A Birthday One-Act and Dragons

A Book Review. But First, the One-Act

Act One

Scene 1

A kitchen table. Kate Susong’s imagination. Daytime.

The lights come up on KATE, a middle-aged but still astonishingly fit author, sitting at a kitchen table with a tea tray and her rose-pink MacBook. An IMAGINARY SUBSTACK SUBSCRIBER sits across from her.

IMAGINARY SUBSTACK SUBSCRIBER:
It’s your birthday today, right, Kate?

KATE:
Yep! October 1st. I share a birthday with Julie Andrews and Jimmy Carter.
(wonders to herself)
They’re still alive, right?

IMAGINARY SUBSTACK SUBSCRIBER produces a caramel cake from under the table with 47 blazing candles.

IMAGINARY SUBSTACK SUBSCRIBER:
And you’re 47! Happy Birthday!

KATE:
(claps her hands in delight)
Caramel cake is my favorite! You’re amazing, thank you!

IMAGINARY SUBSTACK SUBSCRIBER produces a knife, plates and forks from beneath the table. The dialogue continues as KATE blows out the candles and cuts generous slices of cake for both of them.

IMAGINARY SUBSTACK SUBSCRIBER:
As the imaginary representative of your Substack Subscribers, how can I help you celebrate your birthday this year?

KATE:
That is so kind of you to ask, Imaginary Substack Subscriber. The best gift I can think of is this: please share 1 of my posts with 3 of your friends and family!

IMAGINARY SUBSTACK SUBSCRIBER:
How about we share 1 of your posts with 47 of our friends and family?

KATE:
You are too kind. I won’t stop you if you insist on 47. But even sharing with 3 people would boost my readership. As of today, there are 660 of you (thank you!) —and editors have said that I need a growing group of over 1,000 subscribers for a publisher to take an interest in my novel.

IMAGINARY SUBSTACK SUBSCRIBER:
So we can share this post — or any post? I love the one about the police coming to your house to make sure you hadn’t killed your mother-in-law. Or how ‘bout the one describing all your parenting fails? Reading about your trip to Antarctica was cool. And I’m a big Jane Austen fan — those fan fiction short stories are cute.

KATE:
Thank you! Yes, please share anything you like!

IMAGINARY SUBSTACK SUBSCRIBER:
(rises from the chair purposefully while an offstage orchestra plays “Also Sprach Zarathustra”)
We can do it, Kate. We will do it! And to show my dedication to this cause, I now invite two special birthday visitors on stage who will inspire us to share your posts!

The music stops abruptly as 89-year-old JULIE ANDREWS walks onstage pushing a squeaky wheelchair in which sits 100-year-old PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER. JULIE ANDREWS sings the Happy Birthday song, and PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER sings harmony in a quavering voice. JULIE ANDREWS turns to the audience in a manner that could raise millions of dollars for starving children.

JULIE ANDREWS:
Dear Readers of Kate Susong’s Substack, won’t you please join me now in growing her readership by sharing your favorite post with 3 of your friends and family. Only 3 shares could mean the difference between no growth and astronomical growth. You — yes, you — can make a difference. Substack is open 24 hours a day to manage your shares. Just click on the link above and look for this share-symbol near the picture of the post you like best. And thank you — from the bottom of my heart.

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER holds up a poster with a share-symbol printed on it:

Image created by AI, hence President Carter has three legs.

Balloons and confetti fall from the ceiling as everyone in the audience pulls out phones to share posts with 3 of their friends. KATE cuts more slices of cake, and JULIE ANDREWS feeds PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER his slice.

Blackout.

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Book Review

The Secrets of Ormdale

A Five Part Fantasy Series by Christina Baer

The first words of any piece are important to get through. Did you read that first sentence? Have you gotten to the end of this one yet? I’m glad I pushed through the first few sentences of this excellent series by Christina Baer (the opening page is a bit clunky) because the rest of it — literally from page two onward — is fantastic. It’s the most entertaining thing I’ve read this year. I ignored my family for four days while reading these books — my children re-wore their dirty school uniforms and ate cereal for dinner — and I have no regrets.

Christina Baer has done something unusual. She has produced a rollicking adventure and fantasy series with a touch of romance, set in Victorian England — written with elegant turns of phrase, elevated language, literary and classical allusions, humor throughout, and (most marvelous of all) a smart and strong heroine who needs help once in a while. In fact — brace yourselves — the men in her life are neither incompetent nor unreliable. What a delight to read a book in which the heroine overturns all our 21st century expectations by being smart and resourceful and knowing men she can count on.

In Book 1, Wormwood Abbey, our heroine Edith Worms discovers that her distant family are Dragon Wardens — have been for centuries — and that her clergyman father has just inherited the ancestral burden. Shattering more of our post-Christian assumptions, this clergyman is an excellent man — wise, learned, funny, and faithful — who tends his parish in the East Midlands of England while his daughter Edith — of marriageable age — manages the newly acquired estate and dragons in Yorkshire. Chaperoned, naturally. Adventure ensues.

Each book in the series pits Edith against new adversaries who would exploit the secrets she is bound to protect. Extricating her friends from ever-increasing danger takes her to various parts of the kingdom where she grapples with disparate political movements of the day and weighs popular ideas with her winsome faith. It’s all an unalloyed pleasure to read, and my only disappointment is that the fifth book in the series isn’t published yet — but it comes out before Christmas!

Which means you have time to read the first four. Get them here. Enjoy!