5 Reasons Why You Absolutely Should Not Read Black Bear Lake

 by

 Leslie Liautaud

While I could go blue in the face trying to convince you of all the wonderful reasons to read Black Bear Lake, I thought, in fairness, I should be honest about why you should NOT read it. And believe me, there are plenty of reasons.
 

1. There are NO vampires in Black Bear Lake. None. Not a one. No Werewolves or Zombies, either. The only remedy I could come up with would be to make the Walleye morph into Vampires but it got tricky. I mean, how did they become like that? Usually, when you bite a fish, it’s already been fried up in a pan, so how do they get turned in the first place? And what if they transformed into bats when they were still underwater? Instant drowning! I even thought about maybe turning them into Werewolves until I realized how much shedding would be taking place in the lake and it just freaked me out. I can’t even handle hair in a bathtub drain.
2. It’s SAD! People die, animals die, baby deer get left alone in the woods without its mother, there’s cancer, there’s divorce…I mean, come on! Who wants to read that? Isn’t there enough pain and suffering in the world??
3. There are typos. I mean TYPOS! No matter that I read through the manuscript a bajjilion times. No matter that my editor, bless her, read through my manuscript a bajillion and one times. No matter that I had many, many friends, family and colleagues read through the manuscript. NO MATTER. At the end of the day, you can read through Black Bear Lake and still mark it up with a red pen. I’m smacking my forehead every other page.
4. It’s dated, old, practically the Dark Ages…there are no cell phones in my book. No iPods, no Kindles, no laptops. None! You might think it’s because the story takes place in the middle of the Northern Wisconsin woods. No service, right? Wrong. There are no personal devices because the bulk of the story takes place in 1983. No personal devices invented yet! In fact, 1983 was the first year cell phones (which were huge and weighed a ton) were commercially available. So, forget about the characters texting each other. They actually had to trudge around in the woods searching for lost kids! How boring is that…
5. There’s no soundtrack CD in the back of the book. But there should be!! There’s so much great music mentioned in Black Bear Lake! Like “Helpless” by Neil Young and “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd. Not to mention all the other great songs referenced! “Jack and Diane”, “Edge of Seventeen” and “Everything She Does Is Magic”… If you grew up in the 80’s, they will rock you! And if you didn’t, look them up…they will rock you!