Rusty Strait | Senior Reporter

The question has come up many times in my writing career. Frankly, there are no specific answers. One day, fiction tops the chart; another day, non-fiction does. When “Gone With the Wind” was published, writers started clicking on their manual typewriters to emulate other sagas, and so it went. Non-fiction takes center stage when popular issues carry messages that invite the writer to dive in, like Alaskan Novels, for instance.

You may be utterly surprised, but if you don’t believe me, check the web and see the surge in interest for gay books, both fiction and non-fiction. Why is this? Primarily, I believe it’s driven by straight parents who discover one of their little darlings has identified as LGBTQ+, which is becoming way more common than you may think. They want to understand what “causes” it. Nothing causes it. Scientists have thoroughly examined this and come to the conclusion that it is genetic, and in males, it mainly comes from the mother, rather than the father. It is common for twin boys to be gay. Social connections between teenagers have made LGBTQ+ individuals more accepted than in previous generations. Do you know any teenager without a LGBTQ+ friend?

The Catholic church has always frowned upon same-sex unions. In today’s paper, Pope Francis has suggested there could be ways to bless same-sex unions. Pope Francis has also stated further, “Matrimony is a union between a man and a woman,” but when responding to questions about homosexual unions and blessings, he said, “pastoral charity requires patience and understanding, and that regardless, priests cannot become judges who only deny, reject, and exclude.” I take no position on the issue. I am only responding to many requests about what sells books, and what sells books are facts. Almost every major publisher is doing great business with gay books that are often turned into films.

I haven’t had a chance to read all my emails this week and will try some other writing enigmas next time. Hold your breath. I’ll be back. Just sayin’.

rustystrait@gmail.com

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CHICAGO (AP) — As the new school year swings into gear, some students carry heavier worries than keeping up with homework: Demand has been growing steadily for children’s books that address traumatic events such as school shootings.

Sales of books for young readers on violence, grief, and emotions have increased for nine straight years, with nearly six million copies sold in 2021 — more than double the amount in 2012, according to NPD BookScan, which tracks U.S. retail sales of print books.

As anxiety and depression rates have soared among young Americans, educators and advocates say children’s books can play a role in helping them cope.

“While it might be second nature to try to shield kids from the harsher realities of life and scary news, it’s proving difficult to avoid big society issues,” said Kristine Enderle, editorial director at Magination Press, the children’s publishing arm of the American Psychology Association. “Kids face these issues and challenges in their day-to-day life.”

One book, “I’m Not Scared … I’m Prepared,” was reprinted several times to meet demand after the massacre at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School in May, according to the National Center for Youth Issues, the nonprofit group that published the book. The story, first published in 2014, features a teacher who shows children what to do when a “dangerous someone” is in their school.

Bookstores around the country see interest in titles from the genre rise and fall depending on local and national headlines, according to bookseller Barnes & Noble.

Some newer titles engage directly with real-world gun violence.

In “Numb to This,” a graphic novel released this month, author Kindra Neely details the 2015 Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon, which she survived, and the aftermath as she tries to heal amid repeated shootings elsewhere. Initially, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers editorial director Andrea Colvin said she was shocked when Keely pitched the idea.

“I had to remember that, yes, this is what our stories are like now. This is what young people have experienced,” Colvin said.

Michele Gay, whose 7-year-old daughter Josephine was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, turned to children’s books herself to help her two surviving daughters. One picture book she read to them was “The Ant Hill Disaster,” about a boy ant who is afraid to go back to school after it is destroyed.

“It was one of many books that was of comfort to them and gave them a little bit of confidence to just face one more day, one more minute, because we can do it together,” said Gay, who advocates for improved security in schools through a nonprofit she co-founded, Safe and Sound Schools.

Parents should make sure books addressing trauma are age-appropriate and backed by psychologists, experts say.

It’s important to be aware of whether children are aware of or feeling stress about frightening things in the news, said Aryeh Sova, a Chicago psychologist who works with children who attended the July 4 parade in suburban Highland Park, Illinois, where seven people were killed in a shooting. A child asking lots of questions about an event may signify that they are anxious or fixated on it, he said.

“If it’s coming from the kid’s need, then books could be a great way for kids to learn and to read together with their parents and to review it on their own and to process it at their own speed, at their own pace,” Sova said.

But bringing up violence when a child isn’t worried about it could increase their anxiety unnecessarily, Sova said.

Some young children experience gun violence at alarmingly high rates, particularly in communities of color.

For them, it is important to start early to address the effects, said Ian Ellis James, an Emmy award-winning Sesame Street writer known by his stage name William Electric Black. He is the author of the illustrated children’s book “ A Gun Is Not Fun.” He said young children in areas afflicted by gun violence are more aware of it than parents may think.

“They know about flowers and candles and cards in the street. They walk by them every day,” he said.

Through children’s literature and theater, Black works to reduce urban gun violence. “If you start when they’re 5, and you go back when you’re 6, 7, 8, 9, you’re going to change the behavior,” he said.

In the spring, he will collaborate with New York public school P.S. 155 in East Harlem with a series of gun violence awareness and prevention workshops for early readers, using puppets, storytelling and repetition.

“They won’t even get rid of assault weapons here in this country. So my thing is, we have to go in and we’ve got to help them help themselves save themselves,” Black said. “We’re really kind of failing at that.”

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“We are thrilled with the first day sales,” said David Drake, publisher of the Penguin Random House imprint Crown. “They reflect the widespread excitement that readers have for President Obama’s highly anticipated and extraordinarily written book.” The only book by a former White House resident to come close to the early pace of “A Promised Land” is the memoir by Obama’s wife, Michelle Obama, whose “Becoming” sold 725,000 copies in North America its first day and has topped 10 million worldwide since its release in 2018.

“Becoming” is still so in demand that Crown, which publishes both Obamas and reportedly paid around $60 million for their books, has yet to release a paperback. As of midday Wednesday, “A Promised Land” was No. 1 on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com. James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble, said that the superstore chain easily sold more than 50,000 copies its first day and hoped to reach half a million within 10 days.

“So far it has been neck and neck with Michelle Obama’s book,” he said. By comparison, Bill Clinton’s “My Life” sold around 400,000 copies in North America its first day and George W. Bush’s “Decision Points” around 220,000, with sales for each memoir currently between 3.5 and 4 million copies. The fastest selling book in memory remains J.K. Rowling’s seventh and final Harry Potter novel, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” which came out in 2007 and sold more than 8 million copies within 24 hours.

Obama’s 768-page memoir, which came out Tuesday and has a list price of $45, had unusually risky timing for a book of such importance to the author, to readers and to the publishing industry. It came out just two weeks after Election Day and could have been overshadowed had the race still been in doubt or perhaps unwanted by distressed Obama fans if President Donald Trump had defeated Democratic nominee Joe Biden. But Biden won and his victory likely renews interest in an era when he was Obama’s trusted and popular vice president.

Obama himself acknowledges that he didn’t intend for the book, the first of two planned volumes, to arrive so close to a presidential election or to take nearly four years after he left the White House — months longer than for “My Life” and two years longer than “Decision Points.” In the introduction to “A Promised Land,” dated August 2020, Obama writes that “the book kept growing in length and scope” as he found he needed more words than expected to capture a given moment — a bind many authors well understand.

He was also working under conditions he “didn’t fully anticipate,” from the pandemic to the Black Lives Matters protests, to, “most troubling of all,” how the country’s “democracy seems to be teetering on the brink of crisis.” Because of the pandemic, Obama will not go on the all-star arena tour Michelle Obama had for “Becoming.” But he benefits from the attention of any memoir by a former president and by the special attention for Obama, who has the rare stature among politicians of writing his own books and for attracting as much or more attention for how he tells a story than for the story itself. Obama has already written two acclaimed, million-selling works, “Dreams from My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope, which came out in 2006.

His new book covers some of the same time period as his previous ones, while continuing his story through the first 2 1/2 years of his presidency and the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden by the Navy SEALS. Publishers Weekly praised the book as “shot through with memorable turns of phrase,” while other reviews were more qualified, calling the book all too reflective of Obama’s thoughtful, even-handed style. The New York Times’ Jennifer Szalai wrote that the “most audacious thing” about “A Promised Land” is “the beaming portrait” of Obama on the cover.

The Washington Post’s Carlos Lozada noted that in “domestic policy and foreign affairs, in debates over culture and race, Obama splits differences, clings to the middle ground and trusts in process as much as principle.” “It turns out he is not a ‘revolutionary soul’ but a reformist one, ‘conservative in temperament if not in vision.’ Behind those dreams, the audacity and all that promise is a stubborn streak of moderation,” Lozada wrote.

Obama’s book is the highlight of publishing’s holiday season and for some independent bookstores, the potential difference between remaining in business or closing. Publishing sales have been surprisingly stable during the pandemic, but much of the benefit has gone to Amazon.com as readers turned increasingly to online purchases. The American Booksellers Association, the independent sellers’ trade group, has warned that hundreds of stores could go out of business if holiday sales fall short.

Kris Kleindienst, co-owner of Left Bank Books in St. Louis, anticipates selling around 1,000 copies by the end of the year, a number which makes “a HUGE difference” for annual revenues, she wrote in an email. Sarah McNally, owner of McNally Jackson Books in Manhattan, said she sold around 600 copies in the first 24 hours, a pace exceeded only by the final Harry Potter book. “It’s not hard to be a bright spot this year, a year when we would have gone out of business without federal aid,” McNally said. “But Obama does feel like a savior, as do our customers for buying this from us.”

-HILLEL ITALIE AP National Writer

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Quentin Tarantino’s next work of imagination will be in book form.

The Oscar-winning director has a two-book deal with Harper, beginning with a novelization of “Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood” that is scheduled for next summer. “Once Upon a Time” will be a true Tarantino production: The book will come out first as a mass market paperback, like the old pulp novels the filmmaker loves, and will offer “a fresh, playful and shocking departure from the film,” according to Harper.

The film version of “Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood” was released in 2019 and stars Leonardo DiCaprio as an actor and Brad Pitt as his stunt double. Nominated for 10 Academy Awards and winner of two, the movie is set in Los Angeles in 1969, around the time of the killings by Charles Manson’s followers.

“In the ’70s movie novelizations were the first adult books I grew up reading,” Tarantino said in a statement Tuesday. “And to this day I have a tremendous amount of affection for the genre. So as a movie-novelization aficionado, I’m proud to announce ’Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood’ as my contribution to this often marginalized, yet beloved sub-genre in literature. I’m also thrilled to further explore my characters and their world in a literary endeavor that can (hopefully) sit alongside its cinematic counterpart.”

Tarantino’s second book will be the nonfiction “Cinema Speculation,” which Harper is calling “a deep dive into the movies of the 1970’s” that draws in part on the director’s admiration for the late New Yorker critic Pauline Kael. A release date has not been determined.

“The book will be a rich mix of essays, reviews, personal writing, and tantalizing “what if’s,” from one of cinema’s most celebrated filmmakers, and its most devoted fan,” according to Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Several directors have written fiction in recent years, including Brian De Palma, David Cronenberg and Guillermo del Toro, and Michael Mann has been working on a prequel to his crime classic “Heat.” Tarantino, 57, may well have more time in the future for books.

He has said that he will retire from filmmaking after he completes 10 movies: “Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood” was his 9th. Tarantino had not turned 30 when he made his first feature-length film, “Reservoir Dogs,” and he has claimed most directors lose their edge in their later years. Writing has long been part of his transition plans.

“I think when it comes to theatrical movies, I’ve come to the end of the road,” Tarantino, who has yet to announce plans for his next film, told GQ Australia last year. “I see myself writing film books and starting to write theater, so I’ll still be creative. I just think I’ve given all I have to give to movies.”

AP Film Writer Jake Coyle contributed to this report.

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