Kav's Best Reads

Okay, I have to give you my BIG news first and I have mixed feelings about it. Scared but excited too because I don’t do change gracefully. 🙂 I’M MOVING! Just got approved for an apartment downtown in a lovely historical neighbourhood. Close to a farmer’s market, two bookstores, the best vegan bakery in town, multiple parks within walking distance and a lake close by! Oh…and twenty minutes to a library. Do I have my priorities straight or what?

The downside is that I’m leaving the wee little house that has been my home for 22 years…and my garden.SOB! My new apartment does have a balcony but it’s north facing so I’ll have to educate myself about shade gardening. No more veggie gardening for me unless I can find an allotment garden close by. I thought I’d pot up a few perennials and see how they do – a hosta, coral bells and wild geranium so I have a little piece of my gardening heart with me when I go. 😦

My move in date is July 1 which couldn’t be worse because that’s Canada Day and the busiest and most expensive day of the year to move in Canada apparently. So the next two months will be spent packing and…gasp…weeding through my physical books because they all can’t go with me. The apartment is much smaller than my house. Unless I get creative and I have my thinking cap on.

Anyway, all this to say that there will likely be some bumps in the road as far as blogging goes. Partly because I’ll be busy getting the garden into shape for the last time (sob) and packing and cleaning and all that fun stuff so I won’t be able to physically read as many books as I usually do. I’ll likely listen more so it’s a good thing I went wild during that audible sale! 🙂 And then, when we get closer to my move date I’ll likely have to stop blogging for a week or two until I get internet connected at the new place. I’m playing all that by ear so stay tuned for more announcements to come.

Okay, now for some Bookish Conversation!

Since I’m concentrating on reading more Independently published books this year and you all have helped me so much by introducing me to indie authors in recent months, I decided to proclaim every fourth Sunday:

Indie Author Day!

We will celebrate by sharing indie books we’ve read, highlight new indie books coming out and wrestle with the conundrum of how to discover new-to-me indie authors and how to tell if a book is independently published in the first place.

Here’s my definition of indie publishing:

• the author pays all production costs
• the author hires and pays for his/her own editor
• the author hires and pays for cover art to be made
• or, the author creates his/her own cover art
• the author performs the technical magic I don’t understand to make the book appear on Amazon as an ebook or a print book (surprise, that costs too)
• the author pays for a voice performer if they decide to add an audio edition
• Basically, the author writes the book and then does the work of a legion of professionals in order to get it out into the world all at their own cost
• Oh, and the author does all the marketing too.

Personally, I think these hard working Independently published authors deserve their very own day every month. So we’re going to give it to them. Celebrate their dedication to their craft and help sell some books!

How to tell if a book is independently published by the author:

You think this would be the easy part, but it’s not. It used to be. Ten years ago you could look at the copyright info and it would list the author’s name under publisher, or CreateSpace Amazon (or something like that) so, easy peasy. No publisher listed meant independently published.

But then authors started getting creative (poor things can’t help it, it’s in their DNA) and they started making up cutesy little publisher names to use instead of their own. So Mabel Bowser who publishes cozy dog mysteries might decide to use ‘Barking Up the Wrong Tree Press’ and unsuspecting readers looking for an indie book might skim right on by once they see the book was published by a press. Only it wasn’t really. So confusing!

So what’s a reader to do? I have no idea, other than to google search the ‘publisher’ to see if it’s legit. I might find nothing listed under ‘Barking Up the Wrong Tree Press’ and therefore can correctly assume the book is independently published. Or, I might find a link to ‘Barking Up the Wrong Tree Press’ but notice that it only lists the author’s books. That’s another indie clue. Clear as mud, right?!

If you have any suggestions on how to recognize indie published books, do share in the comments. And that brings us to today’s Giveaway…drum roll, please, because it’s time to share the book love with our Christian Fiction Independently Published Authors:

Giveaway Opportunity:

US – paperback or ebook (check to make sure the book you choose has the edition you want, some seem to only be in ebook format.)

Canada – paperback, ebook or audible (if available) and also confirm that the book comes int he format you want

International – ebook if you have a US kindle account

You suggest an independently published Christian Fiction (or Clean Romance) already in print and leave the title and author in a comment and you will be entered in the giveaway. If your name comes up, then that’s the book you will win

Draw will be held and winner announced on Saturday May 2 2026

I first heard about TSTL in the context of my cozy mystery reading but I’m sure it can be applied to other genres as well. If you are unfamiliar with this intialism it stands for: Too Stupid To Live and refers to those characters who do something so foolish that it’s surprising they are alive by the end of the story.

Examples:

The classic horror film heroine who is being stalked by the serial basement hatchet killer and then one dark and stormy night she hears a thud in the basement and thinks, “Oh, I wonder what could be making that noise? I guess I should go downstairs into the dark and creepy basement and check it out.”

Or a cozy mystery heroine who finds an obviously important, pertinent clue and thinks, “I wonder if I should take this to the police? Maybe I’ll keep it for awhile instead just because (no valid reason)” And, of course, not handing it over to the police stalls the investigation, leaving the heroine with ample time to rush headlong into danger.

Or how about a contemporary romance where the hero and heroine break up in the third act over some ridiculous misunderstanding that could easily be resolved if only one of them started a conversation. Instead they both decide what the other is thinking/feeling and react to those misconceptions even though they have been toe-curling and swoony all the way up to that point.

And then there’s the stubborn suspense heroine who will make no concession in her regular schedule even though a pyschopath is gunning for her, putting everyone around her in danger, including the law enforcement/body guards who are trying to keep her alive.

Anyway, you get the idea. I find it so frustrating to be totally engaged in a really good story when it’s suddenly ruined by a TSTL moment. It feels like a contrived plot device to drive the narrative forward and I feel let down, sometimes to the point of DNFing. Which sounds harsh but it depends on my mood and how committed I have become to the characters in the book.

Realistically, I know that TSTL moments happen to all of us so I really shouldn’t be criticizing fictional characters (though I would never go down into the basement on a dark and stormy night with a serial killer on the loose…like, never! Duh!) However, TSTL moments can sneak up on a girl and here’s one of my epic ones:

Twenty years ago (yes, I’m that old.) I’d just moved into my wee little house and had dreams of creating a wild cottage garden. I read books, I haunted flower shops and nurseries and one day I discovered a hydroponics store in a rather run down building right where the ‘good’ neighbourhood starting easing into the ‘bad’. I was curious, excited to expand my ever growing gardening knowledge so I didn’t think twice about climbing the crumbling cement steps to check it out.

The place smelled funny and didn’t look like any kind of plant store I’d be in before. Pretty grimy, unorganized and there wasn’t a customer or sales clerk in sight though I was surprised to be greeted enthusiastically by two Rottweilers. I loved on the dogs until a guy showed up, as disheveled as the store. He was shocked to find me on the floor playing with the dogs.

“Whoa, those are guard dogs, lady.” He said that with a straight face as the two dogs were both trying to crawl into my lap, their stubby tails wagging. I laughed and asked him what they were supposed to be guarding. He got all flustered and called to someone in the back. This huge biker dude comes stomping up the stairs, chains jangling on his leather jacket, stops dead when he sees me and the dogs. “Ah, they’re not supposed to do that. They’re guard dogs.”

Long story short, we chatted a bit, played with the dogs, I asked them questions about the store which they were cagey about, but they did sell me a tub of bat guano which I swear by to this day as a gardening elixir. I visited the store pretty regularly, mostly to visit the dogs, always hoping they had added to the store inventory but the place always seemed in the setting up stages and there were never any other customers. Lots of noise going on in the basement though. Got to know the spaced out clerk a bit. Even gave him my name and number for when he got some gardening thing in, can’t remember what it was but he was enthusiastic.

And then one day there came a pounding on my door and two police officers were on my doorstep. Apparently they were part of a drug task force and had just busted up a Hell’s Angel’s grow op and were checking all known ties of which, apparently, I was one. Yep, that ‘store’ was a cover for a big drug operation (not just mariuana) and they found my name and number. I might have blathered on a bit too long about bat guano and they might have done a cursory check of my house and asked some pointed questions about my drug use (not!) and if I was involved in distribution!!!! They could tell pretty quickly that I was, well, TSTL but harmless enough.

Sigh. I’ve never found bat guano anywhere else. And I don’t know what happened to the dogs, though, apparently they were guard dogs after all under the ‘right’ circumstances.

Time for Conversation and a Giveaway!

Do you have TSTL triggers in your fiction? Situations or actions that make you roll your eyes and want to chuck the book across the room in frustration? Like me, do you have a true life TSTL moment you’d care to share?

Share your thoughts in a comment and you’ll be entered in a draw for:

Draw will be held and winner announced on Saturday April 25 2026