A Walk in the Park.
I started writing this book a few years ago and I’m ready to show it to the world! Let me introduce to you, A Walk in the Park.
This book is the first in a new collection of stories called, The Midwater Series. In this series, I invite you to step onto the brick streets of the charming town of Midwater, Nebraska. It’s a small, peaceful, rural village where everyone knows your name. The main character of this book is Allison Carter. In her twenties, Allison is coming of age, settling into adulthood with a positive attitude and a true desire to be responsible, kind to others, and to promote her small town; she works at the tourism office, so it’s her job. She loves her job and the people she works with, yet there is something ill afoot in her perfect little town. The beautiful brick streets are threatened to be torn up and although Allison isn’t normally one to voice her opinion, she feels adamant that her community’s heritage mustn’t simply be thrown away. A city meeting gives her the opportunity to make her thoughts known, but instead of convincing people to save the bricks, she comes head-to-head with a new man in town, who she, unfortunately, finds terribly attractive, even though he seems to be the enemy.
This series is what is called a cozy mystery. The classification of “Cozy” promises that the book will have no gruesome violence, excessive swearing, or sex, although a little smooching, a “damn” or “hell” here and there, and the discovery of a dead body could certainly occur. But you won’t be reading descriptions of things that would make you blush, cringe, or force you to wade through gutter language. Cozy mysteries are just right for people who want to read a good plot line without fifty shades of gray or having to read every detail of someone’s head being blown off.
This series has endearing characters you’ll learn to love and look forward to visiting with each chapter. I’ve created a world where each book will be told by different people in the small town, letting you get a peek inside different characters’ lives. For instance, Allison will be the main character in Book I, but there will be a different main character in Book II.
My hope is that if you’re from a small town, you’ll recognize people who will seem very familiar to you. If you’re not from a small town, you’ll get an understanding of what it’s like to live in rural America.
I am debuting this book on Amazon as a Kindle Vella book. What is THAT? Don’t be scared! It’s not hard and you can do this! You just go to the link I have at the end of this blog post and download the first chapter, or as they call it, “episode.” The first three episodes are completely free to read. After that, you can download 500 tokens to use to read the rest of the book. It should get you through the majority, if not the entire book. If not, tokens are around a penny each and it takes around 20 to purchase an episode. Yes, it’s a strange new way to read a book, but it’s something new, so I thought I’d try it. It will allow me to see what readers think of the story as people can post comments for each episode. It may even give me ideas about how to write the next book, or even to make changes in upcoming episodes. It’s meant to be an interactive author/reader experience.
I hope you’ll read at least the first three chapters and by late spring, I’ll publish the whole book and you’ll be able to purchase it on Amazon as you would any other book.
I really enjoy this book and the characters. I think you will, too. Just follow this link: A Walk in the Park. You’ll see this picture. Download the 1st episode and enjoy! I have the first episode available, and the 2nd episode will come out on February 2nd. (Don’t forget to give the book a thumbs up when you get to this link.)
Amazon’s Kindle Vella.
Share the book or this blog post with your reading friends to help this book be a success! Thank you.
G. M. Barlean 