I have been writing The Born and the Made for about 10 years. I am a police and fire 911 dispatcher, and a family man, so there is little time for writing. The book is complete and has gone through numerous editings. I enjoy making the book myself, and putting it into the little free libraries that dot the city I live in.

Here is one of the emails I received from one of those who picked it up, a person I do not know from Adam:

Dear Mr. Spande,

I recently picked up a copy of your book in a little free library in Minneapolis.

I usually take a while to decide whether to take a book from a little free library, but I don’t regret putting yours into my backpack. I admit, part of the draw was the hand bound cover, the glue, the little square with the title and author and the painted sides of the pages. I think I am the first one to read this copy, because I ended up gently pulling the pages apart more than once. When I started reading I was intrigued immediately.

The opening is really very good, as I read it I felt a little as though I were watching a movie. The opening also gave me a good starting point in case I needed to re orient myself later on in the story. I fell in love with your characters quickly. Johnny is a great protagonist, and I love Cot. She was really well written and fun to read about. You also did a very good job of making her human. Most strong young girls are portrayed as somewhat heartless, as though they exchanged all their feelings to be tough. Cot was not like that, but there was no doubt to any of her strength.

I don’t dislike any of your characters. They were all well written and had a lot of personality. Particularly I liked Molly White, Mr.Edwards, Lucius, Cot and Johnny’s parents, Eli and Kim and Kimberly. You balanced a lot of elements in this book, and I have to commend you for that.

Between the insane, the sweet, the unspeakable and the mystic I was never bored. I think that sometimes authors feel they must pick a theme and stick with it, but your blend of ideas was really quite wonderful...

I hope my feedback has been of some interest to you. If there is anything you would like me to elaborate on, don’t hesitate to ask. It has been a pleasure reading your book, I really enjoyed it.

Best,

Ebba