About Nancy Houser-Bluhm

Nancy Houser-Bluhm, born in Michigan and returning after living in Colorado for several years, has changed from years of rock climbing and skiing to biking, skiing, yoga-ing, breathing in nature and daily doses of writing with a variety of groups. Her most recent novel is The Nickel Loop, released July 22nd, 2024. 

She retired as a worker bee following a career in Speech-Language Pathology and having once been described as a ‘thinker’,  Nancy strives to leave readers with something to ponder and she is committed to sliding environmental issues into her engaging fictional writing.

The Nickel Loop, a time travel romance that takes place in the 1930s.

The main character, Emmeline, steps from a train in a small Colorado town into the year 1938 only to meet a man who has traveled forward from 1898. As they struggle to make sense of it all, love seems to spark, but can it endure?

Join us at Bay Books on April 22nd at 5:00 for a live interview, a time for questions and answers, and book signing of “A Nickel Loop” by Nancy Houser-Bluhm.

Bay Books Author Questions

On your nightstand now: Legacy by Shannon Falken, The Seasons of Henry’s Farm A year of food and life on a sustainable farm, A Year in Balance, Happy Place, Bended Love-Kat Caldwell

Favorite book when you were a child: Little House on the Prairie books but even more so Half Magic a YA time travel series.

Your top five authors: I don’t have many ‘favorite authors’. I rarely read more than a couple by the same author. Just not a series girl. Authors I have sought out a 2nd book because of the first?…
Peter Heller, Daniel Quinn, Carolyn Myss, Kat Caldwell, Mitch Albom

Book you’ve faked reading: American Gods. (No judgement, I’m an anomaly)

Book you’re an evangelist for: The Mists of Avalon; first real fan fiction that rewrote the Arthurian legend making women the good ‘guys’.

Book you’ve bought for the cover: A Dog’s Purpose – A Novel for Humans

Book you hid from your parents: When I say No, I Feel Guilty

Book that changed your life: Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

Favorite line from a book: “The kind of long, slow kiss reserved for beautiful beginnings for two hearts ready to get back up and try again.” (The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West)

Five books you’ll never part with: Tao of Pooh, Ishmael, The Celestine Prophecy, The Mists of Avalon, The Big Leap

Book you most want to read again for the first time: Timeline- Loved the entire book; sad the movie didn’t measure up.

What are your bookstore rituals? Enter, delight in the calm, scan, look at the gifts and cards. Wander sections such as local author, historical fiction, romance. Buy something-could be a book, a card, a journal.

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About Brittany Darga

Brittany Darga, a Northern Michigan native, received a bachelor’s degree from Western Michigan University and a master’s degree from Marquette University. She has worked in the journalism, public relations, and corporate communications fields. Her passion is writing stories and creating curious minds in children. Her first and very popular children’s book is “If a Petoskey Stone Could Talk”, illustrated by Jennifer Fronanzoni. Available at Bay Books!

Author Interview

On your nightstand now: Yellow Wife by Sadeqa Johnson. Before that it was My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie

Favorite book when you were a child: The Boxcar Children series

Your top five authors: Kristin Hannah, Kristin Harmel, Diane Chamberlain, Mark Sullivan, Ellen Marie Wiseman. As you can tell, I absolutely love historical fiction!

Book you’ve faked reading: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I read it in high school and just couldn’t relate to it at all. Now that I’m an adult, it would probably speak to me more.

Book you’re an evangelist for: American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

Book you’ve bought for the cover: Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah and this is one of my all-time favorites!

Book you hid from your parents: I don’t think I ever did! My parents were very open to reading whatever.

Book that changed your life: So many! Not Without My Daughter by Betty Mahmoody; The Girls by Abigail Pesta; and Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson to name a few.

Favorite line from a book: There are none in particular that stick out to me. I’m not really a “one-liner” person. I love a well-written, thoughtful story as a whole.

Five books you’ll never part with: These are either books I read as a child that hold special memories, or books I currently read to my kids. The Story of Hellen Keller, Charlotte’s Web, My Dog Spot by Jack Levin, Ella’s Night Lights by Lucy Fleming, and a special copy of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Book you most want to read again for the first time: ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. To be a child again and experience that magic!

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About Donald Lystra

Born in 1945, Donald  Lystra was raised in the cities, towns, suburbs  and countryside of Michigan. As a young man he worked as an auto plant worker, a door-to-door salesman, a dishwasher, a housepainter, and a shipyard engineer. He eventually settled into a career as a consulting electrical engineer, though in his fifties he began to write fiction in a serious way. His work has been widely praised for the strong emotion captured in its quiet understated prose. He is the recipient of two gold medals from the Midwest Independent Publishers Association, and he was twice named a Michigan Notable Book author by the Library of Michigan. Lystra has received creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony. He and his wife divide their time between a farm in northern Michigan and a small town on the ocean side of Florida.

Donald Lystra Interview

On your nightstand now: at the top of a high stack is Dear Life by Alice Munro

Favorite book when you were a child: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle

Your top five authors: Richard Ford, Marilynne Robinson, early Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, Ross MacDonald

Book you’ve faked reading: Mrs. Dolloway by Virginia Wolfe. (Ashamed to say I couldn’t make it past the first page.)

Book you’re an evangelist for: The Sportswriter by Richard Ford

Book you’ve bought for the cover: The Goodbye Look by Ross MacDonald 

Book you hid from your parents: The Story of O

Book that changed your life: Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Favorite line from a book: “In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains,” from A Farewell to Arms

Five books you’ll never part with: The Sportswriter, Homemaking, The Sun Also Rises, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Walden

Book you most want to read again for the first time: Grapes of Wrath

More Author’s Corner

Author’s Corner

Reading With… Nancy Houser-Bluhm

About Nancy Houser-Bluhm Nancy Houser-Bluhm, born in Michigan and returning after living in Colorado for several years, has changed from years of rock climbing and skiing to biking, skiing, yoga-ing, breathing in nature and daily doses of writing with a variety of groups. Her most recent novel is The Nickel Loop, released […]

Author’s Corner

Reading with… Brittany Darga

About Brittany Darga Brittany Darga, a Northern Michigan native, received a bachelor’s degree from Western Michigan University and a master’s degree from Marquette University. She has worked in the journalism, public relations, and corporate communications fields. Her passion is writing stories and creating curious minds in children. Her first and […]

Author’s Corner

Reading with… Donald Lystra

About Donald Lystra Born in 1945, Donald  Lystra was raised in the cities, towns, suburbs  and countryside of Michigan. As a young man he worked as an auto plant worker, a door-to-door salesman, a dishwasher, a housepainter, and a shipyard engineer. He eventually settled into a career as a consulting […]

Author’s Corner

Reading with Maryann Lesert, author of “Land Marks”Reading with

About Maryann Lesert Maryann Lesert writes about people and place in equal measure. Her first novel, Base Ten (Feminist Press, 2009) followed a scientist’s quest for self among Lake Michigan’s forested dunes and the stars. Land Marks (She Writes, 2024) is based on two years of boots-on-well-sites research on fracking in Michigan’s state […]

Author’s Corner

Reading with… Karen Dionne

About Karen Dionne Karen Dionne, is an American writer, whose internationally bestselling 2017 psychological suspense novel The Marsh King’s Daughter was selected by Library Journal as one of the best thrillers of the year and has since been made into a movie, entitled the same. After meeting her husband,  They moved with their […]

Author’s Corner

Reading with… Mollie Moody

About Mollie Moody This November 10th at 5:00, we’ll be welcoming Mollie Moody, daughter of WWII veteran Captain Robert A. Maynard, as she is interviewed regarding her father’s recently published WWII diary, A Father’s Arms: Close to Death, Across Hitler’s Path—and Home at Last. Mollie was born in Ohio but […]

About Maryann Lesert

Maryann Lesert writes about people and place in equal measure. Her first novel, Base Ten (Feminist Press, 2009) followed a scientist’s quest for self among Lake Michigan’s forested dunes and the stars. Land Marks (She Writes, 2024) is based on two years of boots-on-well-sites research on fracking in Michigan’s state forests. Her plays have been published by New Issues and in Smith & Kraus’s Best Ten Minute series. Her articles have appeared in EcoWatch and In These Times, and she is a regular presenter on art and activism. Maryann lives and teaches writing in west Michigan, where she spends as much time as possible outdoors.

On your nightstand now: 

Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture by Kyle Chayka

Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit (a book I’ve recently been re-reading)

The Lost Journals of Sacajewea, A Novel by Debra Magpie Earling

Favorite book when you were a child: 

A book that was never written.

My mother, who told vivid stories but never wrote beyond the many journals she started, told a story called “Herkimer the Dragon,” about a child who befriended a young, lonely dragon (secretly). The dragon hid in a seaside cave and was, basically, afraid of its own shadow. My mother may have borrowed the name from a 1950’s Detroit television show that featured Jingles the Clown and a puppet named Herkimer the Dragon, but she created a long-running epic of tales for me and my younger sister. Together, the two characters – young child and young dragon – encouraged and empowered each other to face their fears and to get through difficult circumstances. The theme was clear: these two were better together. I think they had to say goodbye, in the end, when Herkimer was in danger of being discovered by adults, who wouldn’t understand the young dragon.

Your top five authors: 

I’ll name my top five women authors (from the U.S.) who write about nature and science and our relationships with the more-than-human world. These women could be considered “ecofeminists,” though Hogan and Kimmerer write from a non-hierarchal, Indigenous way of living and knowing. I admire the way each of these authors shares research, science, and a deeply poetic sense of place. 

Book you’ve faked reading:  

In college I fell in love with playwriting, and I remember faking knowledge of the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder, which has been called one of the greatest plays ever written. I was embarrassed that I dared to call myself a playwright when I didn’t know the story, so I stammered some nonsense about Emily, a main character, and was immediately outed by my fellow college students—a group of actor friends. I learned my lesson. 

I haven’t totally faked a reading since then, but as an English professor, I read a lot of student work during the schoolyear, and I catch up during the summers. So, when my writer friends who aren’t teaching mention their latest reads, I will admit that when one of them says, “You’ve probably read…” and leaves me room for a non-response, I’m not above nodding or simply listening along in a noncommittal way.  

Book you’re an evangelist for: 

A recent book on eco-grief that has been very helpful to me and my students is Generation Dread, Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis (2022) by Britt Wray. Wray allows readers the space to experience eco-grief, while coaching them toward meaningful healing and responses to an uncertain future. She brings in a lot of great thinkers and doers, too. 

Book you’ve bought for the cover:

I’ve been writing in “Decomposition” journals for several years. I find that certain covers call to me at certain times: a cabin in the woods, butterflies flitting over a golden yellow cover, animals hidden among line drawings of plants and trees, and my favorite recent offering – manatees having tea.

Book you hid from your parents:

I didn’t actually hide Steven King’s The Stand from my parents when I read it at age 15, but I hid away in my room and read the tome, admiring King’s characters and how vivid they became in my mind, over a long weekend. King’s depiction of women sometimes had me scoffing, but he seemed to be most in-tune with the characters with the least stable morals, and that not-all-good and not-all-bad look at his characters was intriguing. 

Book that changed your life: 

Forgive me for “stretching” this question, but as a person with a strong connection to the natural world, grief and joy are often intertwined, so I’m going to offer one title that had me grieving and another that gave me hope. 

The World in 2050, Four Forces Shaping Civilizations Northern Future (2010) by geoscientist Laurence Smith. This book about climate change and a future of climate migrations devastated me for about three months, so much so that students in my Environmental Literature classes noticed a change in my demeanor.  

A Paradise Built in Hell, by Rebecca Solnit. This book gave me “Hope in the Dark” (word play on another one of Solnit’s books) that most people are, as I have always suspected, actually good at heart. When we remain connected to our places and our communities, our first response in tragic moments is to figure out how we can help. 

Favorite line from a book: 

I love the Ents in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, forest beings that are said to be the oldest living creatures in Middle Earth. This quote is from Treebeard, the elder Ent in Tolkien’s The Two Towers: 

“You must understand, young hobbit. It takes a long time to say anything in Old Entish. And we never say anything … unless it is worth taking a long time to say.”

Five books you’ll never part with: 

The Dream of the Earth by Thomas Berry

Cosmos by Carl Sagan (or any “universe explained” title by Hawkins)

Power by Linda Hogan

Beloved by Toni Morrison 

A Language Older Than Words by Derrick Jensen

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, after watching the Atwood-inspired series and reading Atwood’s follow-up novel The Testaments. I feel like I need to hear Atwood’s “voice” again. Why? Because some days we seem a few decisions away from slipping into an authoritarian, patriarchal society bent on controlling women and Earth, and I think Atwood has known that since she did her research for the novel. 

About Karen Dionne

Karen Dionne, is an American writer, whose internationally bestselling 2017 psychological suspense novel The Marsh King’s Daughter was selected by Library Journal as one of the best thrillers of the year and has since been made into a movie, entitled the same. After meeting her husband,  They moved with their infant daughter to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula as part of the back-to-the-land movement in 1974 .Her most recent novel, The Wicked Sister, is just as bone chilling thrilling and we are excited to have her join us at Bay Books on November 17th at 5:00 for a live interview, Q & A and book signing. If you own the book already, be sure to bring it with you. If you aren’t lucky enough to own it yet, Bay Books has it on their shelves!

Author Interview

On your nightstand now: Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

Favorite book when you were a child: The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner

Your top five authors: Only five? In that case, and in no particular order, I love everything by Tea
Obreht, Ken Follett, Joseph Finder, Taylor Adams, and Erica Ferencik

Book you’ve faked reading: None – life is too short!

Book you’re an evangelist for: Girls in the Stilt House by Kelly Mustian

Book you’ve bought for the cover: Dancing with the Tiger by Lili Wright. I’ve still never read the
book (so many books, so little time!), but the cover is absolutely gorgeous.

Book you hid from your parents: I never hid any books from my parents, but perhaps they should
have hidden some from me! By the time I was twelve, I’d read everything on our basement
bookshelves including many I shouldn’t have. Robert Ruark’s Uhuru and James Michener’s Hawaii
comes to mind . . .

Book that changed your life: The Genesis Code by John Case (John and Carolyn Hougan) is the
book that made me think, “I want to do this.” Years later I met John and Carolyn at a conference,
and they were so kind and encouraging, I came away thinking, “I can do this.”

Favorite line from a book: “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the
broken places.” — A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

Five books you’ll never part with: I have dozens of signed copies of books by writer friends who
helped and inspired me that I’ll never part with, including Finn by Jon Clinch, Water for Elephants by
Sara Gruen, The Genesis Code by John Case, Killer Instinct by Joseph Finder, and One Shot by
Lee Child.

Book you most want to read again for the first time: My own! I’d love to be able to experience my
novels as a reader does without knowing what they’re about or what’s going to happen.

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About Mollie Moody

This November 10th at 5:00, we’ll be welcoming Mollie Moody, daughter of WWII veteran Captain Robert A. Maynard, as she is interviewed regarding her father’s recently published WWII diary, A Father’s Arms: Close to Death, Across Hitler’s Path—and Home at Last. Mollie was born in Ohio but grew up in Michigan, where she studied as an art major and brought these talents to illustrating the children’s book Legend of the Cherry Queens. She is honored to have her father’s memoirs of WWII published and we’re honored to have the opportunity to talk with her in celebration of Veteran’s Day. Welcome Mollie!

Author Interview

On your nightstand now: The Way of the Heart by Henri J.M. Bowen
Favorite book when you were a child: Little House on the Prairie
Your top five authors: Leon Kris, James Michener, Nelson DeMille, Maeve Binchey, and Pearl Buck.Book you’ve faked reading: Never faked a book
Book you’re an evangelist for: Mere Christianity
Book you’ve bought for the cover: One of Nora Roberts books
Book you hid from your parents: “The Fear of Flying” by Erica Jong
Book that changed your life: Mere Christianity.
Favorite line from a book: “Give up the Illusion of being in control.” (“Jesus Always” by Sarah Young)
Five books you’ll never part with: Bible, Mere Christianity, Exodus, A Father’s Arms, The Lord’s Prayer
Book you most want to read again for the first time: I do not read books twice.

More Books

About Chris G. Thelen

After working 35 years as a writer in advertising and public relations, Chris is now writing novels and blogging. He lives in Frankfort, Michigan and enjoys kayaking, biking, hiking and cross-country skiing. He holds a B.A. in Journalism from Michigan State University and a Master’s Degree from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. He has been married to his wife Joanne for 41 years. The couple has two children.

On your nightstand now:
All Creatures Great and Small.

Favorite book when you were a child:
Harry the Dirty Dog. My older sister worked at a library. The book was being discarded so she brought it home to me. It was the first book I owned.

Your top five authors:
I don’t have a list of top authors, but there are books I’ve read because of the author. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Malcolm Gladwell, John Steinbeck, and Timothy Keller are a few that come to mind.

Book you’ve faked reading:
My family is a big fan of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I never read the books, but thanks to the movies, I pretend I read the books and converse with them about the characters and storyline.

Book you’re an evangelist for: Islands of Deception of course.

Book you’ve bought for the cover:
The Aviators by Winston Groom. The dramatic cover photo of a bomber intrigued me and then the list of aviators listed on the cover caught my attention.

Book you hid from your parents:
The books I read growing up were checked out from the school library or purchased through Scholastic book sales. There was nothing to hide.

Book that changed your life:
I read The Camera Never Blinks in high school. That book influenced my decision to major in broadcasting my first year of college. I eventually switched my major to journalism and news writing.

Favorite line from a book:
“And so, it begins.” Okay, so that’s a line from a “Lord of the Rings” movie, but I pretend I read it in the book.

Five books you’ll never part with:
When my wife and I moved to Frankfort, we downsized. While I did get rid of a lot of books, I must admit there are a lot more than five books that I’m finding hard to part with. A sampling of a few that remain on my shelf: Team of Rivals, Dune, Robert Kennedy and His Times, Prodigal God, Steve Jobs, First Love, and The Heart. I could go on, but that’s more than five.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman.

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