Category: Blog

Book Review: 13 County Road 666

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Amazon Cover

13 County Road 666 by C.L. McCollum

BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON

It’s the full moon again, and that means Melanie Smithson’s job just got a lot harder. She’s got a demon boss, a drunken werewolf tearing up the place, a long-time crush on her straight trans girl best friend, a toxic witch-with-benefits situation, and brand new interest in the aforementioned drunken werewolf.

But Mel’s relationship problems are hardly her worst problems.

A stranger appears on the property after a vicious attack by what looks like a rogue werewolf, but may be something even more sinister. Worse yet, one by one, Mel’s tenants turn up possessed and violent, forcing Mel to kill in order to protect herself and her other residents. Mel has to track down the one responsible for all the carnage before she risks losing one or more of the people she cares about.

But finding that killer may not save her from a monster much closer to home, and that confrontation may change Mel in ways she could never predict.

 

MY REVIEW

Full disclosure. I was on the editing team for this one, and have been talking about it ever sense – telling people to look out for it.

Being on the editing team means, basically, I got the equivalent of an ARC read. And I LOVED this book. As soon as I get discretionary income, I am going to pick a paperback for my trophy shelf … and reread it. I read it over a year ago for it (due to the length of time things take for publication) and I have been wanting to reread it ever since but couldn’t, ethically.

Let me tell you, when you want to reread a story after editing it … after seeing it at its “worst” … that is one heck of a book.

This is a FUN romp. Over 5% of all Americans live in trailers and mobile homes. In Urban Fantasy, that number would include werewolves and ghosts. Melanie Smithson, a human, has learned over time how to deal with those that live in the trailer park she manages at 13 County Road 666. But when the things that bump in the night get bumped, they expect her to keep things safe at home.

Writing Exercise: Creating Community and Connection

Erin Penn 1 Comment


ID 103740765 | Writing © Pavel Shlykov | Dreamstime.com

A favorite new topic at conventions is how writers can create a community, build third spaces, and connect with others to help keep them growing as writers. Whether this is fallout from the isolation of COVID, the continuing reduction of the size of family and places for people to create friends, or just a natural cycle of knowledge, community and connection is on everybody’s minds.

WRITING EXERCISE: Interact with a writing community.

First off, define what you (1) NEED and what you (2) WANT from a group of people involved in writing. This could be I need to learn more about writing, I need some one to encourage me in writing (daily, on weekends), I need a critique partner. I want accountability. I want someone to talk to over coffee about writing. Remember to define the difference between what is NEEDED to feed your writing and what is WANTED to feed your happiness.

Second, if you are not now part of a writing community, define the steps to find one or create one. And how you want to interact with it. Should it be in person, or social media, or zoom?

Third, if you are part of a writing community, interact with at least one of the formats this week/today. Respond to someone’s memes. Attend a convention. Check in with Con Tinual (on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/con.tinual.37 or YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/continualconvention ). Go to your favorite writers on TikTok and watch a video there. Call a writing buddy out of the blue.

Fourth, if you haven’t already, set up a weekly, monthly, or daily writing contact. Record it in Outlook or some other format to remind you.

Do as little or as much of this writing exercise as you want or can. Start the building blocks of the community you need.

My attempt:

First, I needed one more interaction with people in-person to happen regularly. I looked and looked and looked for a writing community locally. The conventions were two hours away and the people who attended them were even further. My local city had nothing. I checked at book stores and the meet-up app. While I was part of a book club, and had several other book clubs I could join, I NEEDED a writing group…In-Person. I WANTED to not be the one to organize it. I’ve created groups so many times before and didn’t want to do that yet again; partly lack of energy, but partly because I don’t know when I will be pulled away from the duty for other things and I didn’t want to have others depend on me for it. I would like to be in the position to be a learner, not a teacher, bur realize at this point of my life that is unlikely.

Second, miracle of miracles, a nearby library system started a writer’s guild. It is a ten-mile forty-minute drive, lots of lights. They are mostly older folks and not really in this professionally. But they want community and so do I. It’s been three months; no one is working to friendship outside the group, but it is much, much better than nothing.

Third, for the discord group of Falstaff (give me a shout-out in the comments if you want to join), I drop a daily meme and interact with anyone doing stuff there. Once a month, I have an open-door discord where we can hang out in Discord and talk and I also host a once a month type-in where the discord is open by we are.not.talking, but writing.

Fourth, the once-a-month Discord meetings are in the Outlook for reminders.

To one of the Discord people who asked about community creating, I wrote the following:

Silent writing time in person; twined writing over the phone, discord, or zoom; non-reading brainstorming session (MUST ALTERNATE!) – describe the issue (sometimes describing the issue helps to resolve it) – maybe not even have an issue, but describe the story can help find flaws; break time once a month just to talk and support (more for extroverts) — like the Open Door Discord we have once a month here.

Other Cool Blogs: Why Readers DNF

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Patrick Walsh, an editing youtuber, had DNF’ed (did not finish) a book very late in the reading process and thought that had to be strange. He sent out question to his circle of friends of “Why do you DNF a book? Where were you in the reading process?” And he found three areas of read-quitting, for three different reasons at each stage.

The first and easiest he mentions right off the bat is “no questions”. I’m sure I’ve done an editing rant on this; it is one of the easiest “thank you, no thank you” rejects I do when slush reading. Sure the book is beautifully written, you can see the word flow and the story evolving, but without a question to pull you in, the story will not sell through the present electronic selling method of – open sample and read until you MUST.PURCHASE.BOOK! No question(s), no pull into story, no drive to buy … the story isn’t making it out of slush.

Watch the full video for the other two beginning issues, the three middle DNF issues, and the three-late-in-the-book DNF choices.

These are many of the same reasons books are not picked up by publishers or agents. They are, after all, reading the book too.

“I Tracked Why 100 Readers Stopped Reading — The Results Shocked Me” by Patrick Walsh (April 2026)

Geeking Science: Climate Change Second Layer Worldbuilding

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Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I love me some good worldbuilding. When a writer adds magic to the world, what are the other impacts socially, technology, and emotionally? If the magic is defined that everybody can use it or only a few? If only a few can use it, do they become elite or enslaved? What does isolating specialists do to everyone else? You cannot tweak one thing and not have everything else change around it.

Witness: the cell phone. Telling children about being stuck on the side of the road waiting for someone to drive by and help…”Why didn’t you just call?” “Yeah, that area has really good reception.” Or talking about arguments about what the lyrics of a song were. “Why didn’t you look it up?” Or getting lost? “You didn’t just Quest it?” Their world is infinitely different than the previous generation. Every change changes everything.

It makes some good worldbuilding with the unintended consequences. Encyclopedias have disappeared out of houses, maps out of cars, and worry about what happened to someone showing up late diminished.

Onto climate change. The world is getting warmer, with the added impact of climate becoming less stable. Currents, air and water, are changing paths. Predictable rainfalls and snowfalls are modified. The EXTREMES of temperature mean colder winters and warmer summers, impacting the survival of wild and agriculture plants and animals. These are expected. But what other unexpected consequences are happening? Today for Geeking Science, I will cover three: opportunities for navigation clearing, bee populations, and fires interfering with deep-space astronomy.

Navigation Clearing: In 1944, the Germans scuttled boats during their retreat from Russia. Partially to deny them the resources, and partially to prevent them from traveling down the river. Over two hundred wrecks along the Danube River have impacted shipping ever since. The wrecks had been sunk to prevent boat traffic; they continue to do the job to present day. Removing them is a nightmare as unexploded munitions and other surprises are hidden in the river muck. Thanks to climate change bringing droughts, these wrecks are now visible above the water line and inspection is much easier. (Andrew)

Bee Populations: Flowering food requires bees; bees require flowering food. But if climate change disrupts when flowers bloom, putting them out of synch for when the bees come out, then the bees starve and the flowers cannot seed. Heat is sending bees further north, but bees navigate by sun position and if the sun rays are at the wrong angle, they cannot tell their hive where to find food. In addition, “moving north” means the bees are stepping into another animal’s territory which could fight back while at the same time leaving all the familiar plant further south without their primary pollinator. (Biology Insights, Zanco)

Deep Space Astronomy: How on EARTH could climate change impact deep-space astronomy? Well, the wildfires in Spain created evacuation orders for both the ESA Cebreros antenna and NASA’s Madrid Deep Space Communication Complex. The NASA complex is only one of three sites worldwide to keep continuous contact with missions operating beyond Earth’s orbit. The other two are in California and Australia. With Spain unmanned, a third of the communication was done. Backup sites are needed, but the backup will cost just as much as the original. The world is on fire and so is humanities ability to study the causes. (Cosmosrocket)

Bibliography

Biology Insights. “How Climate Change Affects Bees and Why it Matter.” 2025 July 29. Last viewed 8/11/2026. https://biologyinsights.com/how-climate-change-affects-bees-and-why-it-matters/

Cosmosrocket. “Wildfires in Spain Threaten Two Critical Deep-Space Ground Stations.” 2026 July 27. Last viewed 8/11/2026. https://www.cosmosrocket.com/en/journal/wildfires-in-spain-threaten-two-critical-deep-space-ground-stations-40mk-en

Paul, Andrew. “German WWII shipwrecks resurface in Danube River.” Popular Science. 2026 August 3. Last viewed 8/11/2026. https://www.popsci.com/technology/german-ww2-shipwrecks-danube/

Zanco, Brooke. (Ebba Widman, Tahila L. Fulton, Sarah E. Diamond, Carmen RB da Silva, Fleur Ponton). “Bee vulnerability to climate change in a shifting nutritional landscape: why sociality and life-history strategy matters.” Current Opinion in Insect Science Volume 77, October 2026. Appearing on Science Direct. Last viewed 8/11/2026. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214574526000726