Laurel Snyder

I hadn’t really thought about using Pinterest for storing book research. In fact, I’d been whining about how I didn’t *get it* at all.  Pinterest just seemed to be a place for people to window shop (and as some of you know… I’m a terrible shopper).

But then Kate Messner  wrote about how it can be of use for education and book-related stuff, and a lightbulb went off over my head.

So now I’m using Pinterest to store old photos, things I’ve found online that are informing the development of my new book, Seven Stories Up. Working on historical fiction (for me) really requires that I spend a lot of time staring at pictures, trying to place myself in that unfamiliar world.  Pinterest might make this easier, and it lets me share the photos with you!

Look!  Above is a picture of a carnival in 1937, the year my book is set…  cool, right?

Back in my life, my world, my home. Catching up with friends, cleaning the house, peering into the fall and feeling good.

I turned in the book! I did!  I don’t know what my editor will think of it, or how much work remains to be done, but it finally felt like a book. Like it could hold together. Like I had the bones in the right order, and it could walk, at last.  Hopefully, Seven Stories Up will come out in 2013.

And I recorded the audio book for Bigger than a Bread Box, which was a terrific experience!  I choked up a little at the end. Hard to imagine anyone else voicing that particular title.

And now?

With a clean house and a deadline met and the kids starting school in a few weeks?  I get to fiddle with new ideas, and get my teeth cleaned, and cook dinner. I get to live as calmly as I ever seem to manage.

It’s good.

We were impressed with the sudden inspiration for a theater…

And the abstract puppets…

But the 3-D glasses blew us away…

The show was set in a bookstore.  Many puppets died violent deaths.

THE END