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.

SIMPLE PLEASURES

Watermelon. Tank top. Potato salad. Flip-flops.

Sounds like some sort of Child’s Garden of Verses rhyme (yes, wouldn’t we all still like to go up in a swing?), but actually, it’s my plan of action for the Fourth of July…that, and sitting on the back porch, where I can view the sky-encompassing fireworks from a nearby country club. Probably while humming “Yankee Doodle Dandy” or “Born in the USA” (or, has been the case the past few days, the guitar riff / bass line of “Smooth Criminal”) while downing a cherry limeaid (my newest addiction...and as hot as it's been, the drink really is an -aid, not an -ade).

Ahhhhh…

JAKE SCHINDLER, SCENE STEALER

It’s actually my pooch’s best summer trick, stealing outdoor scenery. This is the Finley River, where I was enjoying getting a good chunk of my daily writing done (very Thoreau-ian of me, huh?) while Jake got in plenty of tree sniffing and growling at geese:

Now that summer’s decided to sit her big sweaty self right on top of Missouri (and it's turned far too hot for such a heavy-coated dog to be outside), my scenery looks more like a vent. Nope—scratch that. Looks like a Pekingese lying spread eagle on top of a vent, while the air conditioning licks his tummy. He won’t peel himself off till September. Seriously. He eats on top of that vent.

Who am I to deny him such a simple pleasure? And how could I ever get any writing done at the river without him?

That dog has me wrapped around his dewclaw, I swear…

LITERARY SALT

I’m not really sure when a book can be considered worth its literary salt…I only know when I’ve personally fallen in love.

I mean, sure—some spines on my bookshelf get sold, traded, given away, like trinkets from long-lost exes. But a select group of special others get held onto long after their paperback covers, stained with sunscreen and melted lipstick, have warped, then curled in on themselves like hair taken straight out of a hot roller.

What amazes me are those books that manage to strike such a loud, vibrating chord with so many readers…as a person, we daydream about that special one who falls for us. But there are some books out there that have managed to get thousands to open their hearts and give in. It’s pretty spectacular, when you think about it…

WHAT IF EMILY DICKINSON HAD BLOGGED?

Seriously. What if the supposed shut-in had chronicled her life online in utterly exhaustive, meticulous detail?

What if F. Scott and Zelda had exchanged “love tsunamis” on Twitter?

What if we had all watched Poe stagger, drunk, into a gutter on YouTube?

Would any of it seem romantic anymore? Would we still troll their pages, mining each passage for clues as to who these poetic giants really were? Or would our literary heroes have been reduced to the train-wreck status of a Lindsay Lohan?

I was just wonderin’.

GONNA PARTY LIKE IT'S 1987

My brother turned the big 3-1 over the weekend; before the Schindler shindig, I found this bottom-of-the-shoebox pic of his big 0-9 at Skateland. (Brother John’s third from the left, in the striped shirt, and I’m on the far right—yes, and actual picture of moi—in that radical penguin T.)




My piano / guitar students have been informing me for years that skating parties are passé, blasé, and in no way cool. But does this photo not prove them ALL wrong? I mean, the skates with the neon orange wheels! The music—Tears for Fears practically oozes off this picture! The arcade—Tag Team Wrestling? Yes, please!

Ah, the 80’s…I swear, if I could only get my Big Wheel back (a green mode of transportation!), I’d be SOOOO happy…

YES, ACTUALLY

I, Holly Schindler, took a weekend (GASP!!!). Okay, so I took it with a notebook. And so I had the first chapter of the current book I’m revising tucked under the cooler in the backseat. And so I worked out a plan to revamp the start of that novel.

But: the point is, I turned the computer off and drove to an actual lake far from the sound of actual car engines and spent time in the actual sun. Barbecued ribs. Laughter. Stones skipping and pe-lunking across the skin of the water.

...I also really love checking in on my own favorite authors’ blogs to see their landscapes. To find out what the sunlight’s dancing off of when they wake in the morning: seashores, city blocks, mountaintops.

This is my landscape. Or a slice of it, anyway.

Yes, actually.