I wanted to spend this post plugging one of my existing books, a word search, instead of talking vaguely about the work in progress. And yes, I did write today. I’ll have the progress and excerpt below.
I dipped my toes into self-publishing with two word searches. I know, eyes roll, because there’s a lot of low-effort puzzle books out there. Unfortunately, I’m not capable of low effort. I’ll leave it to the reader to judge the quality (it’s really high!) but I can attest that a lot of time when into both books.
Yesterday, in tribute to the spammers trying to post junk in my comments from a Libya-registered IP, I posted the Libya page from my Countries of the World book. You can check it out. All 248 puzzles in that book are like that. You could use it as a reference guide.
Why word search? Well, I thought it would be easy. (Ha). I did get to learn how to use KDP and Ingram Spark. I had to learn Scribus to get the layout I wanted for Countries of the World. Then I went back and used that knowledge to remake History Word Search.
When it comes time to publish the paperbacks and hardcovers in my upcoming series, I’ll be able to do the layout work myself. Win!
History Word Search
Anyway, yesterday’s post got a lot of clicks (for me. Not by viral standards.) Given that, I wanted to put a page of the History Word Search out there. But not the word search.
See, this book collects history facts from each year, puts them into little paragraphs with some context and a little panache. There’s an accompanying word search using key words and phrases from the history facts. The two pages face each other. Customer like the history part more than the word search, actually.
Links to both books on Amazon and Ingram Spark are on my website’s Word Search Books page.
Without further ado: 1951.
Now for the work in progress
Date 4/14/2026
Words (Draft) 1788
Words (Elsewhere) 0
Words (Total) 1788
Characters (Draft) 9874
Characters (Elsewhere) 0
Characters (Total) 9874
Session Target 1080
Patricia shook her head without raising it off the chair’s back. “It’s not an invitation thing, kitten. Nobody’s in by choice. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything.” She raised her head and looked at Wendy. “That’s the honest truth. And you won’t figure it out. Just accept it’s a thing that happens.”