Bill and Ted Face the Music, Grow Old, and Teach Us a Most Excellent Lesson

It’s the little things in this movie that really stood out to me. Oh, and the big, goofy grin plastered on my face nearly the entire time.

1989

I’ll admit something here I’ve mentioned elsewhere: I didn’t go to see Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure because I knew what it was and wanted to see it. I went because the trailer for the 1989 Batman movie was playing before it. So basically, I bought a ticket for a trailer and got a movie as a bonus.

And what a movie it was. History major that I was (and am), I loved Excellent Adventure and saw it multiple times in the theater. And no, not just because the Batman trailer was attached. I enjoyed the film for what it was: an overly enthusiastic, charming adventure movie about a couple of Gen X high schoolers to which I could relate, even if I lived in the suburbs of Houston and they San Dimas, California.

The snippets of dialogue became engrained in my head and the culture. I mean, how many of us in the past thirty-one years have not thought about something being strangely afoot when we pass a Circle K? How many of us can recite Bill and Ted’s basic mantra: Be Excellent To Each Other. And Party On, Dudes!

Bogus Journey was different, but still good. I like the first one more largely because I could see myself in that story, but Bogus Journey had some marvelous sequences, most of which feature William Sadler as Death.

But that was it. For the past twenty-nine years, Bill and Ted 3 lived its own bogus journey in development hell. I didn’t think it would ever get made. Part of me didn’t think we needed it. Seriously, did we want to see Bill and Ted…old? Was there even a story there?

Face the Music: The Set Up

Turns out, there was.

The writing duo of Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon—the same folks who wrote the first two movies—proved there was a story worth telling. And a story worth viewing by all of us, especially the members of Generation X.

When we finally meet Bill and Ted in the third movie, they are fiftyish. Long gone are the heady days immediately following Bogus Journey when they saved the world and toured as Wyld Stallyns, complete with Death as the, um, killer bass player. Now, the lovable duo are ensconced in the suburbs, living next door to each other, married to the literal princesses from Bogus Journey, each with a twenty-five-year-old daughter. Bill’s daughter (played by Samara Weaving, kin to Hugo Weaving from The Matrix fame) is Thea and Ted’s daughter (played to a T by Brigette Lundy-Paine) is Billie. You see what they did there? Bill’s daughter is…Ted and Ted’s daughter is…Bill. [Cue air guitar]

The one thing they’ve not done is write The Song that will unite the world. [As an aside, I kinda thought that was how Bogus Journey ended, but what they hey.] In fact, they’ve sputtered into middle age, complete with marital problems. The two wives just want their respective husbands to recognize how co-dependent Bill and Ted are for each other and to channel some of that energy into their respective marriages. The daughters are just like their dads, complete with an intricate knowledge of music.

Which is when the future intervenes. The Great Leader sends Kelly, daughter of George Carlin’s Rufus, back in time to give Bill and Ted their mission: write The Song in 77 minutes or all of space and time will be destroyed. Taking a cue from their earlier adventures, the pair decide to travel into their own futures to meet their older selves and get the song that way.

In the meantime, the future wives have traveled back in time to get their younger selves to leave Bill and Ted.

And also in the meantime, Billie and Thea meet Kelly and the daughters take her time machine back in time to form a most excellent band for their dads. [Cue air guitar]

Face the Music Actually Says a Lot

While I’ll admit it took a few minutes for me to get into seeing Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter as old versions of their iconic characters, once the time traveling stuff started, it was all fun from there. Meeting their future selves didn’t necessarily pan out like they’d thought it would. Future Bill and Ted are bitter at losing their wives and their daughters and not having written the song. They blame Present Bill and Ted and actively try and thwart them. Thus, Bill and Ted become the villains…to Bill and Ted.

Hey, it worked for me. Why? Simple: what if your younger self could see how your life turned out?

Think about it. When you’re in high school, your head is full of dreams for your future. Whatever you want to be when you grow up, your dreams put you in the best possible version. You’re a doctor? Then you cure cancer. You’re a teacher? Then you educate the next president. You’re a baseball player? You hit the game winning home run to win the World Series. And if you’re a musician? Then you write the song that can unite the world.

I think few of us would even want to travel back in time and tell our younger selves how we turned out. You had the dream of being a musician? Well, now you have an office job in a cube (or at home, in 2020’s reality) and your guitar sits dusty in the corner of the room. You wanted to be a baseball player? Well, the injury you sustained in college killed that dream and you had to adjust.

Because adjusting is what we all do. We figure things out as we go along, rarely sticking to the dream path we envisioned. Some do, yes, and more power to them. But for many of us, how we envisioned the future may not necessarily be how we’re actually living in it.

Gen X Grows Old

Another obvious aspect of the film is the age of Bill and Ted. Reeves and Winter look great, but they still look middle aged, especially after having watched Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey to prep for Face the Music. You can’t hide age.

Name your reunion movie in which beloved TV characters from your favorite show come together. Gunsmoke. The Andy Griffith Show. The Brady Bunch. Perry Mason. The Rockford Files. The Wild Wild West. Gilligan’s Island. Whatever. The original TV shows are burned into our consciousness, especially us Gen Xers who, as latch key kids, grew up watching reruns. Ron Howard is forever Opie (or Richie Cunningham) in our minds, the small youth walking and whistling with Andy. Bob Denver will always be twenty-nine or so, the lovable goof from the island.

But seeing these same actors play the same characters years or decades older is odd. (The Brady kids kind of get a pass because they had multiple spinoffs and we got to see them age up almost in real time. And I’m not talking about reunion specials when the actors gather to discuss their shows.) There’s something you have to get used to. Exactly the same with Bill and Ted (and William Sadler as Death).

They got old.

But so did we.

Many of us may not have access to our high school yearbooks anymore (I still have mine) but we have access to the movies of our high school (or early college) years. Up until 2020, Reeves and Winter, were forever frozen in 1989 or 1991. Reeves not so much because we saw him age up in his movies, but as Bill and Ted, they are like fossils, preserved in amber.

But so is everything about growing up Gen X. Think about this: to the best of my knowledge, Bill and Ted are the only 80s icons we revisit in middle age. The Breakfast Club are still in high school. So are the kids from Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Ridgemont High, St. Elmo’s Fire, the Goonies, and, of course, Ferris Bueller. They are forever young, forever looking to their futures and their dreams.

With Bill and Ted, however, we get to see them how we are now. Older, shaken from our younger dreams, and heading into the realm of being a senior citizen.

The Real Message of Face the Music: It’s Never Too Late

All of this talk about dashed dreams may seem like a downer—especially in 2020—but there’s an underlying ray of light in this movie: It’s Never Too Late.

One of the small things I really appreciated is the moment with Ted and his father. Played again by Hal Landon Jr., Captain Logan never got over his desire to set his son’s path in life straighter. In the first two films, military school was the answer. And in this one, he explodes to his son and Bill about their wasted lives. Because Gen X was basically labeled as the slacker generation, and we have dozens of films to reinforce the point.

But Captain Logan gets himself drug into the larger plot and he finally realizes that the thing Bill and Ted have talked about for thirty years was real. It all was. The father comes to realize his son really did make a difference to the world, and he apologizes for his misunderstanding. Here’s the father, nearing retirement age, figuring out it’s never too late to apologize.

Late in the film, Present Bill and Ted visit their elderly selves, the villains of most of the film. There, Middle-Aged Bill and Ted get to have a heart-to-heart with Elderly Bill and Ted and clear the air. Both versions of Bill and Ted realize it’s never too late to come to terms and appreciate all the choices they’ve made—and we’ve made—with our lives. We are the accumulation of every single decision we’ve made, the good ones, the bad ones, the cherished ones, and the anguished ones. I live with few regrets, but there are always the little things I wish I could go back and tweak. But all of that vanished the day my son was born. It was that day I realized each and every decision I made led up to that day, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

Another small thing is with Bill and Ted’s marriages. For their entire adult lives, they’ve been blinded by their mutual affection for each other. Boy, to have a friend like that, huh? But during the movie and after meeting their future selves, they realize it’s never too late to reinvest in their marriages with their wives.

Then there’s the big little thing, the one the whole movie hinges on: Bill and Ted realize it’s never too late to pass the torch onto the next generation. Slight spoilers here, but ones you could pretty much see coming.

Their daughters go on their own most excellent adventure, drafting the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Louis Armstrong, and Mozart form the band to play The Song. But the fathers don’t have the song. They don’t even know it.

But they realize, even as the seconds are counting down to annihilation, that it’s never too late to help your children do great things, especially if that thing is to save space and time. The parents facilitate all that’s necessary to enable their daughters to do what they could not: unite the world through a song.

Conclusion

Yeah, this piece edged into heady territory, especially for a movie that’s often laugh out loud funny. But it has a lot of heart and emotion in this film. And I think it can speak to multiple generations. For my son, a college freshman, it’s a fun movie with lots of in jokes and over-the-top shots. I’m thinking Jesus walking on water next to George Washington as he crosses the Delaware River. Or how the two actresses playing the daughters nail their respective impressions of their fathers yet still make the characters unique.

But for us middle-aged Gen Xers, there’s an entirely different movie playing in front of our eyes. It’s a movie about our lives that we never expected, never saw coming, but is so important to many of us. We are getting older. Heck, we *are* old. We’ve become our parents and, with that perspective, we can reevaluate how our parents raised us. For me, I’ve long known my parents were most excellent role models and if I could follow their examples, I’d do well. But only after I became a parent did even more things come into view about my own childhood. Most of us have these realizations some time or other, and now Bill and Ted do, too.

It’s remarkable that a film about two genuinely lovable dudes who possess a genuine affection for each other and the world could deliver such a profound message to the world in 2020. I’m sure the screenwriters could never have dreamed the finished film would land the way it did: in few theaters and on demand (how we watched it) in the middle of a pandemic and an election year with racial strife and fellow Americans yelling at each other. If ever we needed Wyld Stallyns to sing their song, it’s 2020.

But we’ll have to satisfy ourselves with a genuinely funny and heartfelt movie, and also the realization that it’s never too late to look at our fellow humans on this planet and preach and act in the way Bill and Ted told us to do over thirty years ago: Be Excellent to Each Other.

 

The Summer of Bosch

A few weeks ago, I wrote about watching the Amazon Prime TV series Bosch. Based on Michael Connelly’s novel series, there are now six seasons, 60 episodes of excellent television.

And I’ve gone through them all.

Now I’ve caught up with the rest of the folks who watched Bosch live as it aired. I’m not a binger. I still have the weekly airing of TV episodes ingrained in my DNA. But with streaming, I have modified my viewing. With about an hour a day for TV, my wife and I watch a show at 9pm every night. Thus, a 10-episode season of Bosch typically took about ten days, more or less.

Except the last couple of seasons.

Now, work nights, I still have only an hour for TV, but when the viewing bled into the weekends? Well, we might watch two or (shocker) three a night. I know that sounds funny to some of y’all, but I don’t like to blow through TV shows and have nothing left.

Early on this summer, we watched season 1 of Bosch then switched to another show. Prodigal Son. Happened again after season 2 (although I forgot the other show). Then the magic happened. After season 3 as we were discussing which show to watch next, the wife suggested Bosch season 4.

Done!

And we didn’t look back until we had finished the entire series to date.

I wrote earlier about the cast and they remain the best thing about the show. But as the series went on, I particularly liked the relationship between Bosch and his daughter who, by season six, is a college student finding her way through life. Titus Welliver and Madison Lintz have such good chemistry that you’d almost think they really are father and daughter.

The one thing I dislike about binging is the sudden void after you’ve reached the end. Tis why I like to watch shows slow. When we reached episode 60, there was a moment where we looked at each other and questioned if that was it? (We had purposefully avoided looking up anything on the internet because we didn’t want any spoilers. My wife spoiled herself when she was reading about the show and learned the fate of one of the major characters.)

Yes, there will be a season 7, but that’ll be it. Amazon has cancelled the show, but allowed it to end gracefully.

So it turned out that the Bosch TV show was our through line during the summer of 2020. I couldn’t be more satisfied.

 

BTW, our next show is Glitch (Netflix), an Australian show with an interesting premise: a few dead folks crawl out of their graves one night without any memories but in perfect health. 

Learning About Life from Reruns

Late Sunday evening, after the wife and I watched a new-to-us show, Glitch, on Netflix, we turned off the steaming service and landed back on regular cable TV. This being a weekend, the channel was still tuned to MeTV, the channel that shows classic TV. I love Saturdays because it’s westerns all day. During our Covid-19 era, Sundays have become The Brady Bunch day right after I stream my church’s service.

That Sunday evening, the show being broadcast was The Dick Van Dyke Show. It was "Show of Hands," a season 4 (1965) episode in which Rob and Laura and their son, Ritchie, accidentally get their hands stained with black ink. This being episode 28 of the season, it was probably late spring 1965. What gave the show its comedic element was that they were to attend an awards show specifically, although not explicitly, on the in-show’s treatment of the equality of African-Americans in society.

The acceptance speech Rob gives—after he admits the truth about why he's wearing gloves and takes them off to show his black hands—basically said that to treat each other equally is the right thing to do. The characters on the show all laughed at Rob's predicament. This episode led directly into the next.

Tired though I was, I sat and watched these two episodes. The wife did, too. We started chatting about us being latch key kids in the 1970s. That is, we school-aged kids would go home after school to an empty house because both parents would be working. Sure there was homework, but there was also the freedom to do what you wanted with no parent telling you 'no.'

Not having the plethora of entertainment options available in 2020, we'd zero in on TV and the reruns being broadcast. Here in Houston, that was mostly Channel 39 and Channel 26, the two independent UHF channels. Here's where we'd get a steady diet of shows from the 1950s (I Love Lucy) and the 1960s (Dick Van Dyke, Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeanie, etc.). Day after day, we'd consume these shows, memorizing them, laughing at them.

And learning from them.

It was my wife who made the observation: Because these shows we watched in reruns were intended for adult audiences (or at least the entire family), they were not specifically geared to children and their tastes. That was for Saturday morning cartoons and PBS. Watching and seeing how adults interacted with each other, we learned about adult life. Sure, it was often over the top and overly funny, but the common thread was there. Adults got into situations, worried about what to do and the consequences, and made decisions. If it was the wrong decision, they learned. If it was the right one, someone on the show also learned. 

We kids absorbed what we saw and internalized it without even knowing it.

Now, don't get me wrong: entertainment geared for kids is perfectly fine. And yes, lots of it is imbued with lessons to learn. But when you have a diet consisting only of kids entertainment, how do you learn about the adult world? Yes, I know, learning about life from TV is not really how you do it. You get out there and live life, learning along the way. But entertainment plays a role, too. Movies, TV, books, music: it's all in the mix. 

Seeing Old Shows With Fresh Eyes

What's fun about catching an episode of an old show like the Dick Van Dyke Show we saw as an adult is the ability to see the content with fresh eyes. Sometimes, your adult self sees old episodes you remember as a kid and you go "Boy, was that silly" or "How did I even like that?" Often, as we're eating lunch on Sundays and The Brady Bunch (actually, the Brady Brunch where MeTV sequences four episodes with a common theme) is on, the wife will remember and (sometimes) chuckle, while the boy rolls his eyes. I simply grin and keep watching. it's the historian in me.

Then again, you catch an episode like "Show of Hands" and you realize a subtle, powerful message was being delivered not only to adults in 1965 or the kids who might also be watching in 1965, but to folks in the 1970s and beyond. Especially kids. 

We were learning and laughing at the same time and didn't even realize it.

How Do You Find New Books?

by

Scott D. Parker

Earlier this week, a friend of mine at church posted an article about the mental benefits of listening to new music. In his post, he asked us how we discover new music.

I answered by saying nearly all of my nearly two dozens albums in 2020 stemmed from two sources: Frontiers Music (keeping melodic rock alive and kicking) and bands featured on the Texas Music Scene TV show. 

When I stumbled on Frontiers Music in 2019, I ended up downloading a sampler CD and listening. That led directly to purchases. It also led me to subscribe to Frontiers’s newsletter. Every week, I get an email talking about the new releases of that week. I also Liked their page on Facebook. Now, whenever I get the weekly email or I scroll to the Frontiers Music Facebook page, I listen. Heck, this week I discovered a band called Pride of Lions and their kick-ass song “Carry Me Back.” I heard the first few bars of this tune and instantly marked the new album as a prerelease. Only later did I learn one of the lead singer (and lead guitarist) is Jim Peterik, a founder of Survivor and…The Ides of March! Yeah, the guy that sings “Vehicle” is still making music. Oh, and how cool is Peter’s guitar!

The Texas Music Scene is a syndicated TV show that comes on Saturdays at midnight, right after SNL. It used to be a casual show. Now it is appointment television. I take notes on the bands and the songs they perform. Then I go out and buy the albums. I’ve got quite a list and I’m slowly working my way through all the new-to-me music. 

But for books, how does it work? How do I find new books?

Well, J. Kingston Pierce’s The Rap Sheet is top dog for me. Somehow, he finds the time to compile not only awesome lists of new books, but he pens fantastic articles about mystery and crime fiction. His Revue of Reviewers is a highlight as is his lists of awards. Plus, he has a knack for zeroing in on those fun old crime TV shows, complete with links. I often find new-to-me stuff there.

Turning my attention to the local scene, I subscribe to the Murder by the Book email list. All during the quarantine, they have continued their author events, only now, they’re online. They debut on Facebook and then show up on their YouTube page. Interviews with J. Todd Scott and Brad Thor have directly led me to book purchases. 

Here’s the link to their events page.

But, to be brutally honest, other than a few other newsletters, that’s it for me. 

So this post is actually a call to action: how do you find new books? I’d like to know so I can learn about even more books that are being published. 

Routines Gives Covid Days Structure and Builds Anticipation

It’s not often when the day job and the fiction job intersect, but they did this week.

On the day job front, we had our weekly team meeting yesterday. We’ve got a team of about 25 folks and, ever since 16 March, we’ve been working from home. Fridays are our Zoom calls and we get to see each other’s faces and enjoy an hour of camaraderie.

Yesterday, the grandboss asked how we were doing. And not in a flippant way, but an honest deep dive into how we were coping with the new paradigm of remote working. How were we feeling? How are we getting along with our families? The discussion was good with a few of my team members relating the sameness of our day-to-day lives. One of us commented that she sometimes realized that she needed to just get up out of her chair and walk outside to break up the monotony of her home office.

On the internet and Facebook this week, a few of my fellow writers voiced their frustration with the inability to write ever since the Coronavirus descended over all of us. When we’re all stuck at home with few prospects of getting out to typical places like movie theaters, theme parks, or seemingly every other summer tradition, how the heck can we harness the creativity to write?

I can’t answer these questions, but I can answer them with techniques I use that gets me through each day and each week.

Routine and Built-in Anticipation

Some of y’all will read this and chuckle. You may even give me a hard time. Don’t worry about it: my family gives me a hard time about it, too, but I still carry on.

Maybe it’s a sign of my age (51) but I seek out routine and thrive in it.

On the creative side of things, I hold one rule steadfast: write first thing in the morning. No internet. No email. Nothing other than a cup of coffee, a Bible reading, and the immediate opening of the laptop to work on a story. For the past month, it’s been edits and revision to my next book. Soon it’ll be a return to new stories, but, above all else, I carve out the time to be creative when the world is still dark and I’m the only one in the house awake. It was a routine I needed to create, but now that I have, it’s one of my favorite parts of the day.

This routine paid for itself on Monday of this week when, after I had a productive session, I logged into my bank to pay bills and discovered one of our checks had been stolen and forged. Yes, money had also been stolen. It’s resolved now, but the point is this: had I not already done my creative work, I did not have the mindset to be creative after that discovery. So, write in the morning before the day gets to you.

Building Anticipation

How good is a tuna fish sandwich? How valuable is movie night? How do these things relate to each other?

I love tuna fish sandwiches. It’s one of my favorite things to each for lunch. I branch out and try different recipes, often with salads, but the good, old-fashioned tuna fish sandwich is one of my favorite comfort foods.

But ever since I started working from home, I limit the traditional tuna fish sandwich to my Friday lunches. Why? To build anticipation. I’ll admit I look forward to lunches everyday because not only does my entire family of three eat together, but my wife and I play three games each of backgammon and Yahtzee. But I only eat tuna fish sandwiches on Fridays. Now, my family gently ribs me about this, but I can’t tell you how good that tuna sandwich tastes after a week of anticipation. Yesterday’s sandwich was particularly good. It’s something I look forward to all week long.

Ditto the Friday Night Movies. In the summer of 2020 when Covid has robbed us of a typical summer movie blockbuster season, I invented one. I’ve been revisiting summer movies from the past with even-numbered anniversaries (i.e., years ending in 0 or 5) and it’s been fun. But my point is that Fridays are movie nights. The other six days, sure we can watch a movie (we rarely do; the wife and I watch TV shows every night), but the special day is Friday.

Just like the tuna fish sandwich, I look forward to movie nights all week long. I build the anticipation, and that makes the sometimes monotonous days go by faster. And it makes Fridays all the more special.

Saturday mornings are do-nuts from Shipley’s, a cartoon (currently Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated) and every episode of The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. Saturday nights feature the Texas Music Scene TV show. Sunday mornings are online church. Every night at 9pm is our TV show time (about to start season 6 of Bosch). Friday night (lots of Friday things) is also cocktail night. Thursday is often take-out food night.

Yes, there are times when the wife makes tuna fish on a Tuesday and I’ll opt out. Yeah, really. It’s to keep those Friday lunches special. It’s to build anticipation.

So that’s a glimpse into how I’m coping with working from home and maintaining my creativity.

How are you doing?

What’s Your Book About? The Challenge of Book Descriptions

What do you think about book descriptions?

When someone asks us what our book is about, some of us are hamstrung. Having lived with the book for potentially months, we know the ins and outs of the story. Some of us launch into a massively detailed description of the book, the characters, the plots and sub-plots.

That’s not entirely helpful.

You’ve read a lot of book descriptions. I know I have. They either catch you or they don’t. Well, there’s another thing that can sometimes happen: the book description that tells too much. How irritating are those movie trailers that all but show you the entire film? We are all sophisticated viewers (and readers) so I don’t think we need every single beat of a story told in a description.

The reason I’m talking book descriptions is that I’m preparing my next book for publication. It’s called TREASON AT HANFORD: A HARRY TRUMAN MYSTERY. I’ve been re-reading it and making edits and changes most of the summer. I’ve got a cover concept (well, at least five) and I sent it to some of my fellow graphic designers to get their take. One of them came back: what’s the book about?

So I sent the description.

What’s problematic about a book featuring Harry Truman is that most folks know he was president and probably instantly jump to that conclusion when they think of Truman. But my tale takes place the year before he became vice president and then president. So I needed at least a sentence or two to lay the groundwork that I’m referring to Senator Truman and not President Truman.

After a few attempts, here’s what I wrote:

Before he became vice president in 1945, Senator Harry Truman led a congressional committee dedicated to ferreting out corruption during World War II. The investigators of the Truman Committee adhere to a simple credo: help the country win the war and bring our soldiers home.

In the spring of 1944, Truman receives a series of ominous letters from a lawyer out in Hanford, Washington. His client, a common farmer who lost his land when the government confiscated miles of territory for a secret project, has been drafted to keep him quiet about what he’s seen going on around a local warehouse with direct ties to the giant facility in the area.

Fearing the worst, Truman leads the investigation himself, bringing along Carl Hancock, a former policeman. Soon after they start poking around, Truman and Hancock witness a pair of brutally murdered corpses, a town clouded in secrecy, and the warehouse owner who is ready to pull strings and dismiss the pesky senator.

But the man from Independence, Missouri, is tenacious, and in no time, Truman and Hancock not only find themselves embroiled in the top-secret world of the Manhattan Project but also must confront the worst act of treason in American history since Benedict Arnold.

 

Analysis:

To me, paragraph one sets the stage in the reader’s mind that this is Senator Truman I’m writing about. Paragraph two features the incident that gets Truman’s attention and start the investigation. The third paragraph ups the stakes by throwing in corpses and the world of 1944. And the final paragraph—which could almost be a log line itself—tosses the phrases “Benedict Arnold” and “The Manhattan Project” into the mix, letting the reader know the just how high the stakes are.

I think it’s a good description and should tell potential readers whether or not they’d like the book.


Then there’s the elevator pitch. Maybe it’s the log line, the one-sentence version of the book. Kudos for any creative type who can sum up a work in a sentence. It’s crucial, mind you, but it’s a skill that must be learned if you don’t already have it.

Like I just wrote, the last paragraph of the description could serve as the elevator pitch, but I also have a sentence on the cover: Before Harry Truman dropped the bomb, he had to save it.

I debated whether or not to include ‘A Harry Truman Mystery’ or not as a sub-title and will likely opt not to have it and leave in the cover blurb. Not sure. Still tweaking the cover concept.

What’s the cover look like? Well, you’ll just have to watch a little bit longer.

What are  your thoughts on book descriptions? How do you structure them?