HARVEST MOON HEAVEN

We’ve enjoyed a harvest moon in the area as of late—that full moon closest to the autumnal equinox, whose light once gave farmers the opportunity to work well into the night, hauling in their crops…

All I can say is that farming isn’t the only work a harvest moon can foster. Something about the first chill of autumn makes me want to brew an extra pot of coffee and work on my new manuscript long after sunset hues like these have faded away…

THANK YOU, BANNED BOOKS

…I mean it. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Without writers with the guts to push the envelope, our literary landscape would be flat and always green…the kind of surroundings that, while pretty, could completely put you to sleep on a long drive…

I'VE GOT A THING FOR RUST

...And tarnish, and yellowed sheet music. Chipped book jackets. Scuffed piano benches. Antique glass so old, it’s turned purple. Cracked celluloid mirrors. Trunks with broken hinges. Faded plastic beads in clip-on earrings. Once-upon-a-long-long-time-ago buildings like this old mill…

I’ll admit, it’s not just the rust I love, but the history that comes with it. I like to pick up an object knowing that it’s got its own story to tell…and the rust, the dust, the tarnish, the cracks? They’re like the opening sentences in a thick, juicy novel…

FOUND POEM

Poet Omar Khayyám (with his “Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough”) has got nothin’ on this picnic table carver, who is obviously the true master of turning any afternoon picnic into a romantic interlude.




Ah, the poetry of modern-day life…maybe not exactly Khayyám’s “Paradise enow,” but at least it’s good for a laugh…

WHAT THE...?????

When did kid and criminal become synonyms? People around here can tell me all they want that security like this is simply for a student’s own good (this photo was taken in the parking lot of a local middle school), but really, doesn’t this just sting of complete and total distrust?

…Makes my own junior high years look completely unrestricted by comparison.

MILES TRAVELED

So I’m getting rid of the car I’ve had since college…cleaning it out was like an episode of This Is Your Life.

Sedimentary layers in the glove compartment and under the front seats contained ancient parking permits, faded receipts, a long-forgotten villanelle written for a poetry course, and a couple of notes from old friends: “Hey—I’m home from work. Come on over.” (Remember the pre-cell phone days when you stuck notes under windshield wipers??) Not to mention broken guitar picks, squeaky dog toys, hand-knitted winter hats, and paperbacks I read at lakeshores…and even a few scraps of paper I used to plot out my earliest attempts at novels, right out of grad school.


It’s just stuff—but really, it’s also the triumph of graduation, the heartbreak of friends that scatter like dandelion seeds, the thrill of new creative ideas that have to hit paper before the front wheels hit the driveway on my return home…

In a way, it really does feel like one of life’s chapters has come to an end…but it also feels like I’m standing right smack in the middle of the first paragraph of a new chapter...like I’m a little girl reading past her bedtime, hunkered down under the covers with a flashlight, anxious to find out what happens next.

UNADULTERATED JOY

Just happened to snap this shot as my pup, Jake, took off for a walk with my brother this morning…Don’t we all wish we stepped out of the front door feeling so utterly free?

…Actually, I think I had this look on my face last weekend, when I wrapped up yet another revision.

On to the next project…

TEEN READERS ROCK

Truly. According to the Springfield News-Leader, local teens hit library shelves like hammers this summer…Teenage bibliophiles recorded nearly 40,000 hours of reading time over the past nine weeks and wrote 875 book reviews on the Greene County Library’s TeenThing web page.

I love that tech-savvy teens still adore the feel of an old-fashioned book in their hands…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Bunch of area schools are back in session as of this week…No matter how much time separates me from that last commencement ceremony, I always think of late August (rather than January) as the beginning of a new year.

There’s just something about a blank composition notebook, a freshly sharpened #2, a perfect pink eraser that hasn't touched a single mistake…always makes me feel all-over tingly and a little out of breath, like a new adventure is about to unfold…

A COVER STORY...OKAY, SNIPPET

I keep having dreams about it—complete with the crash of ocean waves in the background, mermaids on the rocks beside me. What the official cover art will look like when A BLUE SO DARK hits bookstore shelves, that is! Excitement keeps rolling in, like the tide…

PRUNING

Come on, they’re not weeds. They’re beautiful metaphors. But let’s face it—I am to a manuscript what Miracle-Gro is to a patch of seed-filled ground. I get so many flowers popping open, it’s hard to tell one metaphor from another. Just a blinding sea of crazy color. (Enter sadness-tinged sigh here.) Time to cut some of the blooms from my current revision.


Picture it: freshman year on a Missouri college campus, cluster of sweaters under an oak tree, belly laughter over the results of career aptitude tests. Mine insisted I should become either 1) a florist or 2) a landscape architect. Who woulda thought that crazy test actually had some truth to it???

AN OFFICIAL TITLE!

The title of my debut YA novel is officially A BLUE SO DARK! I'm absolutely thrilled...

NO GREEN STRING ZONE

Remember those old fogies who sighed into their easy chairs after a long, hard day of work while their guitars, propped on stands in corners, grew dust as thick as winter blankets? Remember how you watched those strings turn green—literally—green from not being used, and how you wanted to cry for those poor, sad, lame, geezers? Remember how you swore you’d never be that old—even when you were a hundred and eighty?

Yeah. My guitar reminds me of that regularly. Demands that we do not drift off into fogy-land, no matter how many hours I’ve spent ripping old manuscripts to shreds. (Sometimes, doesn’t it feel more like building houses than it does writing a book???)

All I can say is, demand away…

SHEER BADNESS

Uh, so, um, yeah. What did I say again? That I’d snap a few firecracker pics for the blog, like it was no big deal? Show off the great south Springfield display? Oh, sure—because everyone knows how incredibly easy digital photography is, right? No such thing as a bad photographer anymore, right?





Right.