The last Saturday in April each year is celebrated as Independent Bookstore Day across the country. On April 27, Birchtree Bookstore in Leesburg plans a full day of activities from a morning storytime to an afternoon local author showcase. Also, Middleburg Books has two special author events this week, featuring Mike Vickers on Thursday and Scott Gates on Saturday. 

This week, we also put the spotlight on some local authors by highlighting some of the new books that have come across our desks during the past few months showcasing first time and experienced authors. 

Black Swan Impact 

By Helen Hynson Vettori

In the years before the COVID-19 pandemic, Leesburg resident Helen Hynson Vettori was on the front line of the national planning for just such an emergency. But when the virus arrived, she had retired from her post at the Department of Homeland Security and endured the lockdown with the rest of us. 

She put her time in relative isolation to productive work—writing “Black Swan Impact,” the first book in a planned sci-fi political thriller trilogy. Set in 2113, the book follows the efforts of Dr. Syia Case, the National Institutes of Health’s director of epidemiology, as she works to guide the nation through a deadly pandemic even as the president and other political leaders steer the county on a questionable course. 

“I wrote it in response to my utter dismay at the poor response to COVID-19,” Vettori said in a recent interview. “The reason why it was particularly burdensome to me was I was in the federal government workforce planning and preparing for such an event. I retired before COVID. But even though it was a couple of years after I retired, I felt sure that all the planning and preparing that we had done would be a good base, and that people who had taken over the reins would move forward and adjust as necessary. Blunders and missteps just came in abundance. And it really, it got me very, I'll say uneasy and disappointed.”

A seventh generation Washingtonian, Vettori felt her public service calling early in life. 

“When I was five years old, I had one of those little pedal fire engines and every time I would hear a crash, which was probably at least once a month, I'd get my little firetruck pedal down to it and watch with awe how the rescue squad aided in and helped,” she said. “So, when it was time for me to go to kindergarten, my mother said you have to go in now she was trying to get me to go in and I was hesitant. She said, ‘why don't you want to go into school?’ I said because I'm going to be a firefighter and I don't have to go to the school. I have to go to fireman school.”

She did grow up to become a paramedic EMT. She was doing that and working as a schoolteacher at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks.  

That event prompted her to do more. She joined the Department of Homeland Security as a senior medical intelligence analyst. 

“Ultimately, due to reorganizations and this and that, I ended up in the National Incident Response Unit where I was cast to be the person who would plan and prepare for biological incidents to include pandemics,” she said.

“I had to look ahead and analyze what things were on the radar, and what possible interventions they should or could take. And it was only then that I realized there's a lot out there and that Mother Nature alone can just devastate us—not to mention terrorism or accidents. That just hadn't really occurred to me,” she said. “9/11, I think, was pivotal for many, many, many people, perhaps everyone in the United States and even around the world. It certainly was pivotal for me and the direction I took and my interests. To this day, I'm still very much interested in Mother Nature, pandemics, how people respond to biological threats.”

While retired and on the sidelines as COVID-19 spread around the world, Vettori said she and her former co-workers were frustrated watching the federal response.  

“We were just dumbfounded and, quite frankly, appalled. When it's new, you're gonna make mistakes, but you fix them and move forward with very, very firm and foreseeable milestones. I just never saw that happening,” she said. 

Do Dr. Case and her colleagues fare better in their response to the Pyongyang Virus in 2113? “Black Swan Impact” was released March 28 and is available in bookstores and online in book and audio format. 

Vettori plans to be at Birch Tree Bookstore in Leesburg on Saturday, April 27 from noon to 3 p.m. at part of a local author showcase on Independent Bookstore Day. 

Learn more at helenhvettori.wixsite.com/black-swan-impact.

—Norman K. Styer

Heaven in Your Home

By Soren and Ever Johnson

This year, the Trinity House Café and Market in downtown Leesburg celebrates its 10^thanniversary. The storefront was an outreach of the family ministry launched by Soren and Ever Johnson in 2006. 

Now, the couple is expanding further with its Trinity House Community Group programs already established in seven states and Puerto Rico. That work is supported by a new book, “Heaven in Your Home: Letters & Guide.”

“This is a book that my wife and I co-wrote for families and couples to recapture a vision for their family's life of the Christian faith, and also provide practical strategies for daily life and for when things get messy,” Soren Johnson said in a recent interview.

“In our work with couples and families, we're seeing that families are so busy, and they often can make the mistake of thinking faith is just something else I'm going to fit in when I have a few minutes, instead of seeing faith as the foundation for everything they're doing,” he said. “We are certainly seeing families that are overstretched, overwhelmed, too busy, and often missing these opportunities that are right in front of them to really put their children on a path to lifelong faith in Christ. Along with that, we're seeing a rise in mental anxiety, the challenge of screens and digital media, and various addictions. Our book is an attempt to help families to hit reset and clarify their ultimate goals as a family.”

Through their nonprofit, the Johnsons work to engage families at the coffee shop, offer advice through home workshops and e-letters, and help establish local Trinity House programs in parishes and churches that offer opportunities for participants to gather five times a year to compare notes, encourage one another and grow in fellowship.

“Heaven in Your Home” is a guidebook to those family journeys. 

“We have two kids in college and three at home. The years do go fast, and I haven't met anyone who late in life regrets time they spent with their family. On the contrary, they're always regretting that they overvalued work or they overvalued a hobby and they underinvested in those quick years that they had with their children,” he said. “This is a chance to share that vision and kind of set up strategies that families can pick up.”

The book is available for order online or for pick up at the Trinity House Café & Market at 101 E. Market St. in Leesburg. 

Learn more at trinityhousecommunity.org.

—Norman K. Styer

Kingfish of The Lodge: The Extraordinary Governorship of Huey P. Long

By Tyler Lucas

Loudoun resident and University of Virginia student Tyler Lucas recently released his first book, a biography on Huey Long, former Louisiana governor and senator during the 1920s and 1930s. 

Lucas, a history buff, said while he first learned about Long in middle school, as he continued to study his life he was impressed by Long’s genuine concern for the welfare of Louisiana residents. 

“He sincerely believed that large swaths of the population were being taken advantage of by the current political establishment at the time and by the corporate interests and the state,” Lucas said. “A lot of people were going through hard times during the depression, and he really wanted to help everyone, even African Americans at the time. He was remarkably progressive in his racial views.”

Lucas called Long a “populist politician” and said the book focuses on his life and early part of his career as governor. Long went on to become a U.S. senator and run for president before being assassinated in 1935. 

“He offers a great insight into depression era politics and skillful use of political power for good or for ill,” Lucas said. 

Leesburg’s Thomas Balch Library proved to be a critical resource as Lucas was writing his book. 

“They have a fantastic selection on southern history, and I really used that to help me with my research particularly with the beginning of my book where I really dive deep into Louisiana history and what all is going on and various factors that helped lead to the rise of Huey Long,” he said. 

This is only the first of what Lucas hopes will be a long line of books he authors. He is already working on a sequel that focuses on the second half of Long’s life. 

Lucas said he wants to show other young authors that they don’t have to wait to begin publishing books. 

“It’s pretty amazing how accessible it is to young people today to be able to do high level research and writing and then publish your findings, whether that be in the scientific field or the history field or fiction,” he said. 

Kingfish of The Lodge: The Extraordinary Governorship of Huey P. Long is available on Amazon. 

—Hanna Pampaloni

The Mad Scientist Club Series

By Sharon K. Solomon

Lansdowne resident and author Sharon K. Solomon has published 10 books since her first in 2014. They vary from children’s picture books to historical fiction for teens to a series that uses math and science to solve mysteries. 

The 77-year-old grandmother said she likes information and is a “fact junkie.”

Her series, the Mad Scientist Club is three books deep, with several more on the horizon. 

The first book, “The Pencil That Wouldn’t Die,” follows 10-year-old twins Sam and Abby as they use scientific procedures to try to prove the theory that the average lead pencil can draw a line 30 miles long. As they work to prove the theory, they deal with the fact that the pencil gets smaller and even misplace it. 

She said she got the idea for the book from the lid of a Snapple drink years ago.

“I used to drink a lot of Snapple and the lid had fun facts, one said the average lead pencil can draw a line 30 miles long,” she said. “Basically, I set out and created a fictitious town and these twins, a boy and a girl to entice more readers and wrote the story.”

She said her grandkids would often read her manuscripts before being published and offer suggestions. 

In “The Pencil that Wouldn’t Die,” they suggested adding a little tension to the story, like the twins losing the pencil, to keep readers interested.

In the second book of the series, “The Lost Locket,” released in 2022 it follows the same twins but includes a few more friends to the club. In that book one of the new friends loses her grandmother’s locket so the club makes its own metal detector to find it. She said instructions on how to make a metal detector are included at the back of the book. 

She said she made a prototype based on the instructions to make sure it was doable.

The third book in the series, set to be released soon, is called “The Something’s Fishy Mystery”and focuses on polluted water on a farm in the fictitious town of Jackson City. The Mad Scientist Club makes their own microscope—instructions for how to do this are also included in the book— test the water and discover it has E. Coli and petition the city to clean it up. 

She hopes readers like the mystery and use of math and science in solving it.

“If you get the right book or books for the right kids, they just want to keep reading,” she said referring to her days as a reading specialist where she helped students develop a love of reading. She said finding the right book that holds the interest and is on the right level for a child makes a difference. 

Order the Mad Scientist Club books at sharonsbooks.net. 

—Alexis Gustin

Images of America-Sterling 

by Brittany DeLong

Sterling resident Brittany DeLong wanted to capture the love she had for her community as well as the tight knit nature of the town that sits 45 minutes west of Washington, DC. 

She said as a lifelong resident she felt the need to publish a comprehensive history on the area because one hadn’t been written before. 

“My reason was two-pronged—my personal tie and also my curiosity after doing some research and finding some random stuff about Sterling,” she said. “There wasn’t anything dedicated to Sterling. There are books about Herndon and Leesburg, and I just felt like it was time to do it.”

She got the green light for the book in 2020 from Arcadia Publishing, one of the largest local history publishers in the country and thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic has had four years to work on it. 

“It was not the best time to kick off a book project right before a pandemic,” she said, laughing.

DeLong used the Thomas Balch Library and the Library of Congress for part of her research, but said the vast majority of the content of the book came from community outreach on Facebook.

“I’m a member of every local history group you can imagine, and I put out a very large blast saying ‘this is what I’m doing and if anyone is interested to reach out,’ and it went from there,” she said. 

She said she followed leads from “cousins that knew someone that knew someone” and gathered stories and pictures all along the way. 

“It really encapsulated to me why I love Sterling,” she said. “Those who were reaching out were excited to share their family history and pictures.”

She said she learned a lot about the place she called home, including that its history was a lot older than she thought. 

She said she learned about and included in her book the story of a Civil War Skirmish—the Second Dranesville Battle— that happened where the Northern Virginia Community College Campus is today. 

DeLong called the book a “community effort” and said she wouldn’t have been able to complete it without the help of her beloved community.

“I wouldn’t have been able to pull this together just from using purely formal resources like the library just because there wasn’t enough information in catalogues of libraries or the history,” she said. 

She said she also learned a lot about the African American farmers in Sterling.

She dedicated a chapter to African American contributions in Sterling, highlighting the Nokes, Edds and Fitts families. 

Flora Edds owned Pidgeon Hill Farm, where the current CountrySide neighborhood is. Edds had a large dairy farm that shipped goods into Washington, D.C., every day. When her husband William died in 1938, Flora became the primary manager of the farm. The farm had an iconic silo that could be seen for miles away that remained a Sterling landmark and was incorporated into the design of the CountrySide Marketplace shopping center until it was demolished in 2013 after the shopping center was renovated. 

She said the biggest thing she has learned from writing the book is the pride and love Sterling residents have for their community. 

She said she still gets people who reach out with more pictures or more stories and she plans to create a companion website for all of the new information she has received since the book was released as well as for pictures and stories that didn’t make it into the book. 

She said, there may even be a sequel. 

“My mind goes to all of the places of what I can do,” she said. 

You can pick up Images of America Sterling on Amazon or in a local bookstore.

—Alexis Gustin

There’s a Triceratops on My Toe

By Wendy Buck

Another Loudoun author who just released her first book is mom-to-three Wendy Buck, who said her daughters were the inspiration to her simple and fun story on dinosaurs. 

“I wanted to have a playful, colorful way for children to learn about dinosaurs, especially some of the lesser-known ones,” Buck said. 

The book also includes a pronunciation guide so children, and their parents, can learn the proper way to say the dinosaur types. 

Buck said the reason for the book really lies in her desire to see parents cultivate their children’s interests. 

“I have spent a lot of time reading about dinosaurs with my daughters, especially my oldest daughter …  I just loved that she was interested in it, and I could tell that she was very curious about it,” she said. 

Buck said the story is simple enough for toddlers to follow but advanced enough to keep her 7-year-old, who is learning to read, interested in reading it to her younger siblings—especially since they help form the basis of the  characters.

“I could see their faces, especially my older two, that it dawned on them. I could see the recognition of, ‘hey this looks like me. I know who this is,’” she said. 

But Buck said even though she enjoys writing, she doesn’t have any plans to publish a second book, unless inspiration strikes like it did for this one. 

“The words just kind of came to me one night. I just kind of typed it out on my phone,” she said. “… I think if something comes along organically and that inspiration strikes then I would write another one.”

Buck is also working on getting her book out into the community. She is hoping to read it at an upcoming author event at Cedar Lane Elementary School in Ashburn as well as sell it at various pop-up events in the county. 

There’s a Triceratops on My Toe is available on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble.

—Hanna Pampaloni