tcrow@taylorisd.org  

From bluebonnets and barbecue to Austin’s Bullock Museum, and a mention of our very own Taylor, Texas, Taylor High School librarian, Lynn Burns, has included many regional favorites in her book, Texas Wordsearch: Over 100 Puzzles to Celebrate the Lone Star State. Published in 2022, Burns was contacted by London publisher, Arcturus Publishing, about writing entertaining and educational word lists about her home state.

“In between teaching careers, because I’ve had two, I worked as a publishers rep selling books to schools for 8 years,” Burns said. “One of the publishers I worked with messaged me and said he was working with a British publisher who wanted to do this wordsearch and they wanted to find a native Texan to write the book.”

Burns submitted a sample word list for a puzzle entitled, Texas Eats. The publisher loved it, and offered her a contract along with a list of specifications.

“They told me how many word lists they needed, how long the words had to be, thirty words per puzzle, and they asked me to come up with some cute names for the puzzles,” Burns said.

In the preface, Burns writes, “Texas is a vast state encompassing over 261,000 thousand square miles. If Texas was a country, in size, it would rank as the 39^th largest.”

So how does a writer come up with enough words to adequately cover a topic as big as the Lone Star State?

“I started thinking about everything Texas,” Burns said. “I work best off of a plan, or an outline. Just like when you write a paper, you outline everything you want to cover in your paper. I did Notable People of Texas, Famous Hollywood stars, Texas Sporting Stars, and Cows Go Moo is about cattle ranching.”

Taylor is included in Name That City - Part III, on page 111.

A few months later, the publisher contacted Burns about writing a second book, this one entitled, The Great American Wordsearch Book.”

“They wanted to cover all aspects of America,” Burns said. “The history, the people, the culture. That’s how the second book was born, and it was published last September.”

Burns said one of the most exciting experiences from being an author is walking into a store and seeing her books on the shelf.

“I went into Barnes and Noble in La Frontera and it was on the shelf,” Burns said. “My granddaughter went to Florida for spring break and she sent me a text saying, ‘I found your book in a bookstore at DFW.’ She was so excited.”

In the future, Burns would like to write a children’s book and already has a few ideas. For now, she is working on a proposal for her next wordsearch book, this one with a literary theme.

Both of Burns books may be found in bookstores as well as on Amazon.