Adventures with Meps 'n' Barry » strangers have the best candy

The Autographed E-Book

meps — Sun, 28 Jun 2015 19:26:21 +0000

For readers who must save a tree,
Thereâ€™s now an e-Book, and itâ€™s free,
It’s a little bit newer,
And the drawings are fewer,
But you’ll find that it still sounds like me.

The Kindle Edition of Strangers Have the Best Candy is now available! The download is free today, June 28. Since I cannot autograph your eBook, I’m offering an autographed Happy Spot to anyone who downloads the eBook before July 10! Put your request in a comment on this post, and I’ll contact you for the mailing address.

Although this edition doesn’t have the full quota of illustrations, the best ones are included. Frank Lloyd Bear and I have also included a teaser for our next book, The Joyful Bear.

Candy. Crushes. Competition.

meps — Sat, 28 Mar 2015 23:55:10 +0000

I am glad to have worldwide acclaim,
In the self-published, dog-eat-dog game,
It’s my title, thank god,
That is prize-winning odd,
Not my writing, my looks, or my name.

The BBC ran a teaser with “Candy crushes competition” as the headline

I don’t know whether to be excited or embarrassed.

WhenÂ The Bookseller announced that Strangers Have the Best Candy has received the Diagram Award for the Oddest Book Title of the Year, they said there was no cash award, just a “passable bottle of claret” awaiting me in London.Â However, their news release said that agents and publishers “are tipping it to be the ‘hot book’ at the forthcoming London Book Fair.” Is this an example of British humour (sic), or are they serious?

What’ll ya have?

meps — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 23:20:05 +0000

When I opened the trunk, I went â€œEek!
â€œI can’t keep my books dry with this leak!â€
So I sold that orange car,
With its built-in “wet-bar,”
As a feature — no charge for “unique!”

Meps’ Book: Strangers Have the Best Candy

meps — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 23:59:49 +0000

I WROTE A BOOK! I WROTE A BOOK! I WROTE A BOOK!
(and it’s on Amazon!)

Strangers Have the Best Candy by Margaret Meps Schulte

OK, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, I will try to calm down. This is like having a baby. I’m hyperventilating.

Ever since I started blogging in 2003, my followers have been asking, “When are you going to publish a book?” I stalled, because I didn’t know what the book should be about. I didn’t want to write a travelogue or a navel-gazing memoir.

Finally, I figured it out! Strangers Have the Best Candy, which is available on Amazon today, is about my chance encounters with strangers — all the laughing, crying, topless, boozing, and completely adorable people I have befriended in my travels. It’s their book. I just wrote it.

Meps in Summit, South Dakota

Since these encounters are completely spontaneous, there aren’t a lot of photographs. I had to sit down and illustrate it myself, with 125 pen-and-ink drawings that I completed in the St. Marys, Georgia public library. I didn’t even know I could do that until I tried.

The stories are amazing and hilarious, and the illustrations will make you grin. But it has its thoughtful moments, and there’s a pretty big message between the covers: Strangers have wonderful gifts for us, if we take the time to talk to them.

Maybe the Strangers Have the Best Candy message will go viral, and then you can say you knew about it and followed the blog before it was famous! Thank you for staying with me for all these years, and for encouraging me to say what’s important to my heart.

I would love it if you would reshare this post with your friends in email and Facebook, and go out to the Amazon page and give me a review. I will reward you with hugs the next time I see you, because I think hugs are the best candy of all.

Tim’s duffel bag

(you did see the link above, to my Amazon page, right? If not, here it is again!)

Amazon’s Powers That Be

meps — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 19:10:13 +0000

At Amazon, some geek must say,
“We’ll publish her book on this day,”
But til then, I wait,
In a trembling state,
To unveil before first of May.

Here, Amazon…don’t you want this candy?

I was ready to publish Strangers Have the Best Candy this morning, so I hit the big, scary “APPROVE” button on CreateSpace. Much to my surprise, the book doesn’t get populated to Amazon’s servers immediately! Argh!

The waiting is agony, but it should only be a couple of days at most.