Beth Kephart's Blog, page 283

Excerpt from a work in progress

She walks the path, creaks open the door to the old Volvo, turns the motor over.   I run.  Up the stairs and into the attic, over the crossbeams and the pink fluff, toward the window.   Outside the sun is pale and liquid.  The crows are black and big.  They knock their way around the sky, then knock back down into the crooked tree.  Flying and settling and returning and flying and now the biggest crow caws down from the wide, green crown, and looks through the window at...

Nearly Dawn

The sun has not yet risen on this day, but it will, and soon we will drive a rented van along familiar roads, toward that long goodbye.



I am ushered on my way this morning, by the kindness of readers of Dangerous Neighbors, who put so much of themselves—their intelligence, their openness, their willingness to read an author who has, it is true, moved from genre to genre, from place to place, from time period to time period, seeking the perfect backdrop and mood for a story.  Thank you to:



S...

The day comes

and there's nothing we can do but understand that the boy, not really any longer a boy, must pack his things and return to school.



So that the hallway is now a tower of boxes hallway.  And the shirts have been washed and steamed.  And the last batch of summer cookies is cooling on the racks.  And my heart sits somewhere near my chin.



This is the ritual of the season, and when I saw one of my very best friends at a store today and she turned and I looked into her eyes, I knew that she, too, ...

Hand crafts

I have told the story of my great-grandfather here before—the Horace Kephart of Great Smoky Mountains fame, whom Ken Burns brought to life with care and meaning in his most recent series, "National Parks: America's Best Idea."  Kephart was the father of six when he left his life as a librarian to travel and then to live mostly alone in the Smokies; one of his children, a son named George, would become a forester and an official in the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.  He would also be my grandf...

Humor me

I'm thinking that it's the atmospheric pressure, but migraines have been going around in these parts—I get one and then a friend gets one and then we pretend we don't have them, and then our heads hurt.  While I was just now trying to do the very right thing and focus on my corporate work (instead of banging my hurting head against my desk) a friend (who today has a migraine) wrote to tell me that she appreciates it when I make room for humor in my blog.



And I'm thinking:  Me?  Beth Kephart?...

Collisions

This is New York City in the May sun, and today is Philadelphia suburbs in the threatening-to-rain, but nonetheless (there is a point) the scene is one of collisions. Fashion and sky, church and commerce, sun and shadow, boot and spike, leaf and cotton in the Big Apple.  A sudden infusion of corporate work, a smattering of book launch details, an in-progress manuscript, humidity hair, dance videos, unpaid bills, and the boxes of a boy's return to college abounding here, in threatening-to-rain...

A cover story, an interview, a giveaway, and unrecordable emotion

Today I am in debt to the many who have embraced Dangerous Neighbors and made today, its launch day, alive and so beautiful, in so many ways.



Thank you, Amy at My Friend Amy, for doing so much, so quietly, so dearly — for finding the energy, for working (with Nicole Bonia) toward the ideas and the ideals, for coining the phrase The Beth Effect, for believing in the power of hope, and finding it.



Thank you, Melissa Walker, for asking me to tell the cover story of Dangerous Neighbors for you...

Forgive me, but

I have had a glass and a half of wine, and I am myself, my emotions near the surface.  No, my emotions are the surface.  They are the unhidden, unbidden me.



Lately my father has been leaving things at my house—old publications featuring stories of mine (Risk and Insurance magazine, let's say, where I was the Benefits columnist, a job I could do in the middle of the night so I could be a mom in the daytime).  Sometimes I look into my father's packages right away and sometimes I forget, and on...

Giveaway, Girls' Life and Jenny Loves To Read reflect on Dangerous Neighbors

Adventures in Children's Publishing graciously interviewed me last week about Dangerous Neighbors' journey to bookstores, and then offered to run a book giveaway to boot.  Please head on over if you're interested in winning a signed copy of the book (and reading a little bit more about how this story came to be published).



Girls' Life has surprised me with this beautiful review of Dangerous Neighbors today, closing (or nearly closing with the words):  Dangerous Neighbors is a great book...

Girls' Life and Jenny Loves To Read reflect on Dangerous Neighbors

Girls' Life has surprised me with this beautiful review of Dangerous Neighbors today, closing (or nearly closing with the words):  Dangerous Neighbors is a great book about the bond of twin sisters, love, and losing the ones you love most. National Book Award Finalist, Beth Kephart, takes a story set centuries ago and makes it something we can relate to today.



And Jenny (a Philly girl who loves to read whom I only discovered last week with her great Centennial history postings) had endear...