It’s in! The cover for Windmill Keepers, Book One is finally done! Please click on the image to enlarge it and see the details! I. Kemp put her fancy art degree to use and created something totally unique for our first YA novel. I’m still amazed at how she managed to capture the vividness of their world, but reveal the dark undertones of the story. Keep reading for a small blurb from I. Kemp about the art side of Windmill Keepers.

~A. Kemp

P.S. Normal updates resume this week.
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I really always wanted to be a graffiti artist but never had enough rebellion in me to secretly paint on any walls. So here I am, attempting to live out my dreams by making stencil painted book covers. Please like and share this artwork to your heart’s content!

~~>I.Kemp

P.S. I will gladly do very, very reasonably priced covers for any other indie/self-published artists who want something drawn or painted instead of photographs! Just send me a message any time!

When I was still in college, I made it a goal to seek out the strangest classes for my theology and philosophy requirements. If I was going to be forced into an entire year’s worth of studying morality and the Bible, I was at least going to make it interesting. One of my most memorable semesters was spent studying death and suffering and its explanation in religious texts. What I learned stuck with me long after the final exam.

According to the Kübler-Ross model, there is a set of emotional stages that most people go through when experiencing a loss: Denial, anger, gambling, depression, and acceptance. I recognized these stages as something I went through after the death of a friend and classmate at the age of twelve. Loss, however, doesn’t always come in the form of a funeral. It can be the feeling of losing anything, such as the destruction of a home, the death of a dream, or the loss of a job. Sometimes, it’s not even tangible.

In Windmill Keepers, I introduce a number of characters attempting the navigate the choppy waters of grief. Loss and mental illness are a huge part of the story. It’s a topic that appears in many of my pending works and for good reason. Grief never asks us when it’s convenient to pop into our lives. Loss swoops in out of nowhere and leaves us shell-shocked in its wake. I believe it is extremely rare for someone to make it through childhood without losing someone or something they cherish. In adulthood, it’s impossible. That’s why I think it is important for YA novels to explore these concepts.

I chose to write for children and YA for several reasons, but I most often come back to the end of my childhood and the length of my teenage years. While I was growing up, I knew I would eventually lose someone. As things would turn out, I experienced more than one type of traumatic loss. For years, I told myself that mourning these losses was unreasonable. After all, not all of them were a situation of life and death. I thought I was being strong. That wasn’t the case, and it wasn’t healthy. To this day, I still struggle with this mistake and its consequences. I once wished I had found the right characters and stories to help me navigate my sorrow and understand that I wasn’t abnormal or alone. Now, I can be the writer I needed for someone else.

It’s the best apology I can give to myself.

A week ago, a co-worker from my waitressing days died unexpectedly. We were never very close, but she touched a lot of lives in her few, short years. I saw dozens of condolences appear on her facebook page, and even more attendees at her candlelight vigil. It reminded me of fourteen years ago, when I saw the same turnout for a classmate’s memorial service at my elementary school. It made me think about my own life a great deal.

I’ve never been one for late night parties or huge social gatherings. When my peers went out, I stayed in. Sometimes, I think my classmates forgot I even existed. I always held a certain respect for those who could make friends during these nighttime adventures. It takes me ages to get to know someone, but others can have an instant impact on the people around them. All it takes is a smile. I guess it’s the price I pay for living inside my head so often.

The death of my co-worker reminded me of an important promise I once made to myself. Before I moved from one coast to the next, I swore to live my life to the fullest. I would have great adventures, see amazing things, and meet all sorts of people. I would learn to smile more often. I would make friends. So far, I haven’t been keeping that promise. I let work and schedules absorb my life. I have lived twenty minutes from the Pacific for the past two months, yet I haven’t laid eyes on it. My co-worker never would have stood for this. My classmate would never have stood for this. I shouldn’t stand for it either.

We never know when we’ll draw our final breath. It could be when we’re a hundred or it could be tomorrow. But even without the promise of another day, there are some people who put living on the back burner, silently promising that tomorrow they’ll start working on their bucket list. I’m one of those people, and it needs to stop.

I thought about my co-worker all through IT class the day after she passed away. I wasn’t sure how to express what I was feeling in words. So instead, I wrote it out. It reminds me to go on a journey, seek and new skyline, and make some noise on the departed’s behalf.

So here’s to all the people who died too young, and to those who are still alive but have yet to truly live.

Catie

We’re here but for a moment –
a flash, a blink, a sigh,
a single breath in autumn rain
exhaled into the frigid sky.
We run through fields of winter snow,
prints quickly filling in our wake
like the waxing tides of summer seas,
our imprints their’s to take.
We bloom like flowers in the spring –
vivid, sudden, sweet –
gorgeous for the drop in time
before we’re stolen by the heat.
You were fleeting in this life,
and danced a single step before your leave.
But in that solitary leap you danced a song
more beautiful than eternity.

If you’ve ever fancied yourself an artist, then you know there are inspirations that grab hold of your heart and refuse to let go. Once, I was the victim of such a creative attack. A song and a warm breeze created an image that carved itself into my mind and infected my dreams. To this day, I find it unbelievable that single tune pushed me from the water I was treading and onto unfamiliar roads. After all, I never thought I would have so much gratitude towards a piano.

I was partway through college, struggling to balance several jobs and personal conflicts. It was unusual for me to find free time, but I didn’t mind, since free time gave me an opportunity to worry. On this day, however, I was the solitary employee at a wine and imported cheese shop. The owners – bless their naive souls – thought that an improvised city on the outskirts of St. Louis would be the perfect location for such a specialized store. During its drastically short life, the store saw fewer than thirty customers. This was a day where I wouldn’t see any. I needed a distraction.

Spring had settled over the Midwest like the morning river-fog. It rolled in from the banks and into the soybean fields – wet, brief and sweet. With the rain clouds finally pulling back, I decided to prop open the door, hoping it would attract a customer. To aid in my quest, I took control of the radio system, playing instrumentals from my broken-down laptop.

The breeze came in, warm and soft with the scent of damp soil. I closed my eyes, trying not to think of the piling bills or looming papers in my agenda. That’s when the song stated to play. It from a show I’d marathoned the week before. But this was the first time I heard the tune without characters talking over it. Ailes Grises. Gray wings.

Somewhere between the stirring earth, the gentle wind, and the sad, hollow tune, an image formed in my imagination. I saw a young girl, her hair tossed in the wind, balancing on a wire between two turbines. Something about the scene caught caused my breath to catch. I played the song again, and again, and another time after that. It was still playing in my head when I locked the doors and scurried to my server job at the Greek restaurant across the street.

At night, I added more. There were windmills everywhere. The world was overcast, and the sky cracked with gray clouds. But the breeze was warm. I imagined it swirling around  this girl’s frigid fingertips like a gentle current. The promise of spring and brighter skies kept her moving towards the next mill. For days, I thought of toolboxes and climbing rigs. I couldn’t get her out of my head. At times, her orange hair and freckles felt more familiar than my own features.

I put up with this for two years. Sometimes, as I navigated the choppy waters of adulthood, I would add something from my life to her’s. My volunteer work with the Commemorative Air Force made her into an engineer. The wonder I saw in props and engine hoses became her obsession. I developed a disliking for milk and she developed a taste for it. As my voice grew with confidence, her’s softened with insecurity. We evolved to be unlike one another and I loved her all the more for it.

I’ve wanted to write since I was three.My parents saved picture books I made from my grandpa’s graphing paper and ballpoint pens. They said I would dictate stories to them like an infantile Homer. It seemed inevitable that one day I would need to write her tale. While listening to a panel on female literature in YA, the inevitable became the present. That night, I typed the first sentences of Kite Lyons’ journey.

In the background, I was still playing that song.