Tommia's Tablet

To discover the talent that exists in the valley is akin to finding a new treasure during a walkabout.

Gary Schwartz is certainly not average. The accomplished voice actor’s inspiring middle grade novel, “The King of Average,” is a “memoir of an invisible boy made visible by a strange idea.”

Gary had an idea when he was eleven years old: Told that he was only average, he wondered if he could he be more average than anyone else—if he could be the most average kid in the world. The very idea made a shy boy who suffered from poor self-esteem feel suddenly special. The boy who wanted to be invisible and escape notice and family pain now had a mission. He was somebody. He could cope.

One way that helped Gary cope was developing a sense of humor. By studying comedians on Ed Sullivan and practicing impressions, he could make kids at the school lunch table laugh. Two years later at age 13, he was selected to perform up and down the Hudson River with Pete Seeger and the great folk entertainers of the 1960s. His show business career had started.

Schwartz carried the idea of being the most average around for fifty years and decided to write a book about it. The King of Average combines the wit and wordplay found in The Phantom Tollbooth with the tale of an average boy travelling his emotional landscape in the Realm of Possibility. He befriends a talking scapegoat named Mayor Culpa, a professional optimist and an equally professional pessimist called Kiljoy, and goes on a journey to reclaim his self-esteem and authenticity.

“We take the trauma of childhood with us into adulthood and, without self-awareness, we can suffer our whole lives.” says Schwartz. “I hope this story will inspire children to better understand their feelings and discover their own truth in an entertaining and fun way.”

If you are in the area, join his book release party at Boxley’s  Wednesday from 6pm-9pm.

Or going around in circles….

Inside the Needle 2015

Inside the Needle 2015

Inside the Needle 2015

Inside the Needle 2015

Inside the Needle 2015

This week’s writer is Sheri J. Kennedy and she celebrates her upcoming book, “Likeness.” The Book Release Party is next Wednesday at Pioneer Coffee.

In LIKENESS, early millennium Seattle-based workers Charlie and Emmaline are thrust from their comfortable and quirky marketing department to the Worldwide Pharmaceutical Conference stage. They present their ad for a new drug, Assimilaire, that minimizes social anxiety by making one feel the same as those around them.

In a strange twist, a free sample causes the audience members to not only feel like, but to become like athletic geek Charlie and adventurous artist Emmaline.

Forced to stay at the conference by a bomb scare, the affected hotel guests are caught in a madcap impromptu experiment that exposes the nature of similarity and difference.

This snappy contemporary novel provides much to think about and plenty of humor as it considers the value of who we are.

Author, Sheri J. Kennedy has always been fascinated with similarity and difference. This playful yet rich exploration of the topic was written with a nod to her time living in  Queen Anne neighborhood and working in downtown Seattle as a picture framer when she was a twenty-something like the artsy Emmaline.