by Lindsey on April 28, 2010
Somedays, you’re writing along in your office and you reach a stopping place and you go over to check your emails (which used to be like walking out to the mailbox…remember?) and there is this nice message to you from fellow writer Carmen Oliver about your book Snuggle Mountain.
It went like this:
Last week, I lent my Snuggle Mountain book to my son’s kindergarten teacher. She was looking for picture books that kept children guessing as to the outcome of the story. How something appears to be something and turns out to be something completely different. She absolutely loved Snuggle Mountain, like I knew she would. She ordered a copy of it and was “sigh” disappointed to find it out of print. She was able to get a copy of it and you’ve now got another admirer in your corner. Anyone who reads your work is a fan. Just wanted to share that with you 
Carmen
Little notes like these lift a person’s spirit. Especially when that person is writing like mad and is stuck in existential madness of wondering if one is a writer when one doesn’t have a book under contract or about to be published and the book that they have authored is out of print.
Sigh…so it’s nice to go to the mailbox and find this nice thing that tells me I am what I think I am. A writer.
by Lindsey on April 20, 2010
WOW…That’s what I said when Librarian Maureen Slocum said that Pease Elementary School is the oldest continually operating school in Texas. 1876. Wow, right? And what a vibrant community of children from all over the Austin because their parents work downtown.
And smart? Holy Moley. At one point while reading the book, I ask, “What do you think will wake the two headed giant?” After a few guesses, I give a hint. “What is the biggest light bulb in the world?” A kindergartner with a birthday crown on his head, said, “The sun.” Geez, I don’t think I was that aware in kindergarten.
Always during my visits, I tell the story of the book’s inspration: Early one morning, I woke to find my daughter peering up at me in bed. I was struck with the idea that I must look like a giant and the bed, a mountain. A Snuggle Mountain.
A little boy raised his hand and said that in his house, there is a blue couch and he thinks it is the Great Wall of China.
Fabulous.
by Lindsey on April 18, 2010
Chris Barton and Shark v. Train strikes again
Statesman book reviewer Sharyn Vane posts a notice about Chris’s upcoming signing at Book People on Saturday April 24 @ 1pm and uses the word ‘delightful.’ Vane tends towards understatement so ‘delightful’ is high praise, indeed.
Went to see B-side from the A List at Austin Community College last night. It was an evening of little performed short plays from Ionesco, Beckett, Pinter and Albee. Really fine. I was remembering how these playwrights turned the theatre world on its traditional ear by taking the commonplace and cranking into the absurd. They were a precursor to so much dance, music, film that pushed the envelope of permission. Really, they tore that #10 up. Fine play and well done.
