There Goes Lowell's Party

Latest Book: There Goes Lowell’s Party (Holiday House)

Lowell visions a May Birthday Party with wall-to-wall kin: Crumm Creek loggers from his Mama’s side, Piggott’s Peak barrel-makers from his Papa’s side, plus a passel of Granny Slocum’s grape-growin’, fiddlin’ relatives from up on Slocum’s Bluff. No matter that an Ozark rain storm is a-loomin’ in the distance. Lowell knows jest as sure as snakes crawl that even iffen red skies an’ low geese an’ leafbacks mean rain, and even iffen that rain begets floods, slides an’ twisters, no hard-workin’, family-lovin’, smart an’ clever folk would a-miss a kin’s Birthday jest because of some pourdown. No siree. They’d do what they had to. Lowell’s kin would a-chorus “Happy Birthday!”. Buy now from Indiebound.com, Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, or Borders.com.

More about the Author:

Web site: www.estherhershenhorn.com

A reader, a writer, an author, oh, my!

I grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I’m known to tell writers: know what your character wants, what your character needs, what he or she wishes for, longs for, dreams of.

Can you guess my long-ago wish-dream-longing?
I wanted my name on the front cover of a children’s book!
I still love the “happily-ever-after” endings of fairy tales, especially Hans Christian Andersen’s THE UGLY DUCKLING, and my orange “True Books” that offered up the childhoods of famous Americans.

The Penn Wynne Library was but a stone’s throw away from my new suburban home in 1955. Thanks to my trusty library card, the first I’d ever owned, I spent my tenth year voraciously reading through the blue-spine-ed books on the “K” shelves of the library’s Children’s Room. I rode along with Nancy Drew and her River Heights companions, seated in the back of Nancy’s spiffy blue roadster, supposedly following clues and feeling the breeze, yet unknowingly uncovering how to tell a story. Through adolescence, I sewed along with Jo and her sisters, I strode the moors, I walked the streets of Chicago with Sister Carrie. Writers are readers, and that’s the Truth. How nice that my Penn Wynne Library gifted me with so many wonderful teachers.

I earned a degree in Elementary Education from the University of Pennsylvania, minoring in Journalism, and soon after began teaching fifth grade in Chicago. Eventually, I traded my Phillies hat for a Cubbie-blue cap, my cheese steak for a Chicago hot dog and teaching for Motherhood. When my son reconnected me with my long-ago wish-dream-longing, I was off and running on my Writer’s Journey. Fortunately, the Faith required of all Cubs fans served me well: my journey to publication took longer than expected!

Eventually, as I knew it would, my writer’s plot line ended “happily-ever-after.”

And lucky me!

That Happy Ending spawned several New Beginnings.

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1. Synopsis Critique from Author Esther Hershenhorn