Check out these snack-able stories for purchase

Earlier this month I was able to participate in a unique project from the Head and the Hand Press at the Science Leadership Academy. A vending machine in the school features the work of students and authors in the form of chapbooks; short, 'snack-able' stories. I was so happy to share my chapbook, The Song Inside.

For those of you who can't make it to the school who are interested in purchasing chapbooks, they are now available in the online store of the Head and the Hand Press for $3 (including shipping.)

The chapbooks are packaged so beautifully and, as one astute parent noted at the vending machine's launch party, they would fit very nicely in a Christmas stocking. I hope you will check them out.

They are available here.

A description of each story, my story included, is below.

4TH FLOOR SCIENCE LEADERSHIP ACADEMY VENDING MACHINE CHAPBOOK COLLECTION

Browse through our 4th Floor Science Leadership Academy Vending Machine Chapbook Collection and choose any 1 chapbook for $3 (shipping included)! Just put the titles you want in the note section in checkout and we'll send you a confirmation that we received your selection.

About the Collection
The Head & The Hand Press is proud to offer the 4th Floor Science Leadership Academy Chapbook Collection in partnership with Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy, named after the school's literary magazine, The 4th Floor. In fall 2014, The Head & The Hand Press installed a chapbook vending machine in SLA's building which includes the works of four YA authors and two current SLA students – all available for purchase here!

• “In Memory of Lester” by Jennifer Hubbard –When Nicole’s friend Carter asks if she’ll be attending a funeral for their friend Zaren’s dog, Lester, she doesn’t know what to expect. She asks Carter, “What do you do for a dog’s funeral?” Carter doesn’t have an answer either, but both know that they need to support their friend. Through the course of an elaborate ceremony, Nicole, Carter, Zaren and the other attendees find out that this funeral is more about the relationships and anxieties between friends and not so much about Lester.
• “Believe!” by Tara Altebrando – After praying for someone to get her out of her Chemistry test, Kelly Branham received a blessing that some kids only dream of—her sister Melissa and Melissa’s new boyfriend,  Will, sign her out of school for a spontaneous trip to SeaWorld. But what should be a fun afternoon between sisters and sea life slowly spirals into revelations of infidelity, family strife and a young girl’s realization that the adults donot have it all figured out.
• “a chain of paper dolls” by Autumn Konopka –We don’t publish much poetry at The Head & The Hand. But when you receive a poetry collection with titles like “The boy with the firecracker heart,” “The girl who cut out her own tongue,” and “She wore a necklace of human hair,” it’s hard to say no. In this collection by Autumn Konopka, the wordplay dizzies your senses and the characters oscillating between reality and fantasy stick in your mind.
• “The Room Where Bo Was the Devil” by Eliza Martins - “Christ’s Home for Children” certainly sounds like the ideal place for the orphaned and abandoned. But as Lisa soon finds out, Sister Slade and the rest of the nuns are harboring a dark secret on the top floor of the home. Lisa loves a challenge and a mystery, so one night she sneaks up to the locked room to find out what exactly is going on. What she discovers there changes her forever.
• “The Song Inside” by Melissa Sarno – Many say that youth is a time to try new things and explore one’s true self and talents. But for Clara, she already knows that search’s destination: she wants to be a pianist. And as her dedication and talent show, she is a pianist. So when a broken wrist temporarily takes away her ability to play, she spends a summer having to face those other tough questions of who she is and how she fits into this world around her.
• “Mad” by Ruby Jane Anderson – In this compelling moral tale, student writer  Ruby Jane Anderson introduces us to Jane Jimenez, a hardline pharma executive who begins to doubt her product. Jimenez quickly worked her way up the corporate ladder at McMorris Pharmaceuticals onto a team working to promote what she believed to be an essential vaccine for mad cow disease. But as events unfold and intrigue spikes, she finds out she was involved in something much more sinister.
• “Fade to Black” by Robert Marx – Student writer Robert Marx tells the story of Jimmy, a wayward slacker who’s down and out at a bar called “Bob and Barb’s.” Through dark, lyrical language and character development beyond his years, Marx writes of people who feel forgotten and the places where they go to forget. Aside from a man sending his severed finger to his wife in Paris in an effort to win her back, nothing of real importance happens. But, then again, that seems to be the point.
• “Margot and Moises” by Lilliam Rivera – It’s safe to say that Margot doesn’t fully fit in with her new friends Camille and Serena. Margot constantly misses the inside jokes while she stocks shelves at the supermarket and they sit in Camille’s room talking about boys from their class, but at least her friends make life a bit more tolerable at the Somerset School where Margot has been enrolled. After a tortuous phone call between the three where Camille and Serena toy with Margot over a boy who may possibly be interested in her, a friend of Margot’s brother named Moises from her neighborhood sits down next to her. It’s just a simple afternoon chance encounter, but its impact makes Margot rethink who she is and where she comes from.

The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year by Louise Erdrich

There are bird people. I wouldn't consider myself one of them. Where I live, the birds are rats of the sky, teeming pigeons, sputtering their wings at my approaching bicycle wheel, pecking at scraps of lunch. They make their homes at window sills and peeling benches, in the shafts of subway platforms. They are friends with the neglected, with the sidewalk dwellers and tattered-robe wanderers. They are no friends of mine.

It is with this bias, this complete ignorance, inattention and disassociation to winged creatures that I sat down to read Erdrich's collection of essays on motherhood: The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year. I sought the book out because I am in need of friendship and understanding and I search in the pages of women writers. Women writers who also mother. Because mothers who lawyer or doctor or teach or, or, or, etc. etc. probably look for their mentors in their own fields. So I search in mine.

Erdrich, unlike me, is a bird person. She follows them in rapt attention. The dancing and thievery, the water skimming and cloud swarms. She lives, at the time these essays were collected (1995), in New Hampshire. In a place of quiet. Where creatures burrow and thump beneath her floorboards and stare back at her between trees. She carries her children over roots and untrampled earth, not cement and subway stairs. I'm certain the air she breathes is cleaner than my air, the kind whipping in torrents from the wheeled traffic of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.

Despite the differences in our environments, I found we shared a geography of the self. A self split in many twos, between who we were and who we are, between the child we carried and the child who takes his first steps away. We are both a collection of many women separated between floorboards and walls and veils. 

In recent months, I have been reading a lot of written reflections by mothers and have found fellowship and understanding in the string of all their words. But it is Erdrich and, of all things, her birds that I think, perhaps, best understand me. It feels like they are all at my window, sharing what I see from here. I love when I find the books that know me as well as I come to know them.

A Trip to Philly to celebrate stories in a vending machine and do my first reading

UPDATE: Many of you asked how to purchase these stories. They are now available here for $3 (shipping included.)

I spent last evening in Philadelphia, dreaming words on the train, sitting on the benches in Rittenhouse Square, looking up, in the wet dark, at the twinkling Christmas lights. Then, I walked down a blue lit path on 22nd street and went to the Science Leadership Academy. It's a school I've heard about and wondered about. I've seen the TED Talks and articles and the PBS stories about the work this school is doing and how it is inspiring others to relook at their own models of education and follow suit. 

I was there for the launch party of the 4th Floor Chapbook series, an awesome publishing venture from the Head and the Hand Press in collaboration with SLA's students and staff. See that vending machine in the photo? It's selling chapbooks. Snackable stories. My story, The Song Inside, sits alongside some amazing work and it was so cool to be a part of it. 

I wore flowered tights and, you guys, I did my first reading in front of a live audience over the age of six -- feeling very grateful for my friend Tracy, who used to make me read my work aloud in her living room, but only after giving me liquid courage in the form of wine. Don't worry, I was completely sober for this experience, unless you count the delicious potato chips I had beforehand. 

I was able to talk with Nic Esposito, who founded the Head and the Hand Press and told me stories of his son and his urban farm, which he wrote about in his collection of essays, Kensington Homestead. Linda Gallant, who might be the nicest person ever and it's clear, took great care with our stories. The author Jennifer Hubbard, who read from her fantastic story In Memory of Lester, and advised me where to get middle-eastern food. And Robert Marx, a senior at SLA, who is waiting for his college acceptances, no doubt to do great things wherever he ends up. He blew me away with his story, Fade to Black, which I read on the train ride home. 

It meant a lot to me, to share my work in such a unique venue. My story sits next to great talent. To pop in a few dollars and watch books fall through the machine was a great thrill. If you can't make it to the school itself, I hope to be able to point you toward the place to purchase these stories in a few weeks. 

Thank you to Beth Kephart, who told me about this series. If you haven't noticed, she pretty much points me toward everything awesome.

Now, I must return to my regular scheduled programming in our Brooklyn apartment. Little O has found the recycling bin, its contents are in a pile at my feet as I write, and I think he just tried to bite into a metal can.

Happy Thanksgiving

On Monday, I walked along the river, looked up and found a message along the metal folds beyond the railway,

             your life is beautiful. 

Some letters were cut in half but the words were still readable. The period at the end made it fact. It secured the sentence in its place. The words could not float away.

The certainty of it made me pause. I knew that there, standing beneath those words, I could not argue, and I carried the message with me as I walked away.

I wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving. I hope that, no matter where you stand, you find comfort in that conviction.

Winner of Free Critique from Sharon Mayhew

Thanks to so many of you who entered to win a free critique from Sharon.

I asked Tyler to pick a number between 1 and 11 and he picked 2.

Therefore, the winner is: Joanne Fritz! Joanne, I'll put you in touch with Sharon.

This colorful photo seemed festive for the occasion.

I wish you all a very happy week.

Win A Free Critique from Writer and Editor Sharon Mayhew

Some of you may know the amazing Sharon Mayhew, our BLOM (blog Mom), friend, writer, and editor. She just started her own editing business and is giving away a free critique!

Sharon has critiqued my work and helped me enormously. When I struggled with the opening chapters of my novel (and we all know how important opening pages are) she gave me great advice that helped me re-look at it. This advice helped me land a lot of full requests from agents, and eventually, an offer of representation from an agent.

She has a great eye, is knowledgeable about the industry, and has sat on both sides of the slush pile. She's always so thoughtful, smart and kind with her feedback.  If you're looking for an editor, I highly recommend working with her.

More about Sharon's decision to start editing can be found here.

More about her services can be found here.

To win a free critique, please comment on this post by November 24th.

The winner will receive the choice of the first 250 words of a picture book critique/line edits, the first seven pages of a novel critique/line edits or a query critique/line edits.

Seeing

At my new writing desk, in its new room, I sit one window east of where my old desk used to be. I'm closer to the sill and the glass is cold. Now that the leaves are falling away, I begin to see a small piece of Manhattan's skyline. From this window, the Freedom Tower is just out of view. But I know it's there because one window west, at my old writing space, it is.

Tonight, I relish in the new view, in it's new angle. I am an impatient writer. I don't always like the pace I write at, which is to say, slow. In the month of November, everyone ticking away words, I feel especially less-than. But in the past few weeks, nothing worked, and I had to stop myself from soldiering on the cluttered path. I became slower than a slow writer. I became a writer who didn't write at all.

And it was exactly what I needed.

I cleared away some of the doubt and smudge and, this week, I returned to a story I had been working on. 

I had crowded a character with too many competing plots and I thought I was the grand puppet master. I thought I could bend anyone and anything to my will. I thought, I was the storyteller. Ha. Ha. 

Once I let all this go, I realized that she, alone, knows her story. I stand up to the microphone, make my introduction, swing my arm out in grand gesture, and say, take it away.

Holy smokes. She has a lot to say. 

I'm finally listening. I'm finally seeing what's been there all along.