New Book Excerpt: DORM RATS, A Neighborlee, Ohio book

Our first two weeks in England, we pretty much stayed in London and the suburbs. We hit a bookstore every day, sometimes two in a day. Two kinds of bookstores. In the first, Mum and Pop dug through musty, dusty, shadowy old bookstores for research books, sending twenty-pound crates home, in care of Angela and Divine's Emporium every other day. The second type was newer, sometimes glitzy shops, where our folks did booksignings or talked to reader groups. Depending on the store, and if they were searching or talking, Harry and I had assigned tasks, to help search or to help set up for the talk and signing, or to run errands. Honestly we preferred the last option, because it left us free to explore the village and find something fun to do in the afternoon or evening when our folks were free.

Harry caught on to the whole weird money system on the first day, so he was in charge of making purchases and deciding if something was worth the price being asked, or if we should move on to another shop. I learned the bus routes and how to read village maps and route markers, and had a good knack for deciding if we should rent bikes or hike or take a cab or bus to our destination. I was good with maps. Maybe it had something to do with my ability to kinda-sorta fly, like built-in radar or something. Admittedly, it helped to be able to raise myself up fifty or a hundred feet in the air and get a bird's-eye view of the terrain, orient myself on the roads and fields and spy out landmarks to compare to the map.


Our sixth day in England, Mum and Pop had a booksigning followed by a hike to the other end of the village for a private luncheon with an investigative society. The village and historical society must be left nameless because of security reasons. Not because that particular village was a trouble spot, but because of the people who might want to cause trouble years later. To prevent them following Mum and Pop's route and kind of triangulating to identify other places where we stopped, people they talked to and things-that-shall-be-left-unspoken that they did. Don't like that restriction? Take it up with Col. Hayward.