The baby Bookworm is growing fast. Book titles are quickly inhabiting the platform and traffic to the site is increasing. Bookworm is taking its first tentative steps into the big world wide web. There is plenty instore for the teenage and adult Bookworm, but I’ll leave those surprises for later. But what of the now Bookworm? Currently Bookworm is an online data base of information relating to books and their characters. The platform is not just a website. It also includes socials such as Youtube, Tiktok, X (formally Twitter) and Instagram all providing a conduit for “shout outs”, book and author promotions and tit bits of information relating to the world of reading and books. Worth a look even to be entertained. The Bookworm website is maturing nicely. Users can simply stop by and browse the catalogue of books and visit their points of sale. The platform’s blog is always a good source for an entertaining read. Alternately, users can register. This provides access to their settings page to add their avatar, bio and username. For registered users the library functionality is activated allowing books to be added to their watch list, currently reading list and read list. Registered users to the site can rate and review books. By scrolling to the bottom of the landing page users can add their favourite book(s) and/or add their favourite book character(s). And as always, click that support button to let us know your thoughts and if you encounter any issues. Speaking of characters, Bookworm is also a platform which actively promotes and enhances book characters. As John Cena so elegantly conveyed at this year’s Oscars, a movie without costumes is not much of a movie. Similarly, a book without characters is pretty much a bunch of blank pages. In the movie world characters such as the likes of E.T, Dirty Harry, and who can forget Marty McFly, are etched into our collective minds for eternity, whether one is in the movie theatre or not. Book characters on the other hand tend to remain concealed between the pages, only coming to life when the book is read. Relative few leap from the pages into the popular culture mindset, Harry Potter, of course, being the notable exception. Bookworm provides a platform where book characters can be shared and discussed, imagined and enlivened. When writing The Mind Man, the characters became my friends. Protagonist Ted Farrell, antagonist Adam Henderson, the fashionable and stylish journalist Laura Taylor and even the overweight editor Dennis Parkinson just to name a few. Spending time in their company was a daily joy, not a chore. When my book was sent for beta reading, I experienced a sense of loss and emptiness as one would if leaving a child with strangers. So, jump on Bookworm and “juice up” (a gem I learnt from my youngest – if you want to know the meaning I’m happy to explain) your favourite character. And who knows, maybe a star might “spawn”.