Anna Henkens Schmidt

If you rip enough paper into tiny fragments and toss them out the window of a car traveling down a Nebraska highway at 55 mph, for a brief moment, it can resemble a blizzard. It’s mesmerizing how the wind practically sucks the papers from your hand and carries them around the contour of the car. Then for a moment, they swirl and dance, like snowy confetti, before littering the road and the ditch and leaving a brief, but beautiful blight on the environment.  I don’t recommend doing this. And not only because of the damage it causes to Mother Nature. Don’t do it, because you might get caught.  True, my friend, Melissa, and I had already performed this destructive act half a dozen times, but now we were down to our last notebook. Our previous attempts were a paltry two or three pages at most. But what if we used an entire notebook this time? Could we release it just as another car passed by on this two-lane highway through the Sandhills of Nebraska? Would the driver believe they’...

My apologies to Herbert James Draper, may he rest in peace, and to altar boys everywhere. Not all of you are ding dongs. Our cover design choice for The Ding Dong Altar Boy has garnered attention. We received one particularly nasty text asking, “Did you really do this?” Yes. We absolutely did. Most of the attention has been positive. It’s an arresting image. It’s funny. And it raises questions. All things an author would hope for in a book cover. I stumbled upon the 1909 painting one day while scrolling through Pinterest. The painting is entitled The Light of Faith, and it radiates a quiet reverence, capturing a moment of innocence, tradition, and spiritual solemnity. Of course, none of these things describe my brother, the voice behind The Ding Dong Altar Boy. Still, something about the painting drew me in. Herbert James Draper, a British artist, lived from 1863–1920 and came from the late Victorian/Edwardian art movement, often associated with Romanticism and Classicism. One internet...