Self-Help 101 or: How I Learned to Take Over the World Through Tolerating My Family

By L.G. Keltner

Book 1 in the Self-Help 101 Series

Dani Finklemeier has decided to write a self-help book about how to take over the world, but she’s not sure where to start. After all, she’s only seventeen and looking for a better way to make money than babysitting. She buys a self-help book that promises to teach her how to write a self-help book in the hope of getting the job done.

Not that it’ll be easy to get any work done this holiday season. Her family is staying at the house for Christmas, and fights break out almost immediately. Dani also has to deal with the fallout from an unexpected kiss with her best friend Seth and the feelings that go along with it. On edge around her family and unsure how to interact with the one person she’s trusted with everything in the past, she can only take what inspiration she can from the crazy circumstances surrounding her and see what happens.

One way or another, it should be an interesting holiday.

• Language: English
• Publisher: L.G. Keltner
• Release date: Dec 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310979101

L.G. Keltner

L.G. Keltner spends most of her time trying to write while also cleaning up after her crazy but wonderful kids and hanging out with her husband. Her favorite genre of all time is science fiction, and she’s been trying to write novels since the age of six. Needless to say, those earliest attempts weren’t all that good.Her non-writing hobbies include astronomy and playing Trivial Pursuit.

Book preview

Self-Help 101 or:

How I Learned to Take Over the World Through Tolerating My Family

By L.G. Keltner

Self-Help 101 or: How I Learned to Take Over the World Through Tolerating My Family

Copyright 2015 by L.G. Keltner

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by L.G. Keltner. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover Art by L.G. Keltner

This book is dedicated to all the awkward teenagers of the world, and also to all the awkward adults who are still trying to make sense of life. May you all learn to conquer the world in your own unique way.

Table of Contents

Disclaimer

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Afterword

About the Author

Disclaimer:

It should be noted that the wisdom I obtained through observing my own family has not produced a definitive guide on how to take over the world. For best results, you should observe your own family to learn what you can from them and combine the results of your research with the advice offered in this book. If you don’t have any family, a group of crazy friends should also suffice.

Any misfortune that befalls you in your quest for world domination is not the fault of the author.

Seriously, don’t even think about blaming me. My bank account has nothing to offer you.

Chapter 1

In which you, the reader, come to me for advice and I do nothing but show you how I struggled to start writing this book in the first place.

If you’re reading this book, I can assume you either want to take over the world and are looking for some pointers, or you simply want to be entertained. I hope that you’re able to get what you want from the experience of reading this, but there’s no guarantee. No refunds, either. You may walk away from this scratching your head and wondering what in the world is wrong with me, and I won’t lie. That would be an understandable response.

Now that I’ve probably scared at least half of you off, I’ll start by saying that my name is Dani, and as I write this, I am seventeen years old. When I first sat down to write this book an entire two months ago, holidays could bite the big one as far as I was concerned. Sure, the gifts were nice (unless they came in the form of a hideous sweater from Great Aunt Ruth Ann), and the food was good (again, as long as it had been nowhere near Great Aunt Ruth Ann), but none of that made up for the fact that I was expected to co-exist in a house with ten assorted family members for nearly three days.

Not that all of them are that bad, but the sheer lack of elbow room would make it difficult to get any work done. I just knew I was doomed. Yeah, most people my age weren’t bound to be all that concerned with producing their magnum opus during Christmas break, but I’m not most people, and the prospect of listening to my cousin Corey’s far-fetched tales of personal greatness and dodging Grandma Pearl’s suggestions for how to be a proper lady made me shudder.

Sitting at my desk, alone, in the quiet of my bedroom, I took a long sip of my Earl Grey tea. I had less than two hours before the house erupted in glad tidings and familial discord, and I planned to make the most of that precious time.

After setting my mug down beside my brand new notebook with Keep Calm and Plot Your Revenge written on the cover, I picked up the book that came in the mail the day before. The front image featured a coiffed man with a gameshow-host smile and top-dollar suit. I realized this cover art could inspire two possible reactions in anyone who saw it. It could inspire absolute belief that this man had the answers to all the questions that plagued humanity, or it could inspire absolute certainty that this man had ripped off anyone dumb enough to purchase this lame attempt to make a quick buck.

Yes, on some level I felt dirty for even having forked out a portion of my babysitting money to buy the thing. The cover almost dissuaded me from doing it, but the title ultimately won me over. Self-Help 101: How to Write a Self-Help Book Regardless of Your Level of Expertise. It seemed like just the thing I needed to help me get my book-writing project started. Worst case scenario, if it didn’t prove to be helpful at all, I planned to display it on my bookshelf and claim that I bought it ironically. The fact that the author’s name was listed as Richard Moneymaker Johnson certainly would have lent credence to that claim.

Prying back the aesthetically offensive cover, I glanced briefly at the lengthy introductory section. It appeared at first glance to be filled with the usual self-aggrandizing pep-talky drivel, so I felt confident as I skipped it entirely.

I paused as I reached the page that declared Chapter 1: A Brief Summary of What You’ll Learn From This Book. This made me shake my head. Or you could just start by teaching me what I want to know, I grumbled. But sure, I’ll keep reading. Why not?

Step 1: Select a Topic

I smiled. Well, I already managed that. Do I get a prize or something? Even though I was apparently ahead of the game, I continued reading the paragraphs that followed. Though I might not have missed anything crucial if I’d decided to skip it, I might have missed an opportunity for entertainment. Considering how much the book cost, I wasn’t about to let that happen.

This step might sound simple, but it isn’t. The topic you choose to write about will play a large role in determining your success. Let’s face it. There are self-help books everywhere. Any idiot can write one.

I snorted. You, Mr. Johnson, are snarky.

Even though everyone can write a book like this, not everyone can do it well. The first step in doing it well is choosing a topic you feel a lot of people want to learn about. It helps, of course, if you have some kind of expertise in that area. If you’re an expert on something that is both interesting to a large demographic and hasn’t been written about exhaustively, then by all means, go with that.

For most of us, this won’t be the case. Many people are stuck in boring jobs that no one wants to know about and even a monkey could learn to do.

Unfortunately, I’d just taken another drink of tea, and reading that last line at that moment turned me into a fountain. The resulting spray left the cover of my notebook damp, but nothing else was in the line of fire. The sleeve of my gray hoodie served as a convenient means of mopping up the mess.

Looking back to the book in my hand, I shook my head. Be careful, Richard ‘Moneymaker’ Johnson. If you keep this up, I may start to like you, and I don’t think either of us would be prepared for that.

So, what are the rest of us to do? Should we give up on our dreams of getting our foot in the door of the booming self-help market? No. Never give up on that dream. Anyone who’s willing to put in the effort can find the self-help book that already lives inside of them.

This time when I laughed, I didn’t have a mouthful of