April Lindner

Lucy as seen in the wild at the Vero Beach Book Center It's Lucy's launch day, and in her honor, the fantastic folks at Rock Star Book Tours are hosting a book blast and a giveaway!  To enter, visit one of the participating blogs!    The book blast post is a little something I wrote about the first time I backpacked across Europe, and how the experience taught me a few rules of the road.   Me at 22, in Versailles Like Lucy Sommersworth, the heroine of  Love, Lucy , my parents gave me the gift of a lifetime: a backpacking trip to Europe. I was a bit older than Lucy—22, and just out of college—but when I arrived in Milan, Italy with a Eurail pass, a copy of  Let’s Go: Europe , and a seventy-pound backpack I could barely lift, I was a wee bit terrified.  Like Lucy, I spoke only a little bit of Italian, just barely enough to get by, and I wasn’t particularly good at reading maps or train schedules.  Street map of Milan, cour...

Santa Maria Novella Train Station, Florence, Italy Yesterday I learned that Love, Lucy , my third and newest novel, is now up for pre-order at Amazon .   This is a thrilling milestone for me, especially since the process of writing Love, Lucy was long and fraught with doubt.  Thinking back on it now, I'm reminded of that famous quote from E. L. Doctorow: "Writing is like driving at night in the fog.  You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." Except if you're like me, you spend huge portions of the trip pretty sure you've taken the wrong exit and are maybe even headed off a cliff. I kept going because I fell in love with my main characters, Lucy and Jesse, and I couldn't imagine abandoning them. And because I loved writing about Italy, and about backpacking across Europe.     Rome Termini Station And because I knew there was a destination worth getting to, even if I had to take some bumpy backroa...