This morning I received word from The Wishing Shelf Book Awards that The Nine Lives of Oliver placed as a finalist in the children’s 9-12-year-old category.
The Nine Lives of Oliver is a story of Reincarnation and of Always Meeting Loved Ones from Life to Life.
A curious kitten begs the old cat, Oliver, who is on his ninth life, to tell what he remembers of his past incarnations. Oliver begins with the story of his first life with an Egyptian princess, and from there, goes on to tell of his various lives of being on a pirate ship and living on a southern plantation, among others.
Please check out Sally. I only briefly met her when I was eight years old, but that meeting has forever stood out in my mind. So much so that when, in retirement, I decided to write, I wanted to base a book on her. In celebration of Black History Month… https://www.amazon.com/Sally-J-Schlenker-ebook/dp/B075MDXTQG/
Today and tomorrow, November 30 and December 1, the Kindle version of Alice Black can be downloaded for free. It’s also on Kindle Unlimited.
Alice’s perfect childhood changes when at age six, shortly after a visit from a policeman, her father and brother disappear from their home in Queens. Alice is left with a shell of a mother who never recovers from the incident but never offers any explanation. Alice struggles through life as a misfit, growing up with a mother who refuses to move on. In her final year of high school, she meets Doug, a Columbia law student who talks her into leaving her clinging, out-of-step-with-time mother and going off with him and four others to the wilds of West Virginia to live primitively in a run-down farmhouse. Despite the living conditions, Alice has never been happier, but after five years, she learns her mother is dying and heads back to Queens. After her mother’s death, she sells their home, the one she thinks is to a real estate developer who plans on leveling the house along with the others on the block for a strip mall.
Finally, things are looking up for Alice. She finds a nice apartment, gains a best friend, Chen, whose uncle owns the Chinese restaurant across the street, and gets hired at a health food store with a great boss. She is ready to begin life anew until a plainclothes detective shows up where she works. A skeleton is uncovered in what was formerly Alice’s backyard. Alice fears the skeleton is that of her father.
Cryptic messages from fortune cookies and the return of Doug to New York, who offers to help, as well as meeting Tom, who works at the construction site of her old house, put her on a mission to find out what happened to her father and brother.
I’ve started writing a children’s book, The Nine Lives of Oliver. Oliver is a cat who tells a young kitten Max about his past eight lives. Max is on his first life.
I have a habit (I don’t know if it’s bad or good) of designing covers for books I’ve barely started. This could possibly be the third cover for the third book in the A Peculiar School series.
This is the working cover for a book I hope to have published by November.
Ethel, a middle school teacher, Luce, a stay-at-home mom married to a successful businessman, and Ola, owner of Ola’s Wise Old Books, are best friends. They circumnavigate through the pitfalls of middle age together, confiding their innermost thoughts to each other. Or do they?
Ethel, out of pride, acts as if all is normal even though her husband suddenly returns to his native India. Ola refuses to discuss her past or strange relationship with Cornelius, who works alongside her at the bookstore.
Everything takes a strange twist when Luce, while in the library, comes across some disturbing news regarding Ola, and then after calling the middle school, she finds Ethel no longer works there. If that were not enough, Ola announces she has cancer, and the prognosis is not good.
I’ve been working on a third book, even though the second one hasn’t been published yet. It all started with A Peculiar School, a story about animals living in a nature preserve. They become smarter because of something put into the water supply by the scientists at a nearby lab. Besides becoming more intelligent, they become more docile. Ethel Peacock convinces Densworth Lion they should becoming vegetarians, so the smaller animals will no longer be prey to the animals higher up on the food chain.
Ola Owl, Mac Chimpanzee, Owen Orangutan, Densworth Lion, Ethel Peacock
I have vowed to watching Youtube videos to better learn how to properly use Procreate to create art. I’m old and am old school. I’m still trying to use it as paper and pen or canvas and paintbrush. Hopefully, I can learn layering techniques, masking, clipping, and all the other many features.
This is my version of today’s lesson. I could have done better with the clouds. The tall building reminds me of Batman.
Giverny is a village in the region of Normandy in northern France. It is the site of the home of Impressionist painter Claude Monet who lived and worked here from 1883 until his death in 1926. The artist’s former home and elaborate gardens, where he produced his famed water lily series, are now the Foundation Claude Monet Museum.
In 1968, Sally, at 109 is both the oldest and only African American resident of the old-folks home where Alice works as a nurse. Drawn to Sally, Alice sits at Sally’s bedside and asks her about her life, returning home each night to journal about it. Alice discovers something profound, something she takes with her to her grave only to be discovered by her granddaughter decades later.
Inspired by the true life of Sally Ann Barnes, 1858 to 1969.
The Kindle version of Sally is currently on sale for .99. In August the price returns to 4.99. The Amazon link:
I drew this from a photo taken some years back. We were hiking at Carter Caves State Park in Kentucky. I took this picture of my husband. I’m using procreate on my iPad. I’ve been working with the brushes, trying to create watercolor effects.
This is a continuous progression, although sometimes, we feel we are going backwards. We are currently in the process of building a bog, a new filtration system using rocks and water plants. I’m hoping to use cattails.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
I haven’t even gotten the book off to the editor yet, but I am playing around with the cover. I had originally drawn three paper dolls, but last night, I began work on three figures. It is the story of three middle-aged women who are best friends.
This is the first time I’ve managed to get the rocks to resemble actual rocks. At least, I feel I’ve gotten closer this time. This is no place, a totally made-up landscape.
In the sixties for the last couple of days. It’s supposed to reach seventy by tomorrow. On Sunday before last, we celebrated a full week of electricity. Although February is the shortest month, it seemed the longest. After an ice storm and more snow on top of that, along with temperatures in the single digits at night, we went through fifteen days without electricity and part of the time without water since there was no electricity feeding the pumping stations.
I had a list of resolutions before the electrical outage. The only ones I continued daily was journalling and yoga. I’m now back on track for the most part. One of the resolutions is to practice drawing everyday. This is a drawing of Shaker boxes. We retreated to Shakertown in Harrodsburg, Kentucky for a couple of nights for hot showers and warmth. It’s one of our favorite places.
Our electronic devices are listening. I’ve noticed my husband and I can be having a casual conversation and ads start popping up all over social media regarding some product we may have mentioned. So, whenever I’m thinking about shopping for something and want to see if there are any discounts, I say the product name three times. I’m curious what will happen if I say Beetlejuice three times, but I refrain from doing so.
There is a lot of hidden meaning in Wizard of Oz. Possibly even futuristic predictions. “Click your heels together three times and say ‘There’s no place like home’ and you’ll be there.”
Three times, the magic number. Nickola Tesla did everything in multiples of three.
I’m trying to learn all (well, some) of the bells and whistles of Procreate (It’s an art app.). This was an experimentation with different brushes. It turned out somewhere between impressionism and abstract.
With great love, I wrote Sally. The book is inspired by the life of Sally Ann Barnes, 1858-1969. I met Sally once in 1961 when she was 103. That meeting had a lasting impression on me. I researched her life off and on for seven years.
Bronze Winner of the Wishing Shelf Book Awards and a Readers’ Favorite
I’m quite lazy when it comes to detail in drawing. My husband comes in, and I ask if he can tell what I’m drawing. He says lemons, but then the lemons are right in front of me. I’ll use them later for a Shaker lemon pie.
I think I will take this one slow. When finished, I hope to incorporate it into a previous painting of a polar bear. I’m toying with the idea of a joint adventure with Theodore Polar Bear and Baby Fox, characters from A Peculiar School.
Someone during a Zoom meeting last night suggested we take a screen shot of ourselves. We were practically in the dark, the way I like it during Zoom meetings.
While out walking, I saw something hanging from a tree. It took me a moment to figure out what it was. It was a small rocket and parachute that my husband and grandson launched back in June. A picture from along the trail.
The last day of the year, and I’m in the process of making a new website. Still more work to do, but it’s a start.
For over three months, almost four, we have also been updating our home, the kitchen/dining area to be exact. I have to give my husband the credit. He does ninety-nine percent of the work. It’s all a do-it-yourself job. It started on the day after his birthday, September 13. It didn’t start as a kitchen project, but one thing leads to another. I asked if a particular wall was load-bearing. I was hoping to get more light and a new workspace to write. It’s where I’m writing now–the new kitchen island we installed which is pictured.
Of course, the project grew. They always do. We knocked out two walls. My hope was to get it finished by Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then New Year’s. Now, I’m hoping for Valentine’s Day.
We have tried to recycle as much as possible. My husband has hand-built cabinets, moved around appliances, and we’ve dismantled an old barn to use the boards, some of which were ten inches wide.
So, more writing and better-prepared, healthier meals for 2021!
And wishing everyone a much better year! One of creativity, peace, and good health!
I love polar bears, and Ted E. Bear is my favorite character from A Peculiar School. A Peculiar Store is an anthropomorphic tale about all animals getting along. It’s set in a nature reserve.
It’s been so long since I’ve posted. Lately, I’ve restarted my practice of drawing. Something to do during the isolation period. I’ve been doing digital art, basically for the ease of it and for fear of ruining perfectly good paper. It’s a learning process. I’ve been using the Procreate app.
I’ve been attempting characters from my book, A Peculiar School. It’s about all animals getting along with each other. My main character is a peahen. For now, I’ve practiced a peacock. I will keep refining until I get to a peahen, what I think is a good look for Ethel.
Jessica moves to an island to make a new start after her divorce. A whole new idyllic world opens up for her, but all is not as it seems. A Novel Tea Book Club Selection, Wishing Shelf Book Awards Finalist, William Faulkner-William Wisdom Writing Contest Finalist, 5 Star Readers’ Favorite
The Kindle Version is on sale for a limited time for only 0.99!
Sally, inspired by the life of Sally Ann Barnes, 1858-1969, born into slavery in Carter County, KY was listed one of nine moving works of literary fiction. It was chosen along with Mudbound, one of my favorite books of all time. This book was also made into a movie.
Everyone envisions great things for Abigail Jones-her teachers, classmates, and family-even Abigail. However, one wrong decision while in college leads to an elaborate coverup scheme which has a domino effect on the rest of her life. Depressed, she drops out a semester before finishing her degree to enter into a marriage of convenience, which she thinks is the solution to her problems. She does eventually find love, and for a while, everything is rosy, but by midlife, regrets and guilt bubble back up to the surface. Anxiety takes a toll. Will a memoir writing class, recommended by a therapist, help her sort out her feelings and cope with her past?
J. Schlenker 
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