April Lindner

This summer, it seems my whole life is under construction. We've been living in limbo while the house we're hoping to buy in our beloved Lambertville has been taking shape.   I've been doing a lot of driving back and forth to the house to watch it grow into the next phase of its already quite long life. The process has been exciting and sometimes fraught.   Surprised by asbestos Then there's my usual summer preoccupation: writing.  With several novels underway at once, I've been trying to figure out where to take my writing next.  I've been researching and drafting what I suspect will turn out to be a Middle Grade novel and rethinking a YA novel that didn't quite cohere. I've also been turning back to my first love, poetry, putting together the first manuscript of poems in a really long time. Surprised by dogwood Most of all, I've been grappling with what kind of writer I want to become.  How should I spend the next part o...

Trevi Fountain Love, Lucy comes out in paperback today, and I thought I'd commemorate Lucy's paperback birthday with a celebration of the Eternal City, where she travels with her summer love Jesse.   Here are some of my favorite spots in Rome, including the "greatest hits" I've set out to find, street map in hand.  Here's Piazza Spagna in the evening: Stormy skies And the Spanish Steps themselves, gorgeous even when under construction: Of course there's the stunning Pantheon:   And all the wonders of Vatican City: And then there are the beauties I've stumbled upon by sheer accident, like St. John Lateran: Not to mention the city's smaller but no less noteworthy wonders: The world's best macchiato Wishing you were in Italy?  (You're not alone!)  Please check out Love, Lucy and Far From Over , Jesse's side of the story.  

Here in Southeastern Pennsylvania, we've fast forwarded through April Showers and made it to May Flowers in what seems like record time.  This year April brings with it the publication of Far From Over , the new digital-exclusive companion novella to Love, Lucy.  It also brings some celebratory blog posts including this one, from NOVL , on the travel destinations that inspire me most .     And this musical F ar From Over playlist from With Her Nose Stuck in a Book .  What songs does street musician Jesse Palladino play on the streets of Naples?  Here's a little taste: Finally, April brings a really nifty sale-- Love, Lucy in e-book form for only $2.99 --which means for a little while longer you can download both Love, Lucy and Far From Over for under five dollars.  So if you're yearning for a little vacation flirtation in sunny Italy, please give them a look!

Today marks the launch of my newest baby, Far From Over , a digital-only novella companion to Love, Lucy .  And to mark the occasion, the e-book of Love, Lucy is on sale (only $2.99) for the rest of the month.  If if you've got a yen for some southern Italian sunshine and romance, please take a look!

All school year long I wait impatiently for extended writing time--a stretch of days when I can put my head down and focus with few interruptions.  And now that time is here--theoretically at least.  W hile I wait to hear more about the fate of the Greek novel, I've been trying--with uneven success--to get my head back into my next novel--the one set in a New Jersey river town. Lambertville, NJ But summer--and serious writing--comes with its own pitfalls.   I may hypnotize myself into believing I'm on the top deck of a ferry pulling into Santorini, or wandering the charming streets of a small New Jersey river town, but my body knows otherwise. So to fend off the Vitamin D deficiency and a bad case of the blahs, Andre, the dogs, and I went for a walk in Valley Forge... ...a green world where locals and tourists alike walk trails, ride bikes, and commune with ghosts. Captain Von Steuben looks out across the fields On other visits, we've op...

  A local celebrity As I may have mentioned (about a thousand times) Andre and I have been living in limbo these last few months.  Our house is in the market and half of our furniture is in storage, while we wait for the next chapter of our lives to begin--hopefully in the town of our dreams, Lambertville, New Jersey. What's so special about Lambertville? It's a small town--charming, picturesque, quirky, and with a startling number of artists per capita--the kind of place that would make the perfect place to live--or the great setting for a novel. You can probably guess where this is going, right?  Over the last few months I've been working on a new writing project. Another YA reimagining of a classic work of Brit Lit, it's set in a fictional New Jersey river town that bears a passing resemblance to a certain actual New Jersey river town. The Delaware Raritan Canal So of course I take every opportunity I can get to research my novel-in-progre...

Snack shack, Tinos, Greece (photo by Shawn Krahmer Heal) It's been a super-busy spring.  I've been struggling to balance teaching and a flurry of events promoting my most recently published YA novel,  Love, Lucy.   In the middle of it all, we put our home on the market, so this spring has been a blur of renovation, cleaning, and dog wrangling to get the house ready for potential buyers.   That's why you haven't seen me here for a long time.  But now that the spring semester is more or less over, I'll be back, sharing my thoughts about writing, travel, music, etcetera. And now (at last!) I hope to get back to some serious, sustained writing.  I've got several projects in the works, all too new and fragile to discuss in public just yet.    And then there's my Greek novel --a reimagining of Jane Austen's Persuasion , set on a high school study tour of Athens, Santorini, and Crete. Mule on Syros, Greece (photo by Shawn Krahmer Heal) La...

Thanks to my friends at The Fantastic Flying Book Club for taking Lucy on tour.  Check out her itinerary  here .  There will be reviews , i nterviews , and a giveaway, so visit any of the stops along the way for  chance to win a copy of Love, Lucy .

Audrey Hepburn on Sunset Boulevard When the L.A. Teen Writer Series invited me to appear on a panel with some very fabulous writers-- Susan Adrian , Jennifer Niven , Amy Talkington , Sandra Waugh , and moderator Mary McCoy --I wasn't about to let a whole continent stand in my way.   I've never been to Los Angeles before, so of course I had to squeeze in a little sightseeing.   First stop: TCL (formerly known as Grauman's) Chinese Theater! After that,  I set off for a stroll down Hollywood Boulevard.  In New York City you can tell the tourists because they're looking up.  But on Hollywood Boulevard, the tourists are bumping into each other because they're all looking down--at the Walk of Fame. Here's what I noticed about L.A.  They do things with a special flair.   Take, for instance, the lowly shopping mall... Hollywood and Highland Shopping Center ...where a person might buy herself a plain old-fashioned smoothie. D'...