Harvest and Cycling, my autumn treasures

Autumn has a way of making us pensive, don't you think? Of course, it makes us aware of the passing of time. This year, it's all the more true: my son is getting married in a week, and my grandson turned one year old this past week. But I don't feel old. I just feel as if I'm gathering more information about the world inside. I can only, only hope that makes me a better writer.

I get up a little slower when I've been sitting on the floor, but otherwise, I still feel as physically capable as ever. Maybe I'm fooling myself. But then again...I had a happy realization while cycling last week. I love watching the long shadows during an evening ride in the fall. What I don't love is that dark comes so quickly. Twice this year, I've squeaked home on my bike in the throes of darkness. A couple near misses. Time to mount my light for safety--just in case.

But watching my own shadow, I snapped this self-portrait.  I remember how when I started riding fifteen (!!?) years ago, the guys' long shadows were so smooth; their long shadow legs looked like smooth, fast pistons stretching out, up and down the ditches as we passed. Mine looked awkward and certainly not smooth by comparison. Last week, I watched my shadow and made this happy discovery: lo and behold, somewhere, somehow in the last decade and a half of riding, my own cadence has become smoother. My legs looked like pistons, too. I'm going to relish that realization.

Then again, there's the beauty of harvest. It's sad to me because it means soon the fields will be bare and brown-black although there's a certain beauty of bounty in that, too. It also means the long Minnesota winter is too soon upon is.

The harvest itself fills my heart so full that sometimes I think it will burst (to embrace a cliche). Riding my bike alongside tractors, golden beanfields, or a combine like the one in this picture I took last week reminds me of the richness our soil still holds (IF we take care of it). The smells and sounds wash over me with memories: walking out to Dad's combine in my Halloween costume to show him my ghostly self before we went trick-or-treating; riding rounds in the combine with him, working aloud on my Confirmation memory work; just riding, my forehead pressed against the glass window (exactly as Lainey does in Jake Riley: Irreparably Damaged), watching the grain or corn wash like a wave up into the combine header.  And those glorious last autumns at home, when both my brother Bill and Dad were out in the field and they trusted me to do the chores all by myself. I felt so useful. What a good thing to feel.

There was the night when I was probably sixteen when I drove the Cub Cadet into the hog lot with a cart full of 5-gallon buckets of feed, and realized I couldn't back it out without the cart twisting sideways.  I was utterly stuck. What did I do? I emptied the buckets, fed the pigs, and then straightened the cart behind the little tractor by  herking it around by hand so I could back out. I don't think I ever told Dad or Bill about that and here I am, publishing it for the world. I still can't back a wagon or a cart to save my neck.

But I can ride my bike down county highways, flanked on both sides by golden, browning fields of grain and corn, and breathe it in, and be glad to be this tiny part of the plenty of the earth.

Midwest Independent Booksellers Association, The Depot, Minneapolis

Davenport B&N Tomorrow, and Girl Meets Boy Anthology, January 2012

We got the cover! This week, Kelly Milner Halls sent the cover to all of us whose stories are in this anthology. Pretty cute, huh? It contains some pretty heavy subject matter, I'll tell you that much. The cover may somewhat imply the weight of the stories within...

I'm honored to be in the company of the authors in this book. I'm excited that it's actually in the works and will be in bookstores in January. My story is called "Mars at Night," and the main character is an Iowa farm girl. Go figure. The catch, however, is that she's in love with the only Muslim in her high school. And her beloved pig farm is in danger...

Closer to home, and closer to the moment, TOMORROW, I'm signing Chasing AllieCat in Davenport, Iowa, at the big Barnes and Noble

Reading

I love holiday break. Get up, make coffee, write, walk Freya, eat lunch, write some more, work out (preferably, XC skiing, or tromping through knee-deep snow, or even sitting on the bike on the trainer and hating Coach Troy), write a bit more, make dinner, read, maybe clean a little, maybe watch a movie, read. Such a schedule is more than idyllic. It's heaven.

The reading part might be the best since during school I barely have time to keep up reading what my students are reading for my own classes.

Right now: I finished the Hunger Games and am halfway through Catching Fire. Don't want to put them down. I have about ten more books I'd like to read in the next ten days. Not sure that's gonna happen. Am going to get Wintergirls and Thirteen Reasons Why and Mockingbird any day now.

And then, there's the good family things that come with holidays. Yesterday, Bill and Cathy (my brother and his wife), came up from Iowa for the day. We had a blast. That sort of Christmas vacation possibility is the very best of all.

December mornings and Bob Feller

Finals are over. I'm so relieved. Some wonderful moments of this semester, and some amazing students made it all worthwhile.
But still, it's so much work, I'm glad, glad, glad to be done for a few weeks.

The still early mornings mean no homework, just sitting with my laptop, my story about Grant O'Grady struggling to wend its way forward, Freya snoring nearby, and Christmas tree lights twinkling blue against the black early morning sky.
A magical way to start the day.

Speaking of Grant O'Grady. My protagonist is a fourteen-year-old boy in North Dakota in 1937. His Idol is Bob Feller, who grew up in Van Meter, Iowa, and who pitched for Fargo-Moorhead (Grant got to watch him play), before he was snatched up by the Cleveland Indians at age seventeen.

Bob Feller died this week. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Even though Grant is a fictional character, he lives in my head, in my life, and all of that part of me grieves Bob's death. Yet, Bob had a good life. That we should celebrate and remember.

YA lit

If this link works, it's a great blog about what YA readers like in their books. Fun to peruse.

http://www.write4kids.com/blog/2010/10/25/the-ya-view-what-we-like-in-our-books-and-what-we-dont/