Tag: Thrillers

Ideas, The Latest Twist

If Barrett Book Shop Were Real

JAB

Barrett Book Shop Door is always open 

Where is Barrett Book Shop?

When I meet readers at the arts and crafts festivals, I’m frequently asked where my shop is so they can drop by to chat, browse the shelves, and purchase more books.

More and more readers have discovered and enjoy the convenience of shopping at Barrett Book Shop, online and under a canopy tent at one and two-day arts and crafts events in the spring and fall, but a physical storefront that is staffed by the Barrett Book Shop team? There’s a story for that…

The Shop that Never Closes

I love the opportunity to explain that they can buy a paperback, ebook, or audiobook from the online Barrett Book Shop anytime. Ebook and audiobook links are instantly emailed, and I’ll sign the paperbacks before we ship them. As a bonus, readers can buy the entire series or trilogies in paperback, ebook, or audiobook format at a bargain price that other retailers can’t match.

Of course, the question about the brick-and-mortar bookshop sent my imagination into overdrive, so I had to have a photo of our Barrett Book Shop. If Barrett Book Shop were physically real with an address on Main Street in a small town in Georgia, this is how I imagine it would look. Wind chimes near the front door, which is always open, and lots of books.

Inside Barrett Book Shop

Hang onto your imagination and let’s go inside.

The air smells faintly of coffee, cinnamon, and old paper; a familiar scent that whispers, “Stay awhile.” Sunlight streams in across a row of worn wood tables stacked with paperbacks, each cover promising danger, mystery, a killer or two, and the twist you never see coming.

A small sign by the door reads “Not your typical author; not your typical stories.”

Behind the counter, a tall man, whose official title is Senior Staff, adds more paperback, ebook, and audio books to a shelf labeled “The Rest of the Stories,” which is where the next book in each series lives. The brown dog at his side is the supervisor. The shelf is dedicated to readers who have just finished the first book in a series and are wondering what happens next.

The shelves along the wall are dedicated to the Judith A. Barrett Books. Each series has its own shelf: Maggie Sloan Thriller Series, Jenna Ross Thriller Series, Wren and Rascal Mystery Series, Riley Malloy Mystery Series, Donut Lady Cozy Mystery Series, and Grid Down Survival Series.

In the back is a reading nook with mismatched chairs and a lazy old black and tan lab asleep nearby. There’s a sign overhead, “You keep reading; I’ll keep writing.”

You’ll find me sitting alongside the readers with my feet propped up and a computer on my lap as I alternate furiously writing the next scene in a story and staring into space. You’ll hear the quiet rustle of turning pages, chuckles from e-book readers and audiobook listeners, and then a burst of laughter when someone discovers a new favorite line, which must be shared. And we all laugh.

But for now, Barrett Book Shop exists in pixels and imagination in a cozy corner of the internet where you can still explore the shelves and find your next great read. You can visit anytime, from anywhere, and with your favorite beverage in hand.

Browse, Shop, Enjoy

So come on in. Browse, shop, enjoy!

See what’s waiting on The Rest of the Stories shelf because the adventure doesn’t end with Book One.

And if you could spend an afternoon at Barrett Book Shop, which shelf would you visit first?

You keep reading; I’ll keep writing!

Judith signature

BarrettBookShop.com

Peanut Proud Festival Judith A. Barrett Booka
The Latest Twist

Peanut Proud Festival: A Memorable Experience

We returned to the Peanut Proud Festival in Blakely, Georgia, for the third year in a row and had even more fun. For starters, I caught up with the Peanut Guy! And yes, I did race down the street after him to ask for a photo.

It was a chilly morning; in fact, I wore two more layers under my warm jacket. Ignore those people in the background wearing shorts and short-sleeved shirts. They were probably freezing but were too proud to admit it. See what I did there?

Peanut Proud Festival Judith A. Barrett Booka

We had the same spot we had the previous two years, which was perfect for watching the parade of go-carts zipping around in circles, ancient tractors, marching bands, politicians throwing candy, and fire trucks blaring their horns. The parade set the tone of excitement for the day.

As usual, the Peanut Proud organizers had goodie bags for the vendors, which no other festival does! We brought home dry roasted peanuts, peanut butter, a peanut butter knife, and homemade peanut brittle.

Peanut Proud Faithful Reader

Here’s a thought for you: what if you found books online that you really, really loved? And what if you went to the Peanut Proud Festival in Blakely, Georgia, with your grandfather and spotted a booth with your favorite books, written by your favorite author?

“I’ve read this book, and this book, and this book…”

And when you stared at the person behind the table, you recognized the author…would you be stunned?

It was absolutely magical for both of us! I was so thrilled for her that my hand shook when I signed her books. Since she had already read the entire Grid Down Survival Series, I gave her the bonus book, Grid Down: The Beginning.

The hero of our story, however, was the patient grandfather who stood by then beamed as he opened his wallet for his favorite granddaughter’s books.

Best day ever!

The Latest Twist

My Author Year Seven: The Year I’ll be Predictable

You know when a joke is hilarious in your head? Thank you for laughing at mine.  

Boozy Book Club Nov 2024 

2024 An Exciting End to a Great Year

After a year full of exciting events, my last one was not my usual arts and crafts festival. I met the co-leaders of a local book club at an arts and crafts festival in November. They asked me if I would be interested in talking to their book club. I might have squealed a little. HECK, YEAH!

After we met at a local tavern, I talked a little and listened (and laughed) a lot. They were definitely a fun group!  One of the Bookies (is that an okay name for a Book Club member when the Book Club doesn’t have an “official” name?) said she reads the first few pages of a book, and if it doesn’t grab her, then she drops it.

Challenge Accepted. I read the first page of I Always Wanted to Be a Spy, and she stopped me before I could turn the page.

“I WANT TO READ THAT BOOK!”

I learned a new skill; I shut up.

FarmerMan was recently dubbed Labor by a vendor at an arts and crafts show. He said she wasn’t wrong, but I think Senior Staff would look better on a T-shirt. Ammi right?

Senior Staff sauntered out to his truck and returned with eight copies of I Always Wanted to Be a Spy. The eighth Bookie left early, but she had her book with her, in case you’re an editor or love numbers, and counted the Bookies in the photo. 

I track every event we attend and mark them as Do Not Return/No Fun or Must Go/Fun. Book Clubs are officially on my Must Go/Fun list.

An Exciting Beginning to 2025

Barrett Book Shop

Superhero fighting inflation

Inflation is hitting us all. It’s definitely on my Do Not Return/No Fun List, but I’m fighting it, one book at a time.

For starters, when the printing costs for paperbacks rose, the retailers and book distributors raised their prices, and thanks to that stuff-rolls-downhill effect, my costs for paperbacks went even higher. I’ve fought back. 

All the paperback books, signed by the author, are available on Barrett Book Shop with FREE SHIPPING. (US Continental) 

Another cost saving for readers (and listeners!) on Barrett Book Shop is Bundles of books. You’ll find Paperback (NEW!), Ebook, and Audiobook (NEW!) bundles. 

In fact, would you like a bargain bundle of four or more paperback, ebook, or audio books that you don’t see? Send me an email! That’s what two other readers did over the holidays, and there are two new bundles available for everyone on Barrett Book Shop! 

2025 Events

  • March 15-16 CALICO SPRING ARTS & CRAFTS, Moultrie GA
  • March 29 FIRE ANT FESTIVAL, Ashburn GA (New!)
  • April 26 GEORGIA STRAWBERRY FESTIVAL, Reynolds GA 

Paperback books are always bundled for you at all events, and custom bundles are a breeze! 

That’s it for this month, at least so far. I have plans…

The Latest Twist

It’s (Almost) Fall, Y’all

Fall is absolutely the best season of the year, with spring being a close second for arts and crafts festivals! My September goals are all about preparing for the Fall events.

One of the 8.5″x 11″ flyers I had on my table reminded readers I would sign their book(s). 

Flyers - Meet the Author 

Not bad, except no one noticed it, no matter where I put it on a table or on the book stand in front of my booth. My favorite critic said it was a great idea except it was too busy with too many font styles; it couldn’t be read from two feet away, and the clutter of books hid my face. No argument from me or FarmerMan who had noticed how surprised people were when they realized I was the author, not a random hawker of unputdownable books.

At the last event we attended in the spring, the vendor across the street from us had a chalkboard-style sandwich board sign in front of her tent. I was in awe. It was eye-catching, and FarmerMan and I watched while passersby slowed then stopped to pick up and smell the soap, then buy a bar or two. Boom!

 FarmerMan said I needed a sandwich board sign. I spent the entire summer researching styles of frames for signs. I couldn’t use the typical sidewalk-sized sign like you see in front of cafes because I’m limited by the amount of space allotted for each vendor at events. I couldn’t find a sandwich board that wasn’t too big, wouldn’t fall over with the slightest breeze, and not be so clunky that it detracted from my booth and the books.  

Sometimes my logic escapes even me. Since I couldn’t find a sandwich board I liked and found a great sale on printing 11″x17″ posters, I created and printed two posters.  

  Author Book Signing Judith A Barrett Books     Meet the Author Judith A. Barrett Books     

Talk about build it, and they will come! Two days before the posters arrived, I found a sandwich board that was 13″x 36″ with a 12″x 24″surface for the signs. I’ve ordered it, and we’ll have it next week. 

Our first arts and crafts event for fall is September 28 in Fitzgerald, Georgia, the town that’s famous for its wild chickens. If wild chickens and a Fall Festival sound interesting to you, come see me. I’ll be the one with a sandwich board in front of a tent with some random author hawking her own books.

If you can’t make it to Fitzgerald and would like a signed book, visit Barrett Book Shop and pick out a book or two. I’ll sign it, add a few goodies, and mail your book(s) to you.   https://barrettbookshop.com/collections/paperbacks.

Use this code, good for paperback orders only until September 30, for 15% off each paperback you order: SEP15.  

You keep reading; I’ll keep writing!

Signature cropped

 

 

Ideas, QuickJAB, The Latest Twist

Hog Wild About Festivals

Mr Pig Ellaville May 2024 smaller

Two Hams

The local Piggly Wiggly Super Market was a sponsor of the Ellaville Spring Festival. The Big Boss showed up to see how things were going. My tip: Never pass up the opportunity for a photo op with a Big Celebrity. Can you tell I’m in Hog Heaven?

This spring has been a great season of Arts and Crafts Festivals for us! We’ll be taking the summer off because it’s too hot in Georgia to spend an entire day out in the heat and humidity with the summer gnats.

What I’ve learned this Spring

  • There are still a lot of paperback readers that love meeting an author and buying  signed books
  • I talked to several people who enjoy audiobooks; I added the goal to have all my books in audiobooks by the end of the summer.
  • People are nice (but I already knew that)
  • Always buy lunch from a food truck
  • Vendors are a helpful bunch and are willing to share what they know
  • Size matters: I had changed the font size of many of my books to a slightly smaller font to avoid raising the price for my books (printing costs are skyrocketing!), but there are many people of all ages that need the little larger font, so I switched back to the  original size and narrowed the margins instead.
  • My feet hurt after standing all day on concrete. FarmerMan’s solution: the chef’s mat we have in the kitchen. He’s brilliant.

BONUS: Our Fall Event Schedule is starting to fill up!

If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?  ~George Carlin

QuickJAB, The Latest Twist

For Thriller Readers

Do you remember Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy?

Thrillyourereader apr 2024 42

“The Answer is 42” is a super ancient reference to Douglas Adams’ 1979 novel, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Deep Thought, the supercomputer,  was tasked to answer The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

After processing the question for over seven million years, Deep Thought revealed… The Answer is 42.

When a group of thriller authors banded together to create a promotion of FREE thriller books April 27-29, one of the (younger) authors innocently asked, HOW MANY BOOKS WILL BE FREE?

The organizer said, “The answer is 42.”

And the (ancient) authors lost it.

Care for one or forty-two free thriller books? Here’s the link! https://thrillerbooklovers.com 

Grab your book(s) now! Offer is only good from April 27-29!

QuickJAB, The Latest Twist

A Mountain of Goodness

Our beautiful Buff Orpington and Appenzeller Spitzhauben chickens were two days old when we brought them to their forever home coop from the feed store last August.

This morning, they had their first experience of two mountains of newly-mowed grass and weed clippings from the front field. Initially, they were very suspicious of the two new monstrous creatures in their run, but eventually two of the Buffs ventured close and discovered seeds, fresh green grass, and bugs. Game on!

The chickens have spent the entire day scratching and snacking at the two large piles; the mountain in the back that is much smaller than it was this morning, probably because it had the most green grass blades on top, but they are discovering more tasty grass, seeds, and bugs in the closer mountain.

I understood exactly how they felt when they first saw the two large, foreboding creatures. I tackled my first 2023 mountain when I expanded selling my books through new retailers: Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google, Apple, and a myriad of other international booksellers in addition to Amazon. As I scratched and searched through the mountain of goodness, I’ve discovered a few yummy royalties and am sharing the bounty with my newsletter readers.

The second mountain, with which I’m more wrestling than tackling, is the daunting monster of developing an online book shop, so I can sell my ebooks and paperbacks directly to readers. I’m taking small steps because it’s an entirely new world with all kinds of strange creatures to wrangle. I’m hoping Barrett Book Shop will be live by the end of February.

Have I ever told you learning is fun? It still is!

QuickJAB

The Road Less Traveled

JAB

Robert Frost ends his poem: “I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.”

We all travel different roads, don’t we? I love hearing the stories of others’ journeys and enjoy imagining the different paths we all take.

Taking the concept of the different path literally, which is very easy for a literal person like me to do, we’re checking our trail through the woods after a storm; it’s not unusual for a large limb or even an old tree to crash across the trail during one of our wicked, late summer storms. I’m always thinking of a reason to go outside on a quick writing break. Three times a day, I walk the perimeter of our field with the dogs. They look for voles and grasshoppers, and I listen to the birds and exchange trash talk with the crows. Four times a day, I check the chickens then report back with their latest antics. Be very wary if I approach you and ask if you want to see a picture of our baby chicks because a picture may be worth a thousand words, but I’ve got stories to go with the pictures. Unless, of course, you’ve set aside enough time to hear about our twelve baby chicks, then let’s go for a walk or for a coffee, and I’ll tell you a story.

If I were to write a memoir, I’d title it, “The Different Road.” It would be easy to write and edit, and it wouldn’t take long to read because it would consist of one page with five words: Our road was less traveled.

I promise I’ll stick with fiction.

You keep reading; I’ll keep writing.

Judith A. Barrett Books is 100% reader-sponsored. If you’re so inclined, buy me a cup of writer fuel that others may call coffee. Tap the cup or HERE!

QuickJAB

Bugged by Bugs

JAB

 

I love dragonflies because they eat mosquitoes. Anything that can catch a mosquito and chomp it down is a hero to me. I managed to snap a photo of a red dragonfly as she zipped past me. 

I had a day this week that was obviously a concerted attempt by bugs to terrify me, and they were successful.

Are you squeamish about bugs? Stop reading now because this is not for you.

Bugged #1

I was sweeping out our chicken coop that hasn’t had any chickens in it for almost a year. Most of my sweeping was sweeping down the walls and corners near the ceiling because the cobwebs were thick and sticky. I had my hair pushed up into a ballcap, not my writer ballcap, and I wore work gloves, but my arms were bare because it was hot. I had knocked down all the cobwebs and spiders’ eggs and was sweeping the floor when FarmerMan came into the coop to check on me. 

 

We have dropdown doors on the inside of the coop for the nest boxes that close the boxes when the chickens are too little to lay because we don’t want them to learn to roost in the boxes. FarmerMan knows how I feel about cockroaches, so he peeked behind the doors and told me he found cockroaches. He sprinkled the poultry dust that we use in the nest boxes to keep out bugs and mites. Cockroaches evidently hate poultry dust because 200 (okay, maybe it was 20) cockroaches flew out from behind the doors and LANDED ON ME. I screamed, brushed off cockroaches, and flew out of the coop, almost literally.  

Bugged #2

Later that morning, we sprayed our trees. FarmerMan had more chores that didn’t require my participation, so I went to the camper to write.

 

Toby helps with mowing by clearing the mowed area of grasshoppers that fly up, in case you wondered why I don’t help with mowing.

The camper is my favorite writing spot because I don’t have any distractions. When I went into the camper, TWO aggressive, black WASPS went in with me and buzzed me. I’m allergic to stings, but my most severe reaction was a few years ago when a black wasp stung me, and I collapsed. I had no intention of a repeat performance, so I flew out of the camper. FarmerMan killed the two, found their nest, and dispatched the nest. I was kind of over trying to write in the camper, so I went inside the farmhouse.

Bugged #3

 

After I was inside, I was certain I was over being bugged. I wrote until it was almost time for lunch, then my computer rebooted itself then came back up and rebooted itself: automatically and repeatedly. I pulled out every computer trick I knew, including trying to catch it mid-reboots, so I could run a diagnostic test or two. It finally quit rebooting and mooned me with the Blue Screen of Death. 

I called a Computer Guy, who said it sounded like a hardware failure, but they could probably recover my hard drive. FarmerMan took it to the computer shop. I discovered I have every file on the computer backed up, except for one: my Character Bible, which is a listing of  the names of all my characters (4 series with 27 books and approximately 50 different characters per series), major, secondary, and minor and their physical descriptions, relationships, and in which books they appear. I certainly hope they can recover the hard drive. I bought a new laptop, so I can write in the camper, at the coffee shop, on trips, and while I sit on the sofa with my feet up.

Meanwhile, that’s The End of my sorry tale of being Bugged by Bugs, and I’m writing.

 

Guess which series my newest book belongs in…

 

Did you know I’m a full-time author who is completely supported by my Readers?

If you buy me a cup of coffee,  I promise I’ll drink it while I’m writing at the coffee shop. 

Tap on the cup, the ko-fi link (get it?), or HERE to donate to Judith’s coffee fund.

ko-fi.com/judithawriter

QuickJAB

Bingeworthy Thriller

JAB

MAGGIE SLOAN THRILLER SERIES

When Maggie and her unusual team uncover long-hidden crimes, the desperate criminals attack, and Maggie fights for survival. It’s kill or be killed.

 

Maggie Sloan, librarian and self-taught spy and her unforgettable, unique team avenge a heart-wrenching murder in I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A SPY, BOOK 1.

In RED IS THE NEW GRAY, BOOK 2, Maggie and her team travel to Galveston Island, Texas. Maggie  persists in her pursuit to uncover the deadly crime and the vicious criminal who has escaped detection for years.

In HIDDEN BY FIRE, BOOK 3, When Maggie and her team investigate the puzzling clues that point to a long ago, unsolved theft of famous works of art, Maggie intends to discover the truth hidden behind the series of fires.

In ONE EYE ON THE KILLER, BOOK 4, Maggie uses her uncanny skills and talents to piece together the deaths of senior center residents and staff and the theft of valuable jewelry. A deadly attack on Maggie leaves her maimed, but the killer wants her dead.

What the Readers say:

A well-crafted story! If you’ve thought you have it all figured out, the story jack-knives off the page and spins you in a whole other direction. Very fulfilling. — Amazon

I love it! Taut, well plotted mystery. Beautiful turns of phrase. Laugh aloud moments. A kickass heroine. Imaginary companions who are somehow tangible. You’ll love it, too. — Amazon

Have you read some of the Maggie books? Tap the download button for the ones you have missed!