Carie Juettner

Messy May: Book Title Poems and Other Creations

May is a messy month. For teachers and students, it’s the time of year for cleaning out lockers and packing up classrooms. For college graduates, it’s often a season of change– moving in or moving out or moving back home or moving on. And for parents, May might mean the messiness of summer scheduling– camps and vacations and sleepovers and appointments and figuring out who’s going where and when and why.

For writers, the month of May may or may not mean anything major. It doesn’t necessarily mark a pivotal point in the year. But that doesn’t mean we can’t still choose to make a mess.

Up until mid-May, I was busy writing The Ghostly Tales of Delaware (coming this August!) while marketing The Ghostly Tales of Dallas. (Did you catch my interview with Jane McGarry on Good Morning Texas? If not, click on the image below to check out my segment of the show!) When I submitted the Delaware manuscript on May 15th, I suddenly had a little down time before my next deadline. That’s where things got messy. Deliciously, delightfully messy.

First, I spent some time drawing and coloring. Even though it makes my hand hurt, I love sitting and coloring a pattern for hours while listening to an audio book or favorite TV series. My almost-one-year-old kitten helped add to the messiness by stealing my pencil sharpener, then knocking over my jar of colored pencils and batting the jar around the floor. A couple of days later, I traded my colored pencils and paper for acrylic paints and a canvas. This time, I locked the cat out of the room, but I still made plenty of mess myself. When that project was done, I looked around and decided my books were much too tidy.

It had been a few years since I spent a night making book title poems. I’ve gotten a lot of new books since then and have said goodbye to many others. I could tell poems awaited in the new assortment. I started pulling books off shelves. Books and books and books. Piles and piles and piles. I started with the ones I’ve recently acquired, the ones who haven’t had the fun of playing the found poetry game before, books like The Broken Lands by Kate Milford and The Space Between You and Me by Ashley B. Davis and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. I wanted to use as many of the new ones as possible, but I had to pull some of my old standbys too. I mean, Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes and Billy Collins’s Sailing Alone Around the Room are just too perfect for making found poems. When I had a big enough mess, I started seeing what fit together. Here’s what I came up with…

S is for space,
the space between you and me.
This is not a drill,
the worlds we leave behind
marooned in realtime,
the stars beneath our feet,
voices in the air
shout a wish in the dark–
rebirth
tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

*

The Broken Lands Bomb Shelter

The woman in white,
the trespasser,
the scapegoat,
the searcher,
the outsiders,
the forbiddens,
the new kid on the block,
a common person…
All thirteen inside/
out.
The last generation
tap dancing on the roof.

*

Ancestor approved rules of civility
amaze me.
The dream stealer
writing down the bones,
horoscopes for the dead.
Other words for home
flutter and hum.
Smallest leaf,
extending the shade,
the tree is older than you are.

*

The tiny journalist
becoming a writer.
Interview with the vampire,
call and response.
The last interview…
nighty-nightmare.
Still writing
the magazine that never dies.

*

Little women from the dust returned
transfer big magic
to kill a mockingbird.
Bird by bird,
eleven wingbeats
in a kingdom of birds,
the golden feather
sailing alone around the room.

*

Poems that live forever
fuel
our bodies, ourselves
like water for chocolate.
Call us what we carry–
every soul a star.

*

Stories for the Dead of Night

The night the scarecrow walked
through the woods
along Greathouse Road,
the house with chicken legs
haunted Dallas,
her own two feet
growing pains,
a rattle of bones,
the clackity worser
off the road.

*

I’m not missing,
Miss Nelson is missing!
Myths and legends
rattle the emotion thesaurus.
My wicked, wicked ways
eclipse the walls around us.
Which witch?
Something wicked this way comes,
a lantern in her hand.

*

A thousand mornings
in the company of cats
spark good poems,
good omens,
metamorphoses–
the arrival
the color of magic.

*

The strange and beautiful sorrows of Ava Lavender
ring the house of leaves.
Speak of the devil
breaking dawn.
Shift the shadow of the wind,
dust the picture of Dorian Gray.
The lost track of time:
faithful place
after ever after.

***

Well, that was fun. Now to clean up my mess.

Beware: The Dallas Ghosts are Here

Happy Book Birthday to The Ghostly Tales of Dallas!

Today I’m celebrating the release of my fourth book in the Spooky America series, The Ghostly Tales of Dallas. I’m so proud to be an author for this series. For those of you who don’t know, the Spooky America books are adaptations of the Haunted America books. We’re taking the history, lore, and eerie events described in the original series and tailoring the stories for younger readers. Arcadia Publishing has done an excellent job making beautiful, high-quality books, and I’m thrilled to have my name on a few of them. The Spooky America series is aimed at middle grade readers, which means kids ages 8-12. However, adults are totally allowed to enjoy them, too. Anyone who wants a good ghost story while also learning about local history will find something to love in these pages.

Here’s what you need to know about my newest Spooky America book.

My favorite chapter of the The Ghostly Tales of Dallas

What’s in the book?

Ghosts! The Ghostly Tales of Dallas includes famous creepy stories like “The Lady of White Rock Lake” and famous haunted locations like the Adolphus Hotel and the Majestic Theater, but it also includes eerie encounters at places you might not have even realized were haunted, like the original Snuffer’s restaurant and the DeGolyer House at the Dallas Arboretum. The book reaches outside of Dallas for scary stuff in the suburbs as well. You can read some very disturbing tales from Waxahachie, Red Oak, Cleburne, and McKinney.

Where can I find the book?

The Ghostly Tales of Dallas is available wherever books are sold. Most stores in and around the Dallas area are currently stocking the book, but if they run out, you can also order it online. If you’d like a signed, personalized copy for yourself or a middle grade reader in your life, just contact me! I can mail you the book and you can pay me directly, via PayPal or Venmo.

Where can I find the author?

Connect with me on social media! I’m on Facebook (@CarieJuettnerWriter) and recently joined Instagram (@CarieJuettner). You can also visit my author pages on Goodreads and Amazon. And if you live in the DFW area, you can watch me on Good Morning Texas (WFAA, channel 8) this Thursday morning, May 4th, from 9-10AM where I’ll be talking about my book! This is a first for me, and I’m pretty excited about it. 😊 I can also often be found at local libraries and coffee shops where I like to hang out when I need a break from my adorably crazy cat.

Thank you for celebrating my latest book with me. Dallas is a big place, and I can’t be everywhere, so do me a favor. If you see my book in the wild, snap a picture of it and send it to me or tag me on social media. I’d love to know where these Dallas ghosts are popping up. 👻

A Fungus Among Us & Where to Find Me at TLA

Let’s pretend you don’t like mushrooms.

This is actually easy for me to pretend because I don’t, in fact, like mushrooms. I don’t enjoy their taste and, more importantly, I find their texture unnerving and their appearance vile, particularly that little hairy part. Ick.

So, you don’t like mushrooms. That’s okay. You don’t have to eat them. If you don’t want mushrooms in your house, that’s also okay. Your house, your rules. If you don’t want your children to eat mushrooms, fine. They’re your kids, and you can raise them however you want.

If you find out that a neighbor has been giving your children mushrooms and trying to make them eat the little fungi, it Is okay for you to have a conversation with that neighbor and ask them to please refrain from offering your child mushrooms because you are a no-mushroom household. If your child’s school cafeteria starts serving only dishes with mushrooms, it is within your right to request that they offer other options.

If, when you see another person eating a mushroom, you wrinkle your nose in disgust and tell them you don’t like mushrooms, I guess that’s okay. It’s a little rude, but you’re entitled to your own opinion. I may have wrinkled my nose at a few people in the past.

All of this is okay.

But…

Going to your neighbor’s house and telling them to stop eating mushrooms? That’s not okay. Calling the school to demand that they stop serving mushrooms? Also not okay. Standing outside the grocery store with a sign that reads, “BAN ALL MUSHROOMS”? Definitely not okay. And asking your politician to make laws against people growing mushrooms just because you don’t want to eat them? 100% not okay.

To sum up, it is okay for you to dislike mushrooms and choose not to consume them. It is not okay for you to try to remove them from society just because you think they’re gross.

Got it?

Cool.

THE SAME RULES APPLY TO BOOKS.

If you don’t like a book, don’t read it. Don’t buy it. Don’t keep it in your house. Don’t allow your children to read it, and make sure other books are available for your kids. Feel free to wrinkle your nose when you see someone reading the book and post a negative review about why you dislike it. All of that is okay.

Just don’t tell someone they can’t like it either. Don’t tell other people’s children they can’t read it. Don’t tell stores they can’t sell it. Don’t tell libraries they can’t keep it on their shelves. And don’t try to create laws to rid the world of the book. None of that is okay.

It’s simple. Don’t ban mushrooms. Don’t ban books. Get another hobby. (I suggest reading.)

There’s another thing I want to mention. No one says this enough. You’re allowed to change your mind. About books, about mushrooms, about politics, whatever. I’ve hated mushrooms my entire life, and I used to be really vocal about it, but a few years ago I realized I could handle them on pizza if they were cut up small and didn’t show any of the hairy bits. Then I found a big piece of one in my spaghetti sauce and decided to be brave. It didn’t kill me. Recently, I even survived eating a small stuffed mushroom at a dinner where the host ordered them and I didn’t want to be rude. I didn’t enjoy it, but it wasn’t as objectionable as I’d feared.

I won’t be ordering a portabella sandwich anytime soon, and I still gag a little when I see toadstools growing in my yard, but I have softened my stance against mushrooms. That’s okay.

So, if you ever find yourself alone in a room with a comfy chair and a cup of tea and a copy of a book you swore you’d never read, it’s okay to open it and peek inside and read a page or two. It’s okay if you don’t like it. Then again, it’s also okay if you do.

***

This week I’m excited to be attending the TLA (Texas Library Association) annual conference in Austin. I’ll be talking about school visits and signing my Spooky America books at the SCBWI booth on Friday, April 21st from noon to 1:00PM. Stop by and say hello! Anyone who purchases a copy of The Ghostly Tales of Austin, The Ghostly Tales of New England, or The Ghostly Tales of Burlington will be entered in a raffle to win a free signed copy of The Ghostly Tales of Dallas which comes out on May 1st! I’m thankful for the opportunity to be a part of an organization dedicated to keeping books and libraries safe.