The Girl who Built a Kingdom on wheels

A not so fairy tale about a woman who was still becoming

Once upon a time, in a kingdom not so very far away, there lived a girl who had been given a peculiar sort of gift. She was curious.

Not the sort who asks why the sky is blue and is satisfied with the answer, but the sort who wonders why kingdoms rise and fall, and whether the people who write the rules have ever stopped to wonder who those rules are meant to serve.

Curiosity followed her as her family traveled, teaching her that the world was much too large to be understood from a single point of view. She collected interests the way other people collected pretty stones: history, fantastical worlds, philosophers long dead, and the impossible futures imagined by storytellers. She loved the idea that a person could step through the pages of a book and emerge somewhere entirely different.

Somewhere along the way, she fell in love. Not with a prince on a white horse, for those creatures are notoriously unreliable and generally terrible at modern transportation, but with the love of her life. In time, they built a family. Two small people came into their kingdom: a bright girl whose mind seemed forever to be reaching beyond the edges of her world, and a little boy with a sweet heart and an apparent personal vendetta against the structural integrity of household objects.

The woman loved them fiercely. She became a teacher, a keeper of schedules, a finder of missing things, a maker of meals, and a comforter of tears. She loved the life she'd built, but she began to wonder whether there might be room in it for something more. She didn't want less of her family. Just a little more room for herself.

For she carried another little kingdom within her, one filled with brave heroines, wicked villains, enchanted forests, complicated monsters, and lovers who dared to admit what they wanted. These were stories about love that burned, healed, frightened, and changed people.

She wondered why the world so often treated romance as frivolous, as though desire were silly and the stories people reached for to escape, to hope, or to feel alive again were somehow less worthy.

She knew better. Love was not a weakness in a kingdom. It was often the very thing holding it together.

Then a story reached her from a distant place. It was about a mobile bookstore, a little shop that could travel from town to town, bringing books to people who might never otherwise find them.

The idea took root.

A bookstore devoted to romance. Not a building waiting for people to come to it, but a place that could go out into the world and find them. She imagined shelves full of books, strangers discovering they loved the same impossible fictional man, and gatherings where women could laugh, make friends, and enjoy an evening for themselves without having to justify it.

For the first time, the little kingdom inside her seemed to have found a door.

So she went looking for a carriage. Not a pumpkin. She had no interest in figuring out how exactly one permits and insures a gourd. No, she searched the state of Georgia for a bus. A very ordinary bus, with an engine that required attention and electrical systems that did not care one whit about fairy tales.

She called it Spicy Sammy's Book Bus.

It turned out that dreaming up a bookstore and actually building one were two very different things. There were decisions to make, things to learn, and more moving parts than she could have imagined. Some days, she wondered whether she'd mistaken herself for someone more capable. Perhaps she was better at imagining kingdoms than building them. Perhaps she'd reached too far.

There were days she wanted to sit on the floor and declare the entire kingdom closed.

But she kept going, because she couldn't quite let go of the picture in her head: a woman stepping aboard after a difficult week and finding a story that made her feel something she'd almost forgotten; friends laughing among the shelves; a reader discovering a new favorite author.

She wanted buying a book to be more than another errand. She wanted it to be an experience, a reason to gather, a special moment when a world created by another human could make living in this one a little more enjoyable.

Perhaps the bus would park outside a winery, a brewery, a festival, or a gathering of women who needed an evening of their own. Perhaps someone would arrive looking for a little entertainment and leave with a new friend, a favorite book, or a story she'd remember for years.

If you ask whether the woman lived happily ever after, I cannot honestly tell you. Her story is still being written.

But she has done something she once wasn't sure she could do. She has taken a little piece of her imagination and given it wheels.

And now, her kingdom is open.

Come wander the shelves, talk books, and bring your favorite people. The woman built this little kingdom because she loves romance, she loves books, and she wants to share that love with others.

So come aboard, dear reader. Find your next great love story and be part of the adventure.

Who knows? You might just fall in love with reading.