Something interesting happened back in July 2018. A friend and I were out for an afternoon in Sausalito California, just over the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco, when I heard him say, “huh, that’s interesting.” As we were packing up the car after spending the afternoon kayaking in the sun, he just happened to glance over at a little wooden box in the front yard of the house in front of which we were parked. It was filled with books and right there in the middle was a spine I knew all to well. It was a million to one chance we would have parked in front of this thing, let alone one of us notice that The Amaranth Chronicles: Deviant Rising was in it. Here is the original photograph I took and posted to Instagram:

I stood there stunned and frankly giddy with something seemingly this random happening right here in front of me. Its hard to see from the image but over there on the left was a book mark looking thing advertising “Little Free Library”. I had seen these little book boxes from time to time around San Francisco but didn’t really realize it was a national thing and one taken very seriously with a whole culture around it. What’s extra strange is that, after browsing LittleFreeLibrary.org, I found a map of all of the book boxes within a 10-15mile radius around me and the little box in Sausalito I had just been at wasn’t on the map. I’m not sure why some boxes are officially listed on the organization’s map and some aren’t.

I contemplated for a while on how these little free libraries might help Chris and I get The Amaranth Chronicles: Deviant Rising out there, but with planning conventions, other forms of marketing, and all of the other production work around the intellectual property, it faded to the back of my mind.

So flash forward to May of 2019 and nearly a year after spotting the book in that “off grid” Little Free Library box, a couple of fans in the Allen Texas area wanted to go on their own little crusade for The Amaranth Chronicles: Deviant Rising and fill the boxes in their town. I’m not sure exactly how many copies of the book were donated (somewhere between 20-30) but they sent me a series of photos for our Instagram.

It was interesting seeing our Instagram follower count slowly climb with people who followed the Little Free Library movement. Nothing profound but definitely interesting. After the “recent” traction from our first convention back in September, our marketing girl and I decided it might be an interesting experiment to put together a list and map of the Little Free Libraries in my area and go on my own little crusade.

Google Maps allows you to create a “list” of custom addresses and even share it. I scoured the Little Free Libraries web map and found a decent list (43) of boxes in the San Francisco and Mill Valley areas and set out last weekend to fill them all.

Other than a little car sickness from the winding hills, it was a really fun afternoon. We’ll see how things pan out from this little experiment.