Savannah Hendricks's Blog, page 18

Funny Thing About the Weather

It’s a cloudy day here in Phoenix. This type of weather is usually welcomed by residents. A nice break from the searing burn of the sun (even in the winter). It changes the way nature, houses, landscapes appear. Similar to when it snows, blanketing everything, making things appear flawless.

I’m lucky I spent my childhood traveling to different states and experiencing different weather. If I had grown up and never moved to a different state or visited relatives in other states I would have missed out. It might sound lame, but those experiences sit in a peaceful spot of memory, and as a writer they develop sensory pieces I can touch on in stories.

I’m fascinated by how weather can change a mood in a person’s life, or in a story. Something as simple as rain at night verses rain during the day. Yet, life can be THAT simple, and weather can change THAT much of life. Nature depends on weather, thus human’s depend on weather. We cannot control the weather, but ultimately it controls our everyday. Whether we have ice cream or hot chocolate, whether we water our lawns or shovel our driveway, whether we turn on our heat or our air conditioning.

Yes, this post might sound a little “out of elementary school lesson,” I guess that happens when you write stories for children. Regardless, if you spent 20 seconds thinking about the weather in your location today I’m sure you would connect the dots of how it played a role in your Thursday.

 

I Have an Agent! (Crunching Some Numbers too)

I was hopeful that this day would come, but I was also aware that the chances were slim, alas it arrived. I landed an agent! Yes, an agent! Even though I know that this is not a guarantee of sales to publishers, it is nonetheless just as miraculous to obtain an agent, as it is to obtain a book deal these days. (Writers know this, don’t we!?).

When others land agents they usually say “now the real work begins.” For me, the work continues, with added support! How wonderful is that!?

Here are some numbers for those that are still holding out hope for themselves.

My first agent submission was in May of 2006. I submitted to a total of 51 agents with 3 agents getting a different story on a second submission. (So, yes 10 years before landing an agent in March of this year). I was not constantly submitting to agents though, I took off a year here and there when I submitted direct to publishers.

My first submission (magazine) was to Highlights for Children in March of 2005, with an acceptance in 2006, to run in their Highlights High Five magazine in 2007.

My first manuscript (book) submission was Nonnie and I in August of 2005. (As many of you know that story, contract with publisher July 2013, publication at the end of 2014).

I could not be happier landing my agent! COULD NOT! In fact, it was all about luck even getting my agent’s attention. Pure social media luck!! I think that is how many stories about these things go. My story is similar. I went to the library, saw a book, checked it out, read it, loved it, found the author on social media, befriended the author, commented on a post, said agent saw it, commented back…the rest is history. Yes, that is how I landed my agent.

 

Pictures of Us – adult short story

PICTURES OF US

by Savannah Hendricks

            I knew I was dead. I could feel it. I looked down and through myself. They would have performed CPR if I had a pulse, but at this point I didn’t. The EMT had dragged my wife back to the ambulance to sedate her. I wanted Kristy to know I was here. Her screams subsided, and I knew the medicine was finally working its way through her blood stream.

At the hospital I tried to show Kristy in some way that I was there, but nothing prevailed. I had yet to find out why I was still lingering about in this state. After a couple of days my wife was finally released to go home. I think she wanted to stay.

Kristy climbed into her car in the hospital garage; a police officer had driven it there for her. I rode with her on the drive home. The car was silent, except for the trembling of her hands on the wheel. I wondered if she was paying attention to the road or just driving from memory. Kristy pulled into our driveway, shut off the car, and sat. I noticed baskets of flowers and other trinkets by the front door. I doubted if she noticed them yet.

“What am I going to do Nathan? This is our house.”

Taking a large over-drawn breath she opened the car door and climbed out. Her pace to the house was sluggish and wobbly. Walking up the front porch steps she came upon the gifts. She covered her eyes and sank to the concrete step below, tears rolled down her palms.

“I am right here honey, please don’t cry.”

I felt helpless, she couldn’t hear me. Kristy finally stood, leaving the gifts where they were, and unlocked the front door.

The red light from the answering machine blinked rapidly, but she ignored it and walked straight to the kitchen sink. She lowered her head and slurped water from the faucet. Wiping off her mouth with her right sleeve she turned around. I stood a foot away from her, but she didn’t see me. Kristy headed upstairs into our bedroom’s walk-in-closet. She began throwing all of my clothes off the shelves and hangers.

“Damn you Nathan! How dare you!”

Everything that came out of her mouth was sharp with rage. Kristy fell asleep that night on the closet floor wrapped in my clothes.

My mind went back to when I died. I could see her car, finally coming upon the crash site. She saw my car, the accident, and slammed on her brakes. I watched her stumble over to my mangled chaos of metal, screaming. She tugged and pulled the passenger door, eventually getting it to budge.

“Nathan, wake up, come on,” Kristy said with such patience.

Blood ran down my temple and across her hand that rested on my cheek.

“Please just let me wake up enough to say good-bye!” I screamed from my soul. “Please! She needs me. Can’t you see?”

I hung somewhere between layers of an eternal divide as I watched Kristy start to lose control. I remained in the driver’s seat as she pulled my head to her chest.

“Please no!” Kristy continued to plead. Her tears ran down and mixed with my blood below.

You think that I’d be concerned about where I would end up. At this point I didn’t know, and didn’t care. Watching Kristy being pulled away from me by an EMT seemed heartbreaking – if my heart could still accomplish such a human feeling at this point.

As the days went on, the nights turned into the worst part for Kristy. I realized for the first time in my life what love meant. I knew I loved Kristy. I had since our third date. But now I saw what love looked like from the opposite side. Deep and powerful, beyond anything I had ever realized. For the first time I recognized how much my wife loved me and how short I fell in my love for her.

Kristy was having a microwave dinner, the first so called real meal she had since coming home, she paused, picking up a picture frame from the pile spread across the couch. The photo was of our vacation to New England, the fall colors behind our cuddled up bodies. Pictures of us together had all been taken out of our photo albums and placed in plain sight all over the house. You couldn’t turn an inch without seeing one. Taped to the kitchen cupboards and walls were wedding and Christmas pictures of us.

Seeing something move fast out of the corner of my eye I moved closer to Kristy. Her hand was by her neck and then it gradually fell to her side. In her neck was a serrated dinner knife, the black handle protruding. Tears fell from her troubled eyes as blood flowed from her mouth and neck like warm maple syrup.

“No, Kristy! Honey what are you doing?! No!” I yelled without meaning.

She dropped to the floor in one swift movement. In her hand she held a picture of us in formal wear, her in lacy white, me in a black tuxedo. The picture of us slid from Kristy’s hand as her eyes gazed on.

 

©2016, Savannah Hendricks

 

That Menace is at it Again!

Awesome here, again.

Can I say having a baby brother is exhausting. Now I know why I see Mom drinking that red liquid in a glass at night. Mom calls it “finally.”She doesn’t get a moment of peace, and I don’t either, but she doesn’t offer any “finally” to me.

Do you want to know the worst park about Menace? Any time he is behaving well Mom has the camera out! She clearly has to document Menace’s good behavior. If she documented my good behavior she would have to open a photo kiosk to keep up with the demand.

I have to give the little punk some credit though. He uses that throw your body on the ground and roll on your back and wiggle to his advantage. I do find myself laughing a little in secret when I see Mom trying to pick him up.

I should probably also mention that Menace’s behavior has gotten a smidge better after he injured Mom. She was bleeding, it looked bad! I think she got him back the next night because Menace had diarrhea all night long. Yet, she had to get up with him every time and got zero sleep so it might have been what human’s call coincidence.

 

Call Him Menace

It has been a while since I allowed Awesome to take over the blog, I figured we could all use a laugh. For those who are new, please find the late Dog’s and Awesome’s prior blog posts. Puppy Interviews Dog 

Dog Interviews Puppy

Hey, Awesome here. I was really excited to get a baby brother, but I think I got a broken one. He is what I would call a menace, because of this, he will not be referred to as Puppy (once my title), but Menace. You will see why.

The other day Menace decided to escape his play pen when Mom was gone, he came to bother the heck out of me before knocking over the lamp and spending a long time with the Roku remote. Mom said he was one click away from ordering a Hulu subscription for the month.

Menace’s favorite things are, in specific order.

1. My cheeks

2. My head

3. My tail

4. Remotes

5. All balls that are too big for him

5. My paws

Menace’s favorite past time is climbing. He can almost turn on the stove, this sends Mom screaming his direction. Menace does not like his crate, AT ALL. Mom said give him time, but it has been over 3 weeks. Last night I saw Mom take Menace out to potty and when they came back Menace reached the bedroom door, threw himself on the floor, rolled on his back. Mom struggled to pick him up like this,but  finally got him in his crate again.

So, since Menace can no longer be safe in the play pen he has to be in his crate. This is a huge problem for me because he cries out and bangs on the metal door like a prisoner holding out a cup for water in the desert.

In case anyone forgot, my favorite things are peace/quiet, naps and treats. Menace only likes one of my three favorite things.

 

The Stillness of Thinking and Writing

When was the last time you simply stopped doing all things, sat, and thought?

I find that I am always on my phone, computer or even tablet when I’m cooking, watching television, writing, working…you name it. I am always multitasking, but for what reason?

I came to realize that really the only time I am focusing is at the movie theater and the five seconds before I fall asleep and the television has just been turned off.

The other morning I caught the end of a segment on television about Ernest Hemingway and how he used to constantly edit his work to utter perfection (the narrator stated that most writers today would have never thrown away what Hemingway did). Note I have never followed anything on Hemingway or read his work, yet it still made me think. Did he win the Nobel Prize in Literature for his perfection? And did that perfection come from a time when there were not five hundred other outlets distracting a writer? When a writer sits down to write, most use a computer, for Hemingway it was pen and paper or a typewriter, not a social media filled distraction hole. It was a library of books and an adventure outside, not a Google search engine and Wikipedia pages.

Has the quality of writing shifted because of this? Has society changed our expectations? Would our writing and reading shift if we switched our current ways back to historic ways?

A PUPPY IS ALL ABOUT FAMILY

It has been a while since I have written about dogs. The last post was about losing my girl, Charley, in September 2015. I now have a new puppy, 10 weeks old, a handsome little chocolate English lab.

I like to say that I have a good deal of dog knowledge due to having had a dog aggressive dog (Charley). Sadly, I was never able to correct Charley to be the dog she needed to be, and I realize now that it was my fault, not hers. This is not a negative statement as it might seem, although I believed this until now.

The thing I have discovered, or re-learn, is that not only is every dog different, but it all comes down to family, more specifically me, Mama Dog. I took some time to think about Charley and her behaviors. Even with all the tools I had, I never learned. I also noticed that I was, in just 2 weeks, doing the same thing with the new puppy. When it comes to family, and dogs in that family, everything is about the person/the handler. Essentially, control yourself to control the situation. Seems simple and easy. Nope. The reason, at least for me is to react, to activate myself before and during, due to instinct. Of course, I am not talking about “harming a dog reaction.” I am talking about becoming frustrated, nervous, upset. This energy then feeds to the situation and thus everyone in the family loses control, there is no leader so we all try to be the leader.

This is a long way around saying that the only way to fix the start of puppy “bad” behavior is to look at myself, and my leadership.

Once Upon A Valentine’s Day

The first ever Valentiny Contest is here from Susanna Leonard Hill’s! The contest: write a Valentines story appropriate for children (children here defined as ages 12 and under) maximum 214 words in which someone is grumpy!

Please enjoy my entry – (for kids 10-12) – Once Upon a Valentine’s Day (214 words) by Savannah Hendricks

Once upon a time in the deep woods of the pink forest, in the pink house lived the grumpiest person on Valentine’s Day, Valentine Holly Heart. Everyone knew that Valentine’s Day at Valentine’s house meant temper tantrums and extreme eye rolling. How could someone that lives in the pink forest, with the name Valentine be grumpy on the day of love?

“Valentine’s Day is about giving heart cards to boys. I don’t like boys,” she explained.

The day before Valentine’s Day, when tantrums were already starting, a gift appeared on her door. With caution, she opened it.

“Yum,” Valentine said, holding three candy bars.

A card was attached:

For someone I like

“Crazy boys, you’re gross.”

She could not waste chocolate, so she savored it, and then went back to being grumpy.

Tomorrow arrived, Valentine’s Day, and another gift, a vase of pink and white daisies, and a card.

“I hate Valentine’s day!”

She opened the card:

For someone I like

“Hello?” she called, looking around the forest.

A shadow moved.

“Come out, I see you!”

With hands shoved in pockets, the secret admirer stepped forward.

“Lily? Were the candy and flowers from…you?”

Lily smiled. Valentine felt warmth in her heart for the first Valentine’s Day ever.

“Thank you,” Valentine said, taking Lily’s hand.

White Writes Black

This day, January 27th is noted as Multicultural Children’s Book Day.​ Nonnie and I was not written with the race of the main character in mind. It was story of a girl and her giraffe, that’s it. When it was published and I saw the cover, an African girl standing next to a giraffe, then it hit me. I wrote about a black girl!? Me, a white person.

Was that the reason why the manuscript received so many “loved it, but not enough” letters until I landed a contract? Was the reason because my character, unbeknownst to me, was African?
I’ve been reading recent articles mentioning people of color in children’s books, with regards to the limits of color and even, girl characters. Is that’s why Nonnie and I does not stand out among other published books? (Double whammy – black and a girl)
I live in a mostly Hispanic community and I do see that represented at my local library, yet I can’t seem to get them to bite on my book.
What factors play into that? If I am essentially blind to the main character of my book, does that make me the opposite of other readers out there? Lastly can a Caucasian author write about an African child or any race not their own?

 

Giraffe Fun Fact Q & A – NONNIE AND I

Xist Publishing, 2014

As many already know, in 2005 I set out to write a story about a girl and her best friend, a giraffe. I wanted to capture the plains of Botswana and a special friendship bond. I spent time researching giraffes to make sure that the words I presented were true. Ten years later it became the beautiful picture book that is NONNIE AND I.

GIRAFFE Q & A:

How long do you think a giraffe sleeps for?

Giraffes sleep about 5-30 minutes in a 24 hour period.

How often does a giraffe drink water?

Giraffes only drink water about every 2-3 days. They acquire a lot of their water in the 75 pounds of food they eat a day.

Do giraffes sleep standing up or laying down?

Giraffes most often sleep standing up, but sometimes they will sleep laying down, resting their heads on their bottoms, while another giraffe keeps watch for safety.

Do all giraffes have the same spots?

A Giraffe’s spots are like human fingerprints, they are all unique. The two main factors of different spots have to do with where they live and what they eat.

Do giraffes make noise?

A giraffe makes snorting, grunting, hissing and moo sounds.

Why is a giraffe’s tongue a blue-black color?

The dark color protects the giraffe’s tongue from becoming sunburned.

How tall and how much does a giraffe way at birth?

A giraffe weighs 100-150 pounds at birth, and is about 6 feet tall.