The Bones of "Stud Bunnies"

Dusty D spent the morning laying out the Table of Contents, or ToC, for her book "Stud Bunnies and the Underwear Club: Tales from the Ypsilanti Archives," due out this winter.

It turned out to be a very interesting and rewarding experience. Originally I'd just piled all my stories into a list to submit to the publisher. Time was short and I didn't have time to make thoughtful arrangements. But this morning I cut up my ToC list into the individual stories and had a wonderful time seeing relationships, finding thematic segues between stories, and imagining the reader's experience and what would please them most. I'm particularly happy with a section dealing with the Depression:

You Use Witch Sugar? (humorous, food-related)
Luminous Pork Chop Comes to Light: So Does Cause (humorous, food-related)
Ypsilanti's First Supermarket (food-related, more in-depth story)
Locavores in 1930s Ypsilanti (also deals with city groceries, Depression)
The Sadness in a Depression-Era Grocery Receipt (groceries, Depression, sad)
Needles, Rags, and an Old Peach Tree (Depression, food preservation, upbeat)
The Angel of the Depression (Depression, food, social services, uplifting!)
Ypsilanti's Depression-Era Zoo (Depression, offbeat, fun)*
Cash for Clunkers in 1938 Ypsilanti (Depression, interesting, offbeat, cars)
The Golden Age of Free Parking in Ypsilanti (cars, funny)
New Motoring License Requirement Grievous Imposition to Ypsilanti's Elite (cars, funny, the privileged class)
1906 Letter from a 20-Year-Old Servant Girl Working at 118 South Huron Street, Ypsilanti (rare artifact**, lots of images, stark contrast to privileged class)

And so on. It's really fun to try to knit them together in an alluring way while spreading out stories with images and those without, plus 3 super-long stories among lots of shorter ones, plus not juxtaposing frothy fun ones with stories about death and murder. At any rate, I sure am grateful I'm blessed to be in the position to make a book! Very thankful, mostly to my sweetie. Back to work now!

*this will be in this Thursday's Courier, God willin' and the creek don't rise.
**thanks to Kristin P., who gave her permission to use these images (I'll thank her in the book too)