Foxes and Fireflies Bookstore

Foxes and Fireflies Bookstore Turns One

/ mariezhuikov / 11 Comments

Superior, Wisconsin, is just across the Minnesota state border from my home in Duluth. A twenty-minute drive down a hill and over a bridge takes me to another state. I used to make this drive nearly every day for work before I retired this spring. Now, I do it less often but it’s for events that are more fun than work!

One such event is a reading and discussion next Saturday (Aug. 30) at Foxes and Fireflies Bookstore in Superior (1401 Tower Ave). It’s billed as a “local author extravaganza,” which I love, especially since there are only two of us doing presentations. 😊

I used to get nervous before these events from self-consciousness and fear of being judged, etc. (By the way, fellow blogger Swabby offers an excellent post today about self-absorption.) But I’ve had enough practice now and done enough presentations about my books and photography that for the last several events, I’ve just winged it.

Me at the book launch for Meander North. (This was before Foxes and Fireflies had opened.) Look, I’m having fun! Image by Russ.

It’s worked out well, I think. I wasn’t nervous one bit. I’m glad I’ve finally reached this point. That only took over a decade! Public appearances still take a lot out of me, but dare I say they’re even becoming fun. I enjoy learning about the audience members and pondering their questions. And I’m not talking about huge audiences here, so they’re usually intimate affairs. Ah yes, the glamorous life of a local author!

For next weekend’s event, I’ll read from my books, The Path of Totality (magical realism short story collection) and Meander North (blog memoir). I’ll look over notes from past talks beforehand, but I’m going to leave them at home and see how “winging it” goes again.

The other author who’s reading is Gina Ramsey from Superior. Her book is Burnt Gloveboxes. (Two volumes.) She relates crazy but true things that have happened to her family.

Foxes and Fireflies is the first independent bookstore that Superior has had in years since Beecroft Books closed. I used to love going to Beecroft for author events. Afterward, the authors would have the honor of signing their names on a long white hallway. It was my goal to someday write a book and be able to sign that hallway, but the store closed before I had that chance.

My fox from the bookstore.

Foxes and Fireflies was opened by Maria Lockwood, a reporter for the Superior Telegram, kind of by accident. She was researching a business grant program for a story and decided to submit a grant to see how the process worked. Lo and behold, her project was chosen to receive the funding! She’s been working at the bookstore and at her reporting job, so she has her plate full. She’s so supportive of local authors. Besides books, Maria offers all sorts of other literary paraphernalia and cute little toy foxes.

Instead of a long hallway for authors to sign, in the tradition of Beecroft Books, Maria offers a whiteboard. My name is proudly on it.

If you’re in the area, please stop by for the author extravaganza or any of the bookstore’s other events.

Book Giveaway, Libraries, and a Signing

/ mariezhuikov / 12 Comments
Marie and most of her books at Foxes and Fireflies Booksellers in Superior, WI.

Bookish things have been happening in my world. First, I wanted to let you know that my speculative fiction/magical realism short story collection, The Path of Totality, (POT) is having a giveaway on Goodreads. Three copies will go to some lucky readers in ten days on March 12.

The second thing is something I learned from one of my fellow writers. He clued me into the WorldCat website, which is where you can see what libraries around the world carry certain books. He looked up POT and told me that it was in seven libraries already. Cool! Of course, I then looked it up and my other books. POT is available in libraries in Omaha, NE; Farmington, NM; Charleston, SC; and Orlando, FL. This exercise reminded me that I should donate a copy to my library in Duluth so that they have it.

One surprising thing I discovered is that my first novel, Eye of the Wolf, is available in the National Library of Qatar, in the Middle East. How did that happen?? Another surprising thing is that my second novel, “Plover Landing,” is available in 233 libraries! I think that might be because I offered libraries free rights to a PDF download of it. Since that happened a few years ago, I can’t recall now what service I used for that.

The last bookish thing regards a signing and reading I had yesterday at a new bookstore that opened in Superior, Wisconsin. Foxes and Fireflies Booksellers is run by a woman who’s also a reporter for the local newspaper. Maria Lockwood began the store as a lark. She was reporting on a business startup grant program and as part of that, put in a grant request to open a bookstore as an experiment to see how the process worked. Lo and behold, she was awarded the grant.

Superior hasn’t had a literary independent bookstore in many years, so the community was excited to see Foxes and Fireflies open. The store is very cozy and is filled with neat items. I probably spent any royalties I made during my signing on a cute little fox toy that is destined for our cabin. Oh, the glamorous life of a regional author! Superior writer Vickie Smith featured the bookstore recently on her blog.

Now that I’m on a countdown to retirement for my day job (not my fiction writing), I figure I’ll have more time to read writing trade magazines. I used to subscribe to Writer’s Digest but quit after a while because the copies just kept piling up and it felt too much like work to read them. I’m wondering what writing magazines are your favorites? I’d appreciate recommendations.

My Book Comes out this Week!

/ mariezhuikov / 29 Comments

My collection of shorts stories, “The Path of Totality,” is being published this week by Cornerstone Press. It will still be on sale for a few more days for 20% off until the publication date, which is Feb. 11. You can order it from Cornerstone here.

I’m having a launch event Feb. 18th, 6:30 p.m., at one of my favorite cafes in Duluth—Wussow’s Concert Cafe. It’s being hosted by Zenith Bookstore. I’ll also be doing a reading/signing at Foxes and Fireflies Bookstore in Superior on March 1 from 1-3 p.m. If you’re in the area, please stop by!

Noted Superior, Wisconsin, author, Carol Dunbar is helping me with the Feb. 18th event. She is way more well-known than I am, having had two books published by a national publisher. She was nice enough to write a blurb for my book, which appears on its cover. She was also nice enough to volunteer for a question and answer discussion with me of our books and careers. We deal with many of the same themes in our writing, so it should be a cool event!

“Booklist,” which caters to libraries, recently reviewed “The Path of Totality.” Here’s what they said:

Love, in its numerous forms: romantic, parental, devotional, inspirational, and desperate, has a lingering presence in Zhuikov’s collection of tales. The title story describes a young couple’s emotional struggles after the devastating loss of a premature baby boy. While viewing the 2017 total solar eclipse, healing suddenly sprouts as something “flipped a reset switch” inside the wife. “Bog Boy” is a comically creepy tale illustrating that love truly has no limits. A teenage girl discovers the long-dead body of a young man entombed by peat in the woods, and the preserved corpse becomes her de facto boyfriend. “The Shower Singer” is a feel-good story about an aspiring musician who receives more than just a much-needed jolt of creativity when he hears a woman in the adjacent apartment singing lovely melodies in the shower. Other characters include a sleuthing widow obsessed with the strangeness of a house who ultimately pays a steep price for her curiosity, a hungry alien life form that stalks a college student in Biosphere 2, and a reference librarian with an extraordinary connection to sentient trees.