"Hey," I Exclaimed, "That Was My Idea!"

I read an author on Substack who said she was tired of publishers not paying her, and she was going to begin writing a series of small books.

 "Hey," I exclaimed, "that was my idea!"

Writing small books, I mean.

Well, there is room for both of us, but isn't it odd when an idea is floating around and more than one person gets it? I heard that when Albert Lamorisse wrote The Red Balloon, to his dismay, another author was also presenting a book by the same title for publication. Both were published. (A title is one thing not copyrightable.) Lamorisse's book, made into a movie, won an Academy Award. (His young son plays the protagonist.)

Lamorisse was a filmmaker and was praised for his photography, yet while filming another movie, his helicopter crashed, killing all aboard. His grown-up son and wife completed the movie and released it posthumously. (I keep finding dead authors, darn it.)

I love novels, and I usually have one running all the time, but reading them takes time, and time is a precious commodity. You can read a short story in one sitting, and it is more fun than a bunch of real-life How-tos. Besides, I want to get to the questions and answers quickly.  People have asked these same questions for eons, and will continue to do so for eons to come, however, they are fun to ask, and the answers are as different as the person asking them. "What’s my purpose? Why am I here? Where do we go from here? What sort of spirituality rings true for me?"

I reach out tentatively and touch the questions, throw a few crumbs their way, drop a little magic, and run away.

Here are the first two books in my "WHERE" series,

10,000 words or less—fiction.

 

Two so far:

Number 1: Where Tiger's Belch, 8,791  words.

Number two: Where the Frogs Sing Café, 6,766 words.

Remember Edward Abby's quote? He gives an invocation better than I can:

"May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams wait for you — beyond that next turning of the canyon walls." –Edward Abby

As we go through life, not only have our bodies been bruised, but our spirits have often been as well. Yet, a few words can shine light into a dark hole, tickle our funny bone, or motivate us.

This series is my try.

"Don't try, do."—Yoda

Carry on. Do good work,

P.S. In searching for other books of this genre, (I don’t know what their genre is called) I found two authors who have written books the sort I aspire to. I’ve read two books from each. One author is John Strelecky, The Café at the End of the World, A Story About the Meaning of Life. “Over 4 million sold,” so says the cover. See, I know there are people who like these sorts of books. The other is Michael V. Ivanov. The Traveler’s Secret, Ancient Proverbs for Better Living. (Five stars.)

Yea, live authors.

Here we go with Number Two:

 Excerpt from Where The Frogs Sing Cafe: 

 

  

Copyright © 2025

ISBN: 979-8-9906076-2-0

Published by The Frog’s Song Publishing Junction City, OR 97448

 

Cover design by Joyce Davis

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the author's prior permission.

 

Chapters

 

Chapter 1 Voted the Best Café by My Mother

Chapter 2 The Green Flash

Chapter 3 Who Created This System Anyway?

Chapter 4 Underground Railroad

Chapter 5 Where is That Person?

Chapter 6 Life Beyond the Horizon

Chapter 7 I Vote for That

 

"May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles, and poet's towers into dark primeval forest where tigers belch, and monkeys howl…beyond that next turning of the canyon walls."

–Edward Abbey  

 

“Frogs sing the eternal call to life and happiness.”

 

 1

"Voted the Best Café by My Mother"

 

 

Carolyn, Freda, and I were barreling down a lava-based road in our rented Jeep while cane grass as high as the Jeep's hood slapped us on both sides. We thought a Jeep suited us, but by the end of this day, we felt beaten up from the constant wind in our hair and sun on our cheeks. And why in the heck were we on this road?

We had seen a sign tucked in alongside the highway, barely visible if you were going any speed at all: "Voted the Best Café by My Mother," it read. We laughed but kept on going until we saw the second sign: "Where the Frog's Sing Café" with an arrow pointing to the road we were now on.

The road didn't look like one that would lead to a café, but after our day of snorkeling in the ocean, sunning on the beach, and being wind-whipped to pieces in an open-air jeep, we were exhausted and starving.

And so, when the sign indicated a café ahead, we aimed toward it.

We were on summer break from college, and although it might seem that a trip to Hawaii is a luxurious holiday, our families got together to give us three girls this trip. My Aunt Mable gave us her Condo share for a week, our folks paid for our airline tickets, and we scraped together enough money to live for seven days.

We were all juniors in college and had been friends since high school, but there we were, exhausted after our junior year and worried about what to do after graduation. Our folks decided we needed a break, and so they gave us this gift, like the Twelve Days of Christmas minus eleven.

Eventually, the lava-encrusted, lumpy road through the cane grass ended at a strip of golden/white sand. And there on that beautiful sand sat a Robinson Crusoe-style shack with a sign under its thatched roof, Where the Frogs Sing Café.

When I (the designated driver) cut the motor, we heard the surf pounding off in the distance.

"Jo," Carolyn attentively asked from the passenger seat, "do you think this is safe?"

"We have only met friendly people," I said. "This looks like the sort of place poor college students would frequent, a Barefoot pub on the beach. Besides, do you think that fellow we met while snorkeling would steer us wrong? He said there was a shortcut to our condo beside a café titled Where the Frogs Sing? He seemed nice."

"Well, you were flirting with him, no wonder he was nice."

"All the more reason to trust him. He was flirting back." I opened the car door and swung my legs out. 

end of excerpt 

 

Where The Frogs Sing Cafe will be available on Kindle in a day or two. In the meantime, since you are my blog readers, and if you want to read the rest of the story, I will send you a PDf file for Free to your email. You can be my first readers. See what you think.  This offer will only be available this week. Thanks for reading.

Oh, I need your email address to send it. No worries, I never let emails creep out of my box. My dog guards it.

Go to joshappytrails at gmail.com/ You know what at means. Type it in. Whohoo! Sing with the frogs. Say YES.

 

 

 

Where Do You Want to Go?

 

“When I write something that really happened, people read it and say, ‘Sounds like bullshit.’When I pull something completely out of thin air, I hear, ‘Wow, that was so real.’”—Steven Pressfield.

 

 

 

Where does this leave us?

 

Write what’s real, or make it up?

 

But don’t lie and say it’s real if it’s not.

 

Pressfield’s point is, Write everything as though it is fiction, even if it’s true.

 

I’m trying to learn to write since, for some stupid reason, I feel compelled to do it.

 

I remember the day it began. Well, not the specific day, but the place. I had driven my two girls to school, a 45-minute drive from home. One daughter was in the first grade, the other in the third. Sometimes I didn’t want to drive right back home, and often I would stay away the entire day. It took 45 minutes to drive back home, do a little work, then drive 45 minutes back to pick them up. That’s when I started to write.

 

Bless their hearts, they gave me a profession. 

 

 As I sat on a hill above Fashion Valley in San Diego, California, having just ordered orange juice and coffee, I asked one of those pertinent life questions. I had graduated from college and had my children. Now they were in school. My question? What do I want to do with my life?  

 

“Well, I’d write if I had something to say.”

 

I wrote my first little children’s story that day. And I haven’t shut up since. I am not a verbose person, but I enjoy putting words on a page. 

 

Am I an illustrious writer? Nope. However, I have filled copious notebooks since. I didn’t know about blogging then—come to think of it, neither did anyone else. 

 

Some 40 years later, I had a book published. I remember reading that it takes 20 years to become a writer . I said I would do it, but I wanted a guarantee at the end of those years.

 

Life doesn’t come with guarantees, but I’ve had a damn good time with the process. This adventure has taken me to fascinating places. I studied and wrote about Cosmology—which is the origin of things. I told another writer what I was writing about, and he thought I said Cosmetology (About make-up and hair.) 

 

I studied metaphysics and came to some understanding about where I was regarding religion and such subjects. I wrote about Africa, and I made up stories. Then, somewhere in the midst of it all, I became involved with horses and self-published a book called, It’s Hard to Stay on A Horse While You’re Unconscious, that no one can manage to spit out the title. To my detriment, I was rebelling against the need for short titles. However, it was pertinent, and in Hawaii, Mrs. Chiropractor got it right off the bat. You can’t navigate life too well when you are unconscious. 

 

The unconscious part is both philosophical and literal. Sierra, my mustang, once knocked me in the nose, and I didn’t know what happened until I woke up on the ground. And there followed a week where I had racoon eyes.

 

I’m still trying to learn how to write. I still can’t keep my fingers on the correct keys, but so what. You plunge ahead, right?

 

So, Natalie Goldberg (Writing Down the Bones) was correct when she said, “Writing will take you where you want to go.”