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I’m not sure how I learned about Par­nas­sus Books in Nashville, Ten­nessee. Prob­a­bly I was look­ing up some­thing about author Ann Patch­ett, who is one of the own­ers of the book­store. I have loved her books for years. And I adore her book­store. Even though I’ve nev­er been there.

Some­thing about it imme­di­ate­ly tick­led my fancy—even from afar. Maybe it’s the name? In greek myths, Mount Par­nas­sus is the home of the Mus­es, those inspi­ra­tional god­dess­es of lit­er­a­ture, sci­ence, music, and the arts. Maybe it’s their programming—they do some fan­tas­tic work there. Pret­ty much every week I’m wish­ing I was close enough to attend an event they’re host­ing. (Sign-up for Mus­ing and you, too, will know all they’re planning.)

I have a deep and abid­ing love for inde­pen­dent book­stores. I am lucky enough to live in a place that is home to sev­er­al won­der­ful indies—a cou­ple of them ded­i­cat­ed entire­ly to chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture, even. The peo­ple who work at these book­stores are sim­ply the best. They are well-read, excit­ed about local authors, tire­less in their event/program plan­ning, and gen­er­ous in their pro­mo­tion­al work. They take seri­ous­ly the busi­ness of get­ting the right books in front of the right read­ers. I don’t know how they do it, but now that I’m an author, I’m more than just admiring—I’m grate­ful. Most authors do not have an enor­mous mar­ket­ing depart­ment and bud­get behind them—they have indie book­shop angels rec­om­mend­ing their book to one cus­tomer at a time.

A friend vis­it­ed Nashville this past week­end, and she not only vis­it­ed Par­nas­sus, she also took a pic­ture of Giant Pump­kin Suite on their shelves! This is such a thrill for me. (Well, who am I kid­ding, it’s a thrill every time I see my book on a shelf—even my own book­shelves.) But there’s some­thing about it being at Par­nas­sus, in par­tic­u­lar, that just warms my heart. 

When you call Par­nas­sus Books, some­one who sounds like my aunts, or maybe one of my Mom’s cousins, answers the phone. (This Min­neso­ta girl has some south­ern roots.) I imme­di­ate­ly feel…well, at home and loved. And so, although Giant Pump­kin Suite is set in Min­neso­ta, I just know it must feel quite com­fort­able down there in Nashville on the shelves at Parnassus. 

Thanks Par­nas­sus, for being my favorite book­store I’ve nev­er vis­it­ed. (I’ll get there!) And thank you indies everywhere—for your pas­sion for books, your ded­i­ca­tion to read­ers, and your kind sup­port of authors. Thanks for includ­ing Giant Pump­kin Suite on your esteemed shelves.

(And thank you, Ter­ri, for send­ing the picture!)

[Read­more­from­Me­lanieHeuis­er­Hill]

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I had lunch today—in the mid­dle of a Min­neso­ta snowstorm—with Dori Wein­stein, one of my Writ­ing Friends. It was an excel­lent way to spend part of a very snowy after­noon. We man­aged to tack­le the sub­jects of mar­ket­ing, dis­ci­pline in a writer’s life, event plan­ning, pic­ture books, nov­el writ­ing, and series writing…as well as eat our veg­gies and catch up on the kids and life etc.

Dori brought me a copy of her newest book, Hoopla Under the Hup­pah, which is the third book  in the YaYa and YoYo series. My daugh­ter and I read the first one in our moth­er-daugh­ter book­club sev­er­al years ago just when it came out and we’ve had the plea­sure of read­ing the sec­ond and third dur­ing devel­op­ment. We bring the non-Jew­ish view­point to the author. In oth­er words, we ask all the ques­tions. 

YaYa (Ellie) and YoYo (Joel) Sil­ver are twins. (Just like my Rose and Thomas in Giant Pump­kin Suite!) They are hilar­i­ous and real and won­der­ful char­ac­ters, as is their sur­round­ing cast of fam­i­ly and friends. The series is mak­ing its way through a year of Jew­ish cel­e­bra­tions and observations—Rosh Hashanah, Sukkot, and a fam­i­ly wed­ding are cov­ered in the first three books.

I have learned so much from these books. I’ve also sim­ply loved the sto­ries. I had the hon­or of “blurb­ing” this last one.

This is what I said:

Beau­ti­ful, cre­ative, and authen­tic explanations—so acces­si­ble, even for those of us who are not Jew­ish. The joy and beau­ty of this wed­ding, and all of the rit­u­als and tra­di­tions around it, are tremen­dous fun.

Have a read—I’m seri­ous about the tremen­dous fun! 

And in case you are wondering…Dori and I are 14 inch­es apart in height! The pic­ture we had the serv­er take makes me laugh!

This past week­end, I attend­ed the meet­ing of a moth­er-son book­club. They had read Giant Pump­kin Suite. These young men—nine and ten years old—were sweet with their feed­back, and they asked excel­lent ques­tions about the book, the writ­ing process, and giant pump­kins, too. It was a mar­velous treat to be with them. I get a lit­tle verklempt just think­ing about it.

The hosts served the­mat­ic treats—pumpkin choco­late chip cook­ies, blue­ber­ry muffins, french fries, pump­kin seeds, and Mr. Pick­er­ing’s Lemonade!

I’m a huge fan of par­ent-child book groups. My daugh­ter and I met reg­u­lar­ly with ours through the ele­men­tary and mid­dle school years—so many good books and dis­cus­sions, and so much fun. I can­not rec­om­mend it enough. Those girls are now sopho­mores in high school, and lam­en­ta­bly it is more dif­fi­cult to gath­er, but we still think of our­selves as a book group. In a very fun twist, two of the boys in the above pic­ture are lit­tle broth­ers of the two of the girls in our moth­er-daugh­ter book club, pic­tured below. (The pic­tures cap­ture the kids at about the same age. The moth­ers are ageless.)

A year after the pic­ture above, these girls and their moms read a draft of Giant Pump­kin Suite and gave me won­der­ful feed­back. Each of the girls is in the book in some way, we real­ized the after­noon we dis­cussed it. One is a cel­list; one was in Fid­dler on the Roof the year I was fin­ish­ing the book; one has a boy twin; one was taller than all the rest of the kids her age (and taller than ME now!); and one had to stop an activ­i­ty she loved dear­ly because of an accident.

I did not real­ize I was writ­ing them into the book—but there they are. This is how a writer’s brain works, I guess. This writer’s brain, at least. (For the record, the boys pro­claimed this “cool.”) In any event, I am pos­i­tive the book would not have seen pub­li­ca­tion with­out the girls and their moms—their sup­port is one of the things I will always trea­sure about this book’s journey.

And to vis­it the lit­tle broth­ers’ Moth­er-Son book group five years later…well.

My heart is full.

Des­per­ate Times=>Desperate Measures.

That’s all I can chalk it up to. I am “doing” NaNoW­riMo, oth­er­wise known as Nation­al Nov­el Writ­ing Month.

Every year in Novem­ber, bazil­lions of authors around the world com­mit to writ­ing a nov­el in the month of November—50,000 words is what they rec­om­mend, I believe. It seems like a rather arbi­trary num­ber, but cer­tain­ly it’s a fair amount of words to get down on paper in a month. The very idea of this has seemed equal parts ter­ri­fy­ing and ridicu­lous to me in the past. 

BUT…let’s just say that the Cur­rent Novel/WIP has had some trou­ble in the area of get­ting words on paper. It could be that its author has become quite crafty and sophis­ti­cat­ed in her pro­cras­ti­na­tion and research diver­sions. It could also be that it’s been a heck­u­va year. What­ev­er the rea­son, it is now time to haul some serious…words onto the page.

I have dis­dained NaNoW­riMo in the past. Snob­bery comes eas­i­er than words for me. When I con­sid­ered mak­ing the move this Novem­ber I spent an inor­di­nate amount of Octo­ber’s writ­ing time read­ing the archive of Pep Talks on the NaNoW­riMo web­site. I could­n’t help but notice that the authors I most admired did­n’t actu­al­ly do NaNoW­riMo, but rather stood in stu­pe­fied awe/disbelief of those who did. (They also gave grand pep talks to these peo­ple they clear­ly did not quite under­stand.) “See!” I thought. “This will nev­er work for me—care­ful writ­ers devot­ed to craft and vision and art can’t just slap words on a page and expect that it’s going to turn into a novel!”

And I still believe this to be true. How­ev­er, it is infi­nite­ly eas­i­er to write a nov­el when there are some words on a page to work with—be it 5 or 50 or 50,000. They can be crap­py words devoid of any­thing artis­tic or lit­er­ary, but they are still a start. The art comes with the revi­sion. Dear God, I hope the art comes in the revision.

I had a decent start on this nov­el before I began, so I’m not doing NaNoW­riMo in its purest form. I am just try­ing to get dang near the fin­ish of this unwieldy sto­ry. I’m count­ing chap­ters, not words. I have no use for the badges and the meters and graphs on the web­site. I’m just doing my best to sort of throw up on the page every day and sim­ply keep going.

And here’s the thing: when you do this every sin­gle day, which I have for a whole week now (yes, even when bone tired on Sun­day night), your head and heart stay in your sto­ry in a dif­fer­ent way. I know this is prob­a­bly not rev­e­la­to­ry to any­one but me, but I’m kind of astound­ed by it. It gets eas­i­er every day on some lev­el. I know where I am, I know where I’m going. I’m let­ting my sub­con­scious hang out. I’m using brack­ets lib­er­al­ly (i.e. [put some­thing here that makes sense]). I am not chastis­ing myself for a wan­der­ing point of view and incon­sis­tent detail­ing. I just keep going.

I’m sus­pi­cious that there might be some­thing to it after all.… I even went to a “write-in” at a local book­store. (This is so not me.) And it was a lit­tle odd…I don’t write in groups nor­mal­ly, but def­i­nite­ly not scary, and they had com­fort­ing snacks and they made me a but­ton for the mon­th’s jour­ney. I’m step­pin’ out, peo­ple! ‘Tis a new day!

Can’t wait to see what sort of mess awaits for me to work with in December.…

Last week, I vis­it­ed my friend Mar­garet. Mar­garet lives in an assist­ed liv­ing care facil­i­ty. She is 88 and a dear. We talk books, the­ol­o­gy, music, his­to­ry, news, as well as life in gen­er­al. It’s always a good day when I go see Margaret.

When I arrived last Wednes­day, she announced she was read­ing Giant Pump­kin Suite. I was touched. One of the most unex­pect­ed things about the last six weeks of being A Real Live Pub­lished Author is the num­ber of adults read­ing my book. I’m always sur­prised, though it’s cer­tain­ly a won­der­ful thing. Mar­garet said she was enjoy­ing it and that her neigh­bor had already fin­ished it.

“She’d love to meet you. Before you leave, let’s go down and knock on her door. She reads all the time.” 

I was intrigued—two old­er women read­ing a book that’s being mar­ket­ed for ages 9–12.… (And one does­n’t even know me!) What a hoot! And Dol­cie was—a hoot, that is. Love­ly, gra­cious, mince-no-words kind of woman. She was as excit­ed to meet me as Mar­garet said she would be, and she said won­der­ful­ly kind things about the book. I men­tioned that I was dou­bly hon­ored she’d enjoyed it as it was a book writ­ten for kids.

“For kids?!” said Dol­cie, clear­ly tak­en aback. “I don’t think so!”

“Well, yes,” I said. “They’re mar­ket­ing it as a book for 9–12 year olds.”

“You’re kid­ding!” 

“Um…no. A pre­co­cious read­er could read it ear­li­er than nine…and I know some young teenagers who’ve enjoyed it, but.…”

“That’s ridicu­lous,” Dol­cie declared. “I mean, it’s fine if chil­dren want to read it, of course, but I just can’t think it should be lim­it­ed to them. I’m 97 years old and I quite enjoyed it.”

So, there you have it—Giant Pump­kin Suite, ages 9–97, give or take a few years!

These two!!!

The first male flower arrived this week on one of the pump­kin plants. (We still have three plants in the patch—this will need to change soon, but we’re going to give it anoth­er week or so since there’s still room for three.)

The male flow­ers arrive a week or two before the female flow­ers. If a grow­er wants to con­trol pollination—i.e. not let the birds and bees take care of things—the male flow­ers are cov­ered until the female flow­ers appear and open. This is what Rose  and Thomas do in Giant Pump­kin Suite. 

But we’ve not had good luck with this method in the past; the flower with­ers and dies before it is need­ed for pol­li­na­tion (around the 4th of July in Min­neso­ta.) I’ll prob­a­bly do a lit­tle research and we’ll try it again this year, though. Usu­al­ly there are sev­er­al male flow­ers, so a vari­ety of ways can be tried with­out ruin­ing our chances.

The plant seems a lit­tle small to be flowering…but hope­ful­ly it’ll grow into itself?

When you spend years writ­ing a book…YEARS…and then when it’s about to be birthed out into the big wide world…then come the REVIEWS. Or so I’ve heard, anyway.

And now it has come to pass.

It feels almost sur­re­al, hav­ing wait­ed so long. But Some­oneI­don’teven­know has read my book. And that some­one cared enough to review it. And they LIKED it, even! WOW.

Thanks for my first review, Eve Costarelli!

http://bit.ly/2qOrzkM

Four of the eight giant pump­kin seeds we plant­ed actu­al­ly ger­mi­nat­ed (or hatched, as I like to think of it). They have grown at a fan­tas­tic rate these past sev­en­teen days.

May 1st—Seeds start­ed in their lit­tle incu­ba­tor in the laun­dry room.

May 5th— the pale green loops begin to appear! (Those lit­tle green things with two leaves—weeds!)

May 9th—the first true leaf appears—that’s the high­est leaf in the pic­ture below. (True leaves are the first leaves that are actu­al foliage, not the seed leaves or cotyle­don leaves.)

May 11th (TWO DAYS LATER!)— the four that have “hatched” are off to the races!

We had a gor­geous Moth­er’s Day week­end here in Min­neso­ta and so the plants stepped out to enjoy the sun. Kept them in their bin for a lit­tle wind protection—they’ve been cod­dled in the laun­dry room up until now, so they need to be gen­tly intro­duced to the vari­ables of being out­side. We’ve brought them in at night as the temps are still drop­ping into the 40’s and 50’s.

You can see how much they liked Real Sun! We were gone all day on Sat­ur­day, and when we got home their leaves were notice­ably larger.

And today (May 17th), they’re reach­ing up out of their bin! We have storms this week, so it’s a con­stant tak­ing them out, chas­ing the sun, bring­ing them in when the thun­der rolls. (It’s not unlike hav­ing a pet, I sup­pose.) We’ve got a good start on these—we want to con­trol what we can while we can!

Right now, the weath­er is fore­cast­ed to be rainy and stormy until Sun­day. So we’ll rotate them in and out of the bin so they can get used to a lit­tle wind dur­ing the sun­ny times for the next few days, and then get ’em in the ground this week­end! The pump­kin patch looks like a tulip waste­land right now, so a lit­tle work will need to be done in preparation.….

In Giant Pump­kin Suite, Rose and Thomas find the mys­te­ri­ous seed their neigh­bor, Mr. Pick­er­ing, has start­ed on May 1st.

May Day has long been the day I start giant pump­kin seeds—and by “long been” I mean this is my fourth year start­ing giant pump­kin seeds on May Day. I pull out my giant pump­kin bible: How-To-Grow World Class Giant Pump­kins The All-Organ­ic Way: The His­to­ry, The Peo­ple, The Pump­kins, The Records. The title gives me great con­fi­dence. You can see all my sticky-note tabs on the pages with real­ly impor­tant infor­ma­tion. I fol­low the instruc­tions rather reli­gious­ly when the project begins. (By the end of May, the plants are most­ly fend­ing for them­selves in the gar­den, to be honest.)

I get my seeds from the St. Croix Grow­er’s Asso­ci­a­tion. This year I paid big bucks—$25, I believe—for my seeds. This sounds like a lot for a few seeds, but some giant pump­kin seeds go for much more. These are sol­id seeds from prize-win­ning pump­kins and the mon­ey sup­ports a great local orga­ni­za­tion. The num­bers writ­ten on them undoubt­ed­ly mean some­thing about the parent­age of the seeds. I don’t know what, how­ev­er. Must inves­ti­gate! But I’ve not­ed and kept track of the num­bers just in case they wind up being significant.

First I file the edges, as my How-To book tells me to do. This helps the seed to germinate—helps the water pen­e­trate etc.

Then I soak the seeds for a few hours—water is pret­ty impor­tant for germination.

Final­ly, when the soil tem­per­a­ture in the pots is above 85 degrees (this requires a bit of a set up, as you can see below–and yes, I use a ther­mome­ter to check the tem­per­a­ture) and the soil is just past damp, but not sog­gy, I plant the seeds, pointy end down. My book warns me that these seeds are noto­ri­ous­ly fussy and dif­fi­cult to ger­mi­nate; hence, I always start more than I will need. But I’m hopeful—most years, most have germinated.

They will spend a cou­ple of weeks indoors in the laun­dry room’s make-shift giant pump­kin nurs­ery, then I’ll take the pre­cious fussy lit­tle plants out­side for a few hours each day for a week so they can accli­mate before they go in the ground. The pump­kin patch is full of tulips right now, so it’s not ready for pump­kins anyway.

May in Min­neso­ta is a wee bit unpre­dictable. On May Day this year we had snow show­ers. A cou­ple of days lat­er, we hit 70. We’ll wait for moth­er nature to even out a bit before sub­ject­ing the plants to the ele­ments! In Giant Pump­kin Suite, Rose and Thomas have to build a tent over the pump­kin plant and use a space heater—I’m hop­ing to avoid that.

So, they’ve been start­ed. I do not see any green pok­ing up yet, but it usu­al­ly takes a few days. Then, if we’re lucky, they’ll grow like crazy. For now, we water and keep things warm—fingers crossed!

Sev­er­al years ago I had a chance to inter­view Amy Krouse Rosen­thal. I knew (and loved) her sweet and clever pic­ture books. I had no idea about all of the oth­er “projects” she had going until I googled her in prepa­ra­tion for our con­ver­sa­tion.  There are many projects–each and every one is utter­ly fas­ci­nat­ing. I fell quick­ly in love with The Beck­on­ing of Love­ly project, in particular.

I watched her at an event with a bunch of kids at a local bookstore–I loved how real she was with them–before we sat down for an inter­view. I remem­ber two things from our con­ver­sa­tion (besides the fact that she qui­et­ly noticed every­thing going on around us.)

#1) She told me about her house, built around a three sto­ry stair­case made of bookshelves.

#2) She talked about writ­ing and cre­at­ing in the “crevices of life.”

Oh, how that word “crevices” spoke to me.…I’ve worked in what I call the “nooks and cran­nies” of life ever since hav­ing kids. But crevices–that was a dif­fer­ent word entire­ly. Crevices are tight spaces between big things– places you have to squeeze into. Crevices require effort to enter. Crevices involve an inten­tion to explore. I’ve nev­er for­got­ten how she used that word–such a wise writer­ly woman she was.

I’m grate­ful for Amy Krouse Rosen­thal’s books, her spir­it, and the encour­age­ment she gave to the world to notice and cul­ti­vate con­nec­tions, believe in mag­ic, and beck­on love­li­ness. My heart is with her beau­ti­ful fam­i­ly in this raw time of grief.