hadn't needed anything to do with sports. They were such good deals! There was so much choice! It was just so darn exciting to be in there, with the young, energized staff, the flashy promotional messages, the funky music blaring through the speakers. Just made you want to dance while you handed over your Visa card. Over time, they started selling ladies' clothing as well, so we stopped visiting the other store. They'd be fine without us. Or so we thought.

It wasn't long before a huge grocery store moved into the neighbourhood. Again—what choice! Everything laid out like presents at Christmas … and ooh! look at those things we've never eaten before! We need to buy some of those! One of the saddest memories I have as a child was finding out that our cheese/figurine shop had gone out of business about a year after that.

I hardly noticed the changeover when Chapters opened, and it was only in passing that I realized our little bookstore was gone. I was first in line, Visa in hand. And I haven't stopped shopping there since—except for when I actually take the time to go out and visit the rare independent bookstore or when I shhh! shop online. Even then, I always try to buy my books online from Chapters, not Amazon. Just on principal. But really, isn't Amazon just a bigger box store eating all the smaller box stores? And we used to celebrate these massive stores when they arrived.

Now times are a-changing. The E-book revolution has changed the world, yes, but more than that, it was the internet. 

Before now, we had no idea of the millions of books out there. Actually, I doubt there really were millions of books out there until the internet, when it suddenly became possible for anyone at all to write and sell books. But back then, one of the more relaxing, enjoyable things for me was stopping in at the little bookstore, browsing, then buying just the right book. Not being handed promotional postcards, being shuffled towards the gift section, or having tables of $5 books slid in my path. Just finding something that would take me away.

So what will happen now? It's not as if books are going to go away. You'll always be able to find the #1 Bestselling Amazon Book! or the Free Book of the Day! online. You'll still be welcome at any library, and your friends will always lend you books. But oh, those hours of lost time, wandering the bookstore aisles, picking up books on impulse because of the pretty covers and managing to grab a candle or bowl for a friend's birthday at the same time … How will we survive?

I moved to a small town five years ago, so the internet has become a very easy way for me to pick up books. We have no small store here. I have to go half an hour before I can find a Chapters store. So yes, I'm starting to increase my online shopping. And I do love when a book arrives in the mail. 

But what if--and, like I said, there's no talk of this at all, so don't go around saying "Genevieve said so! I'm just hypothesizing—Chapters closed down. What would I do? Yes, I could drive to the closest independent bookstore, once I found out where that was. Yes, I could continue to shop online. 

But what if … the shutting down of box stores meant the rebirth of independent stores? What if my little town all of a sudden offered a tiny bookstore? What if Future Shop closed and little electronics stores opened instead, and we got to know the actual owner, not just a hired hand? What if big grocery chains had to downsize? Well, we all have to eat. Maybe if the giants aren't there to take all the money, those quaint little grocery stores with the handwritten price labels could come back. Maybe we could even attend farmers' markets and end up eating better, supporting local.

The #1 thing box stores and the internet give us, in my opinion, is convenience. We're spoiled. It'd take some time, some adjustments, but personally, I don't think I'd be all that sad if those massive stores were gone.

The world is shrinking, and we're all fitting quietly and easily into those narrowing borders. Despite all the talk we do about reading labels and avoiding GMOs, I believe I served a Mexican tomato in our salad last night because it's just too darn cold to grow them here in January, and we wanted a tomato! *stomp stomp stomp* But really, couldn't I have waited? Couldn't I have eaten something else? Couldn't I have stopped being spoiled and accepted what I was given without complaints?

As an author, I will sell fewer books if the big stores are gone. I know that. I'm sure a lot of people pick up a copy of one of my books completely on impulse, because of the pretty cover or the intriguing blurb on the cover. Not because the shop has propped it up as a "featured book" at the front counter. Because, in case you didn't know this, all the books you see featured at any of the big bookstores are being featured not because the bookstores choose to do it, but because the publishers have put big bucks into those displays. Can you really see everyone racing out to buy books like 50 Shades or Hunger Games if they hadn't been stacked to the ceiling everywhere you turned? Without some great marketing miracle, you'll never see a new or local author featured that way (except at a signing). We can't afford to pay for that.

Big Box bookstores closed a ton of small bookstores. The internet is closing a bunch of those Big Box bookstores. I don't think it means fewer people are reading—in fact, I think because of ebooks and the ease of internet shopping, the opposite is happening.

I'd miss the hours of wandering through bookstore aisles, reading samples. But I love the idea that these closings might be opportunities for new doors to open. Independent stores. They won't be nearly as hard to find if this happens, I'm betting. And I'm all for that.

Check out these previously posted features, because you can enter to win these books all the way until December 21!
- December 3 - Joanna Bourne
- December 4 - Pamela Callow
- December 5 - MK McClintock
- December 6 - Steve Vernon
- December 7 - Sophie Perinot
And don't forget to enter to win the GRAND PRIZES at the bottom of the page!

Summary:

A passion for humanity drives Rona Altrows’s Key In Lock. The people in these entertaining yet poignant stories wrestle with self-doubt, ethical dilemmas, money problems, health issues. Yet somehow they survive and sometimes they even thrive. Key In Lock also marks the return of Irene, beloved manager-in-all-but-name of Marjorie’s Lingerie introduced in A Run On Hose. This time Irene takes on issues as diverse as dating later in life, the effect of childlessness on a person’s psyche, stress incontinence, and the love rituals of banana slugs. Irene also brings us tales of her youth in the days of the polio epidemic and Vincent Price horror movies.

Excerpt:

A man needs a certain amount of intercourse. You can stay at the rubbing-pressing-groping stage for only so long. You may be able to stretch it out for months, which is how it’s been going with Raymond and me. When you are in your sixties, like we are, you like to extend everything out, move at a more relaxed pace, as though that will convince the Grim Reaper not to rush.

It’s not as if he’s said so in words, but through the way he acts, Raymond has shown me how he would like the scene to unfold; he’ll be ready any time I am. And to be fair to him, I can’t hold out forever. I mean, he has been patient, a gentleman—no pushing or insisting. But at some point, no matter how sweet a guy is, or how old, only penetration will do. I’m in a jam now. He’s great company, a fine man, and easy on the eyes, but I’ll never love him. What’s more—and this is the part that scares me right now—there’s something I don’t want him to know. If we keep seeing each other, there’s a chance he’ll learn my secret; if we go all the way, he’ll find out for sure. Can I live with that?

So I’ve given myself a deadline. Tonight. We’re going out to a movie, and then he’ll drive me back to my apartment for a drink. By then, I’ll have made up my mind.
Right now I’m still doing the back and forth. We humans would probably be better off if we were built more like banana slugs. In her university classes, my young friend Julie learns how animals go about their business. She knows I am curious and tells me the juiciest stuff, like the slugs’ story. She talks about how they court for hours, which is like years for them, and how they snack on each other’s slime before sex. But to me, the best part is the location of the genitals, not too far from the head. With that anatomy, I figure there’s a good chance that they use their heads when it comes to deciding about sex. Not like us. All that distance between the brain and the other place leads to nothing but trouble. Bad matches, heartache, aggravation—I’ll bet those are not major problems among the slugs.

And there’s another thing slugs have got on us—mucus. In slug sex, there is an exchange of mucus, which is what I will need more of if I am going to take that next step with Raymond. Not mucus exactly, but lubricant.

Author:

Rona Altrows was born and raised in Montreal and lives in Calgary, Canada. She is the author of two books of short stories, A Run On Hose and Key in Lock and is currently writing a book of flash fiction. She has received the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize and the Brenda Strathern Prize for her fiction and has been a finalist for the Howard O'Hagan Award for Short Fiction. Altrows's work has appeared in many Canadian and American magazines and ezines. With Naomi K. Lewis, she is co-editor of Shy, an anthology in which 39 writers reflect on their own shyness. Shy will be publshed in fall, 2013 by the University of Alberta Press.

#1 GRAND PRIZE:

Kaki Warner's acclaimed trilogy: THE RUNAWAY BRIDES—three strong-willed women headed West in search of new lives. But when their train is stranded in a dying Colorado mining town, they get more than they bargained for…and find love where they least expect it.

"Lightning paced, innovative, topical … and most of all, frightening." 
-- James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author

Check out these previously posted features, because you can enter to win these books all the way until December 21!
- December 3 - Joanna Bourne

Summary:

Book #3 of the Kate Lange thriller series

She is obsessed with tattoos.
He is obsessed with her.

When a body is found on the outskirts of Halifax, rumors run wild about the victim’s identity. But tattoo artist Kenzie Sloane knows exactly who she is. They share a tattoo… and a decade-old secret.

Lawyer Kate Lange remembers Kenzie Sloane. The former wild child was part of the same crowd that attracted her little sister, Imogen, before her death. Now Kenzie needs her help. And Kate needs answers.

But there are others who know about the tattoo and its history. And one of them is watching Kenzie’s every move, waiting for the perfect moment to fulfill a dark promise that had been inked in her skin.

Excerpt:

Flushed with triumph at finding sarracenia purpurea -- also known as the purple pitcher plant – Rebecca Chen crouched above the surprisingly clear and shallow water of the peat bog.  Bag this last plant and then I’m outta here.

It was a pretty plant, and yet, according to her notes from her biology class, it was a predator, capturing its food in its petals. She plunged her hand into the muck, her fingers scrabbling down the plant’s stem, searching for the root ball. But the stem curved sideways under the dense thicket of hummock. She exhaled, her forehead prickling with sweat. 
Further up the slope and beyond the cliffs, lay the outer mouth of the Halifax Harbour. Fog hung over the horizon, a ghostly waterfall hovering over the deep blue of the ocean, but the cooling breeze carrying its afterdamp did not reach her.

With a grunt, she pushed her hand deep into the underside of the hummock. Her fingers hit a rock. The stem appeared to be wrapped around it. 

Frig. She sat back on her heels. The peat bogs stretched around her, serene blue pools dotting scrubby hummocks of low-lying shrubs. She had never even been out to Chebucto Head until her biology teacher assigned this lab, and she cursed him when she had missed the class trip and had to find her own way to the peat bogs. After a twenty-five minute drive, she found the road to the headland. It was flanked by a protected nature reserve, but it eventually opened to a cove dotted with houses. They huddled, higgly-piggly, on the granite bedrock cliffs, as if holding their collective breath. 

The peat bogs were a twenty-minute hike across the headlands. “Just find the old bunkers,” her teacher had told her. “There are two. The bogs are down the slope.  You can’t miss them.”
True enough, after twenty minutes of following a scraggly, muddy path, she spotted the bunkers on a crest of the cliff.  There were two: one facing the water, the other offset behind it.  The bunkers had been built eighty years ago as the outer battery to defend Halifax Harbour. The lower bunker perched on a slope, its flat, sharp roof appearing crooked against the sky. Tall shrubs and a handful of stunted evergreens grew around the squat concrete boxes. Rather than softening the forbidding exterior of the wartime posts, the dense thicket of shrubs and the lush branches of the evergreens served to emphasize their brutal purpose. 
Even in the May sunshine, they were creepy. She veered around them, and headed down hill to the peat bogs. They gleamed in the sun, the area a large, open marsh with a pleasant piney scent. It hadn’t take much time to find the samples for her biology lab.

Until now.

Last lab of the school year, last lab of high school, Rebecca. That knowledge lent extra urgency to her scrabbling. She wrapped her fingers around the rock anchoring what she now viewed as “her” plant. She yanked the rock-and-plant specimen from under the hummock, falling back on her heels. She staggered to her feet, the prize clutched in her hand.
Her butt was soaked from her efforts. Figures.

She unraveled the roots clinging to the rock.  

Her fingers froze.

Beneath the plant debris and muck, the rock appeared calcified. And smooth.

God. It felt suspiciously like a bone.

It’s not a bone, Rebecca.

It was a bone. Her heart pounding, Rebecca tore away the roots of the plant. The smooth curve and calcified exterior were obvious now.

It’s just an animal’s bone. Probably a deer.

She peered at the hummock, searching for the hole she had tunneled through the underside.
Her breath caught in her throat.

She couldn’t move.

Couldn’t blink.

Couldn’t scream.

All she could do was stare at the two bulging colorless eyes that pinned her in their malevolent gaze. Then she saw the hooked nose, the gaping smile, the hair floating from the head. Everything tinted the same brownish color.
Horror in sepia wash.

Her brain, at first, couldn’t process what she saw. Finally, her lungs forced her breath out in a gasp. And her brain interpreted the image.

The bulging eyes belonged to a mask. A rubber Halloween mask that someone had thrown into the bog. Her insides liquefied with a warm rush of relief. Then she remembered the cold, smooth length of bone in her palm.

It hadn’t been just a mask she had dislodged. The mask had been on a dead body.

She was holding proof of it.

A scream built in her throat.

The dead body was under the hummock. Under her.

Oh, dear Lord. She was holding a dead body!

She threw the bone into the water, so forcefully that water splashed onto her torso, her face. And into her mouth.  An earthy, decayed taste swelled the tasted buds on her tongue. Bog water.

The water had a putrefied body in it.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. With the hand that was filthy with muck.

Muck that contained a dead body.

Her stomach heaved. Vomit flecked her rain boots.

She began to scream.

Excerpt from TATTOOED (MIRA Books, June 2012)
Copyright 2012 by Pamela Callow

Author:

A member of the Nova Scotia bar, Pamela Callow is the internationally published author of the Kate Lange legal thriller series for MIRA Books. RT Book Reviews hailed series lead Kate Lange as a, “…standout character.” DAMAGED, the debut novel of her series, was chosen by Levy Home Entertainment as a “Need to Read” Pick, with Top Ten Bestseller placement in retail stores across North America. 

Callow’s critically-acclaimed series has been compared to works by Robin Cook, Tess Gerritsen and John Grisham. She is also a contributor to the International Thriller Writers' bestselling THRILLER 3: LOVE IS MURDER anthology, edited by New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown.
Prior to making writing a career, Pamela Callow worked as a Strategic Services manager for international consulting firm Accenture. She lives in Nova Scotia, along with her husband, two children and a pug. She loves to go for walks (unlike her dog), and drink coffee. Visit www.pamelacallow.com to learn more about her books.

#1 GRAND PRIZE:

Kaki Warner's acclaimed trilogy: THE RUNAWAY BRIDES—three strong-willed women headed West in search of new lives. But when their train is stranded in a dying Colorado mining town, they get more than they bargained for…and find love where they least expect it.

GRAND PRIZE #2:

"Lightning paced, innovative, topical … and most of all, frightening." 
-- James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author

Originally written as guest blog for In The Next Room book reviews on May 4 2012


There are almost 90,000 words in “Sound of the Heart”. Isn’t that wild? This blog post is less than 500. And yet as I was writing, there were so many more. I had to edit it back. So it kind of begs the question: Where do all those words come from?

Ah. I’m so glad you asked. Because that’s something I’d like to know as well!

It’s probably easiest to start with the physical. When I write, I head into my quiet office (which my husband assembled for me) with a cup of tea. I light a couple of candles … then stare at my computer screen.

Tour from left:

• Usually I have tea there, but we’re having a bit of a heat wave lately, so I’m going with ice water. No, that is not vodka.
  
  
• Basket of pens, most of which don’t work.
  
  
• Hershey kisses. Yeah, so?
  
  
• Candles (at least one). I like these new dangling square ones I picked up a few weeks ago, but they’re expensive so I only burn them on special occasions.
  
  
• Computer (this is the third laptop I’ve owned since 2007. I’m a big Mac believer now).
  
  
• Cat carving which my beloved husband made for me. I’m a dog person, but he says I collect so much stuff (yes, I’m disorganized) that he calls me a Cat Lady. I just like it because he made it.
  

The entire wall in front of me is a huge world map, which I sometimes use to distract me when I need something new and entertaining in my head. Like when I see “Farafangana” in Madagascar and wonder what kind of stuff goes on there. You know. Very important stuff.

Right. Now onto the writing part. Like I said, I stare at the computer screen, and I kind of wait. I think, in a way, I meditate, though there are no ohms or soothing imaginings going on in my world.

Actually, my dog, Murphy, occasionally does ohms. Kind of like a “Poor me, what a hard life I lead” kind of a comment.

Then the words start flowing, and it’s absolute magic. Sometimes the pictures are so clear in my head, I feel like I’m channelling the stories. Words literally fly out of my fingers. It’s kind of interesting, because a few people have suggested I carry around a tape recorder kind of thing so I can just speak into it and type out stories later, but I’ve found I can’t do that. The words get stuck in my brain. So I have to type. Back in 1990 I bought one of those “Typing Tutor” programmes, then taught myself to type when I was applying for a job as a marketing assistant at a top advertising agency in Toronto. Seriously. In two weeks I went from 0 to 85 wpm. I have no idea how quickly I type now, but my fingers move more quickly than my brain most of the time. I can’t carry on much of a conversation with my voice, but if I could type it I’d be just fine!

So the question remains: where do all those words come from? 

And the answer is still: “I don’t know.” 

My favourite part about writing Historical Fiction is that no one can tell me what I’m writing didn’t actually happen. After all, no one alive today was alive then (unless you’re talking about reincarnation or something). The stories come to me from somewhere I’ve never been, giving me words I rarely use in my day to day life. Where do they come from? What if I am actually channelling them? What if the words come straight from the stories themselves because … maybe, just maybe, they really happened.