Secret Cellar Interior Illustrations Redone

I decided that the interior illustrations for the Dubois Files children's mysteries need to be done over in ink rather than remain as pencil sketches. The actual result of the printed pencil sketches is that they are pale and muddy. This decision was made before I published The Bigg Boss, so those were done in ink on the first time around.

Here are the new pictures for The Secret Cellar. They will also be larger. I decided that the horizontal ones would be turned so you have to turn the book sideways to see them. This isn't my favorite plan, but in a 5.25 x 8" book the pictures have to be very small if you don't do this. I'd rather have the pictures larger.

I've left them full size here so you can click on the picture and see them better.

Picture #1- Laszlo's father drives the truck over a railroad bridge, but a train is coming! Jimmie and Laszlo hadn't planned on that much excitement.



Picture #2- Jimmie and Cora dig up a treasure in the crawlspace under Jimmie's house.



Picture #3- Laszlo uses the post-hole digger to make a foundation hole for their clubhouse.


Picture #4- The secret cellar- but it doesn't seem to be the hiding place for the papers the kids are trying to find. I made a major change to this picture by adding Ruby, who is tired and discouraged. She sits down in the corner to rest.



There are currently four books in the series, and I'm working on the fifth. Age range 8-11; chapter books. All are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or directly from me. Ebook formats also on Smashwords, Kobo and iBooks.

Visit Books Leaving Footprints for synopses and samples.

original pencil illustrations

North Country Quest - Cover

After almost 9 years of working on North Country Quest, it's ready to go to the printer! The writing was sporadic for about 7 years, as I branched off into fiction. In 2018 I began to get more serious. In 2019, it's essentially all I've done. Even so, I didn't manage to finish until 2020. But here we are.

This book is even better than North Country Cache. The writing is better. There are more pictures. Hopefully, the printing quality of the cover will be better (long unhappy story that I have to relive every time I look at a copy of NCC).


Today, I'm sharing the cover of the new volume. The design is the same as for the first one, but with pictures that go with these stories.

The image above is the front and spine. Here is the back cover with recommendations by Frida Waara, Polar Adventurer, and Jennifer Pharr Davis, National Geographic Adventurer of the Year.

The book will be first available, publicly, at the Quiet Adventure Symposium in East Lansing, MI, on February 29.




See Too Fast at Car Speed for a sample of the first chapter.

Accidentally Yours Available as Ebook

Accidentally Yours, a collection of short stories, poems, and essays, by Joan H. Young is now available as an eBook from Amazon and Smashwords. It should appear on Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iBooks, and Overdrive in just a few days. The paperback edition will also be ready in a few days.

The volume contains 30 poems, 16 short stories (several of which are micro-fiction), and 9 non-fiction essays. Thematically, they are all over the map. That will keep you from getting bored. It also gives you a glimpse into my chaotic mind. Enter if you dare. All this for $3.99 in the eBook format!

Diana Kathryn Wolfe-Plopa, founder of Pages Promotions, LLC, and an author in her own right, says, "This collection of short stories, essays, and poetry feels like a Literary Advent Calendar. Each time I turned the page, I was given a little gift of story, perspective, and art. It was impossible to take it slowly. Remarkable in this writing is the flash fiction pieces sprinkled throughout. The art of writing a complete story in just a few short lines is a difficult skill to master. Joan does it here with an acumen and comfort that reveals the true nature of her outstanding writing gifts. The balance between shorter and longer pieces creates a natural ebb and flow to the writing."

And Jean Davis, author of speculative fiction writes, "A delightful collection of poetry and prose that will make you gasp, laugh out loud, and fondly appreciate days gone by."

After a frustrating day of formatting woes (I usually don't have many problems, but the issues probably stemmed from culling the pieces from many different files, created in various versions of several different software packages), both major platforms (Amazon and Smashwords) have approved the files, and they look pretty clean. I don't see a bunch of formatting oddities in the previews.

You can find Accidentally Yours at Amazon and Smashwords.

Accidentally Yours Anthology

One of my goals for the year was to bring out an anthology of my varied short writings-- stories, essays and poems. However, the amount of effort required to finish North Country Quest has put all of my other goals into a tail spin.

Getting a collection of my short works together really doesn't require a lot of effort. Everything is written. Some final editing is needed, compiling things and maybe adding a little text about some of the stories, but most of the work is simply formatting the book.

So, this week, I got my act together and tried to come up with a title for the book. I read some articles about how long an anthology should be. While researching that, I learned that anthologies are often given the same title as the lead story.

I'm not usually one to ask what other people think about titles and cover art. In this case, it's probably a good thing I did. I came up with six possible titles, and my first choice only got one other vote, from an engineering friend.

The overwhelming choice of the people who participated was Accidentally Yours, which is also the first story. I'd really like to have this title and cover be appealing enough to attract people to buy it, so I'm taking the advice I've received.

One person said, "Accidentally Yours reflects a mystery of a first encounter." That said a lot to me. The collection will be eclectic, to say the least. Themes are all over the map-- very much like my brain. That first story is set on the frozen North Sea, so I went looking for a royalty-free photo I could use and put together a possible cover. What you see above is only tweaked a bit from that first effort. I like it! Others seem to like it!

This could be a winner. One author friend of mine says her short story collection is her best selling book. Maybe I can have this ready to go in a month... in time for Christmas. That's not out of the question, without taking away from the time I'm working on North Country Quest.

So far, it includes flash fiction, literary fiction, entertaining short stories, essays, and quite a few poems. The list includes, at this point, nine stories, five essays, 14 poems and a few two-sentence stories. I'm aiming for about 200 pages. Formatting has begun.

If you helped in the title decision, thank you!

3288 Review

3288 Review

This summer, I had a short story accepted to the literary magazine, 3288 Review. My complementary copy arrived today. Sweet stuff.

The story is titled, "The Valley."

I wish I could tell you this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship, but sadly, the publisher of the magazine has decided they can't make a financial go of the project and this is the last issue.

The Valley by Joan H. Young

Should I...?

I stand or sit there for a few hours, an author friend on each side of me (pictured above, mystery writer Don Levin, whose books you should try).

They sell a few. I have sold nothing. The truth is, no one is selling very much.

I'm tormented by questions. Should I be trying harder to lose weight so I'd look better? Should I not care about losing weight so I'd be mainstream plump like so many others? Should I have gone to an event closer to home? Should I be writing my technothriller faster? Should I have focused on the children's picture book this year instead of North Country Quest? Should my table be arranged differently?

The event is beautifully organized, but somehow an audience has failed to materialize. We are "networking;" we are enjoying a really nice box lunch; we are buying a few books from each other. But we are not selling books to new readers.

Diana Plopa, the organizer, has segments where authors who requested a time slot can read from their books. The pieces will be put together into a program for Cable Network TV (Detroit market). So that is good!


I discussed marketing strategies with Don on one side and Bob on the other. We are all struggling to figure out what works.

Does it matter if I sit or stand--one might look disengaged while the other might look too aggressive? Should I have dressed nicer? Should I have dressed more casually? Should I have spent more hours writing so I'd have a new book in the Anastasia Raven series.

Well, events sometimes work and sometimes they don't. With two hours to go and still no book sold, it became a game. Can I make it to the end without selling a single book? But almost at closing I did sell one. So I lost the game, but I'll take it.

One has to accept that there are going to be days that are financial losses, but I can't continue to suffer them so regularly. Here's hoping the next one will be a big seller!

Pentwater Arts and Crafts Fair

This, right here, is the future of what I do.



Yesterday and today I was at the Pentwater (MI) Arts and Crafts Fair. The weather was marginal yesterday and downright icky today. Nevertheless, I did OK on sales. More on that later.

On Saturday, three of us shared the booth. We've done this before, and we work well together. Jean owns the sandwich board sign and it is great- it lets people know what we are about.



There was live music by Awesome Distraction of Manistee. They were quite good. Not so loud they blow out your brains, but our booth was very close to the stage, so it made it really difficult to talk to people. This is one of my pet peeves, and yet, when the music was playing people were definitely more upbeat and engaged. Don't know quite how to solve that conundrum. I'm sure it wasn't too loud for those a little farther away.



At one point they warned us that the Coast Guard helicopter was going to be flying low overhead as part of a demonstration so people wouldn't be alarmed.



Today, it was just Jean and me, well.. and Bitzi, who helped bring people to our table.


I met two new (to me) authors, so that was great.

Now for the nitty-gritty. I'm not throwing in the towel yet, but I need to do better than I did this weekend. Alternatively, I can do more than two shows a month, which will result in less writing time, and/or less volunteer time. It will definitely make me crabbier.

I can keep this up at this level for a while, but eventually there has to be an upturn in sales, or I will need to add another source of income.

I can live frugally, but I do need to have a car and a place to live and food, and a few minimum other things. I get tired of having to forego a lot of activities because I can't afford the gas or whatever. I know, I do go to a number of things, but I have to pick and choose carefully, often camp or sleep in my car, take my own food, etc, etc. I'm not whining, I'm just being honest. After a lifetime of having pretty much nothing, I'm used to it, but I'm not going to let the finances get to the point where I can't afford to do anything at all other than eat and drive.

We shall see. No major decisions until after this year. I'm trying to move from small potatoes to medium potatoes. Maybe that's just a slow transition.