My book series (okay, it will be a book series…. As soon as the rest of the books release) is set in Charlotte, NC. I’ve had a few people ask me why I picked Charlotte. I could tell you that I chose it because it isn’t a place that many books have been set in this city, or I could tell you it was because I am originally from the area. Neither of which are true.

“When Love Finds You” actually started as a writing exercise. I was going to write a simple book about a guy meeting a girl and falling in love. The end. I wanted to work on certain writing skills. I have an entirely different series plotted, and it takes place on a little island along the Maine Coast. Which is a far cry from Charlotte, NC. But during the “exercise” an entirely new series idea attacked my brain and wouldn’t let go… and a series was born.

So I circle back, why did I choose Charlotte? My husband had recently travelled to Charlotte for an anniversary trip. He is a HUGE San Antonio Spurs fans and we went to Charlotte to see the Hornets play the Spurs. While there we also went sight-seeing. I fell in love with the city. I’ll be honest, I am a country girl at heart. I love the quiet, the mountains, and the isolation.  But as cities go, Charlotte is super nice. And since I was doing this as a writing exercise only I thought that it would be EASY (sill author) to write someplace that I had been to, aka less research.

Fun fact: The Cowfish (the place of Kendall and Aiden’s first almost date) really does exist. My husband ate the Hunka Hunka burger and loved it… although when he ordered it I thought he was insane. LOL

Hunka Hunka Burger

I am having a lot of fun incorporating more of Charlotte into book two, TAKE A CHANCE ON LOVE. So far I’ve worked in a farmers market and a quirky little bookstore. Who knows what else will get added along the way!

Anyway, that’s the how of it.

That is the question that I ask myself about my To Be Read pile almost daily.

I do my best to follow an “every other book” type of system. Every other book that I read is from my TBR pile. This helps, but doesn’t stop the problem. Because awesome-ness happens, publishing houses do amazing things like put stuff on sale for .99¢ (re: Entangled’s most recent sale) and I buy up every title I did not already own. So the TBR grows. BookBub introduces me to new authors, and I buy their backlist. It’s a great and exciting, but vicious cycle. So that’s how it happens. I think I am making a dent in it… but then, alas, I am not.

For a while I thought, well, at least they are in ebook, so I don’t have to dust the pile right? Nope. Wrong. Because then I end up falling in love with books and any book that I deem as a keeper I always buy in print (the zombie apocalypse could happen… and I may be holed up in a bunker or something with no electricity but plenty of light to read by…. Hey, it could happen, you don’t know!) And I can’t imagine not having my keepers in print if something were to happen to my digital books.  Sure, the amount of print books have reduced drastically, but also, due to the affordability of ebooks (sales and free, hello!) I end up impulse buying even more.

Hello, my name is Darcy and I love books. The more the merrier. I know I will never, ever, never ever, read my way through my entire pile. Even if I stopped buying books today I wouldn’t make it through my TBR pile if I lived to be 100. And the only thing that is not okay about this is the fact that so many awesome books will be left unread either on my shelves or on my ereader.

Combined, between my ebooks and print books I can safely say that I have over two thousand unread books, just waiting for my attention. So here is the question: Is it a pile or a mountain?