From behind my eyes to yours ...

Leaving Nothing Behind

JessicaHoltWrites@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment - Martin Luther King, Jr.

We won’t let them win, you say.

We won’t give them the satisfaction of living in fear.

Because that’s what they want, you say.

We won’t stop going to work.

We won’t stop going to school.

We won’t stop going to restaurants.

We won’t stop going to coffee shops.

We won’t stop going to the movies.

We won’t stop going to concerts.

We won’t stop going to the mall.

We won’t stop going to houses of worship.

We won’t stop riding public transportation.

We won’t stop walking the streets.

We won’t stop visiting ice cream shops.

We won’t stop playing on playgrounds.

Because that’s what they want, you say. They want us to stop doing everything that makes us ‘us’.

Should we not stop, though? At least for a minute?

Long enough to be thankful that we’re not one of the ones who can no longer choose not to stop?

Long enough to remember that some of the ones who can choose not to stop loved the ones who can no longer choose not to stop?

Long enough to learn about the ones who can no longer choose not to stop rather than the one or ones who made the choice for them?

Long enough to keep a loss of life headline ahead of a political headline even if a political headline is better for business?

Long enough to search for the story about innocent families killed outside an ice cream shop in Baghdad because that story doesn’t even make the news?

Long enough for us all to agree that regardless of our stance on guns or gun ownership, when a gun or any other weapon is used to destroy lives, it’s a horrible thing that should not elicit an argument of any sort?

We must not stop, you say. We must not give them what they want.

We will remember.

We will pray.

We will light candles.

We will hold a benefit concert.

We will do all of that and more.

If we’re talking about loss of life in the Western world.

Why is that? You never say.

And who is ‘us’? And who is ‘them’? And who are ‘you’?

And why do we let ‘you’ and ‘them’ lead us to believe that nothing is what we should do and is all that we can do?

Nothing is not something.

Nothing is nothing.

Nothing will never make a difference.

I am you.

You are me.

They are us.

We are them.

Your something, my something, and their something may be different.

But our nothing is the same.

Seven billion nothings result in nothing.

But just one something does more than seven billion nothings.

My nothing ends today.

May yours do the same.

The Family that Hits the Road Together…(Insert Verb Here) Together

trholt@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Fri, 28 Jul 2017 01:16:31 GMT

Back in the 1900s, we were a road-tripping family. 1997 was San Diego to San Francisco. 1998 was Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and a whole lot of Texas. 1999 was Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and just enough of Wyoming to say we’d been there. 2000 was up the East Coast to Boston.

Some days we were like the Brady Bunch, blissfully riding mules into the Grand Canyon (we never actually did that, thank goodness) or dancing together at a luau in Hawaii. (That didn’t happen either. I’ve never been to Hawaii, and if I ever do go, I can’t see myself hula-ing). But my point is that there were times when we were a cohesive family unit, just enjoying the adventure and the time together.

Then day five or six would hit, and all of that time together in the car would have taken its toll. We were no longer the sha-na-na-na-na-na-na-ing Brady Bunch. We had become the Griswolds or the Little Miss Sunshine family, basically still in the car together only because the alternative to being in the car was to be out of the car on the side of the road somewhere watching the car drive away without you. Had cell phones and Uber been readily available (cell phones were...I just didn’t have one) that might have been a more appealing option. But this was the 1900s, remember. Options were limited.

Our car-trip fatigue always seemed to hit the hardest in big cities. My only vivid memory of Boston is being on a set of really wide cement steps that led to some very important part of American History. You know why I remember the steps but not the name of the very important part of American History? Because those steps were the location of my family’s East Coast trip meltdown. I don’t remember what the problem was or who was involved (If I had to guess I would say that I was involved and my brother, the peacekeeper, was not), but I do know that my teenage tour of Boston was not the best it could have been.

You’re probably thinking, at least we made it all the way to Boston without a meltdown. Yes, we did, but that was only because we averted a meltdown in New York City. We had been walking and walking and walking, and we didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. I know now that when you’re on a self-guided walking tour, you’re not necessarily supposed to be getting anywhere. It’s the journey that matters, not the destination, because the destination is most likely right back where you started. And I like walking now...short distances, long distances, by things, to things. But back at the dawning of the 21st Century I wasn’t a big walker or a big crowds person. I don’t remember what all transpired, but the result was my parents leaving me and my brother in the middle of Manhattan to find our way back to the hotel. So while I don’t remember an actual meltdown, for my mom to leave us at least one Subway transfer away from the hotel, she must have really been ready for a break from us.

So after a 17 year cool-down period, we thought we’d travel up the East Coast again, this time to Maine, with my sister-in-law and my dog in tow. Last year my brother and sister-in-law drove through all 48 contiguous states without ever getting on an interstate (click on the map-logo at the end of this blog to learn more about that) and have since taken almost all of their trips by way of US backroads. So to keep that tradition alive, we’re going to take 25 driving hours to do what we could do in less than 15. But I’m looking forward to it. I really am. As long as my dog sits in his seat and behaves (he will...he realizes that going on vacation is a privilege and that a PetsHotel is never far away), and all of the luggage fits neatly in the cargo space without spilling over into the seating area, and there is at least one seat (or dog) between me and the next rider I think it will be a great trip!

Click the map below for more about the No-Interstate 48-state trip ...

More to come ...

It's About Time .....

trholt@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Thu, 02 Mar 2017 00:56:36 GMT

February was National Time Management Month. Why February, you ask? My guess is because by February we’ve abandoned enough of our New Year’s resolutions to have room for another one. In January, time management would pale in comparison to getting healthy, learning something new, and following our dreams. By February, we’ve settled on just being a little better overall than last year, so we can spend the time we’re no longer spending on our New Year’s resolutions thinking about how we can better spend our time.

Prioritize

The average adult spends 40 hours working and 56 hours sleeping each week. That leaves 72 hours for everything else. I don’t know about you, but when the pie chart puts it that way, I have a lot more ‘free’ time on my hands than I realized. If you can’t do all that you need to do in what amounts to three whole days out of every week, you’re trying to do too much. Decide what is most important. Decide what is necessary. What’s most important to you may not be a necessity, and your necessities may not be what you consider most important, but time fillers that don’t make either list can be the first to go, and you probably won’t even miss them.

Eliminate

My mom used to fill up her DVR like some people fill up their time. If she saw it on the guide and it looked interesting, she set it to record. She was recording everything and watching nothing, and eventually she ran out of room. Her solution was to scroll to whatever show she deemed least important and delete it in order to have room for something else to record. The DVR stayed 99% full, and occasionally if she didn’t delete what she thought was low on the list of importance, the DVR took it upon itself to delete something of higher importance. Too often we only eliminate something that fills our time so that we can fill it with something else. When our time is 99% full, we can unintentionally let the more important things slip away.

Get Started

Mark Twain said, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” Decide what’s a priority, either because it must be done or because it matters to you. Get rid of what’s not a priority, and don’t fill its spot. Then simply get started, and maybe by next year you’ll have the time to get healthy, learn something new, and follow your dreams all year long.

Making a Dent in Making a Difference

trholt@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Sun, 20 Nov 2016 02:33:49 GMT

Well, the Holiday season is upon us. The Hallmark Channel is already showing round the clock Christmas movies. I would normally not know that, as the Hallmark Channel is not part of my 9-channel cable package that a few years ago would have been called ‘Free with a decent set of rabbit ears’ but is now considered ‘Premium basic cable’ thanks to the digital switch (remember the announcement that scrolled across the bottom of the TV screen for what seemed like years, warning us that if we didn’t make the switch to digital by such and such a date, we’d suddenly find ourselves staring at a black screen?). Don’t get me wrong—I’m not one of those anti-TV people. I have two of them. One has 9 channels, and one has no channels, but both have Hulu readily available, and Netflix will be added, at least temporarily, when the new Gilmore Girls episodes are released the day after Thanksgiving (just one more reason Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday). If you want to know just how not anti-TV I am, you can go back and read my blog entry titled, ‘The Story Behind the Story’.

But back to the Holiday season being upon us. Santa is apparently already at the mall. Hopefully I won’t be able to confirm this because while I try to avoid the mall year round, I really make an effort to avoid it during the Christmas season. I may not be anti-TV, but I am absolutely anti-crowded-shopping-malls, especially when they have all of those over eager sample pushers stationed at the kiosks. Last time I went to a mall, I left with some sort of Jerusalem sea salt cream on one wrist and an Alaskan mud bath on the other wrist, and I didn’t even get what I went for because I was out of wrists and didn’t know what they were going to try to put where next.

And if your local soft rock radio stations haven’t switched over to ‘All Christmas Music All the Time’ yet, I’m sure they will soon. I actually like listening to occasional Christmas music during the Christmas season. I just can only listen to the same song being sung by different people in slightly different ways so many times during the same hour.

It may not sound like it, but I love the Holiday season. I love the decorations (not my own—I have one little supposed-to-be-indoors fake pumpkin out right now and that’s only because my neighbors all decorated for Thanksgiving and I didn’t want to take away from their motif). I love the smells. I love the food. I loved that one time snowflakes fell on Christmas Day (If you don’t live in the south, you don’t understand the excitement that the sight of a snowflake brings, even to an adult).

Most of all, I love the Christmas spirit. I don’t even know what that really means, but to me it means that people have a softer spot in their hearts for their fellow human beings. We donate tons of food so that others can have a Thanksgiving meal. We drop change into the bell ringers’ buckets. We give a dollar to help homeless pets at Petsmart. We take an angel off the tree at the YMCA. And we all feel like we made a difference in the world. And we did. But the people who needed a meal on Thursday probably also need a meal on Friday. And for every animal who’s fortunate enough to end up in the care of animal lovers, there’s another one or two or ten still being abused by animal haters. And that little girl whose angel simply asked for pants will likely outgrow those pants before she can ask for more next year. And those are just problems within our own country. There are other parts of the world whose problems my brain literally will not let me comprehend.

Sometimes I’m so overwhelmed with all that’s wrong with the world that I end up doing nothing because it seems like the something I can do won’t do much of anything. But anything is better than nothing.

So…

If you would like to purchase signed copies of Behind My Eyes for $15 each between now and Christmas 2016 (great Christmas gifts by the way), just get in touch with me through the Contact page on my website or at my Author page on Facebook using one of the links below ...

If you live in the Upstate of South Carolina my distribution department (aka my mom) will be happy to personally deliver them to you. If you are anywhere else in the continental United States, we’ll ship them to you for a flat fee of $2.00. If you're anywhere else in the world, send me a message and we will see what we can figure out.

Thank you for making a dent in making a difference this Christmas!

The Story Behind The Story

JessicaHoltWrites@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Fri, 22 Jul 2016 16:06:19 GMT

Unquestionably Questionable, Week 1

First, the story behind the story:

The year was 2007. I had just moved from Upstate South Carolina to Charleston, and every week I had a very important appointment with my roommate. It involved a trip to Sonic and a TV show called Gilmore Girls. The tradition actually started when I was a Freshman at Wofford College. Thursday night was still Must See TV back then. At 7:30, four of my hallmates and I would walk to the campus coffee shop. I would order a white chocolate mocha, they would order their beverages of choice, and we would take them back to the room with the largest TV (not mine...it was a white 13” TV/VHS combo) and watch Friends.

Friends had been a part of my life for five years by then. My 8th grade band teacher referenced it one day during class, I went home and watched an episode, and I was hooked. And just so you know how hooked I was, before the days of DVD collections, I recorded a rerun of every episode, in order, on VHS, creating my own version of a Friends box set.

Friends was the one constant in my life as I took the leap from high school to college. Friends was the one thing that gave me hope that the world hadn’t totally fallen apart when, one Tuesday morning two weeks into my Freshman year, I came in from an 8:00 Calculus class, turned on my little white TV, and instead of Regis and Kelly, found Matt Lauer and Katie Couric talking about the plane that had just flown into the World Trade Center. I had only been watching for a minute when the second plane hit the other tower, and in that moment ‘horrible accident’ turned into ‘intentional attack on the United States’. For two days I thought nothing would ever be the same...there would be ‘before September 11’ and ‘after September 11’. All I wanted was for something that existed ‘before September 11’ to exist, unaltered, ‘after September 11’, for something to be familiar and comforting.

I very specifically remember wondering if Friends would come on that Thursday night. My version of the story goes that all day long was news, news, news, and then suddenly at 8:00 the news stopped and Friends appeared on the screen. It offered a glimmer of hope, thirty minutes of familiarity in the midst of fear and confusion, an occasional laugh that felt both inappropriate and necessary at the same time. Whether or not the timing happened the way I remember it really doesn’t matter. What does matter is what I realized from that experience, that sometimes things that seemingly don’t matter at all can matter the most. If it brings happiness, or joy, or a brief escape from the real world to even one person, it matters immensely.

So you can imagine my sense of loss when Friends ended in 2004. Or maybe you can’t. I’m not sure if it’s normal to grieve over the loss of a TV show. But normal or not, coffee and Friends night had evolved into Zaxby’s and Friends night, and in the fall of 2004 I found myself sitting on the couch with a Wings ‘n Things and nothing to watch.

Now to make what should have been the longest part of a short story the shortest part of a story that got much longer than I meant for it to be.

Gilmore Girls turned out to be a welcome replacement for Friends. And if I’m being honest, while a Friends episode on Nick at Nite before bed is always enjoyable, I have never seen a better-written or better-casted show than Gilmore Girls. It was lighthearted. It was quirky. It was a little bit whimsical. It was sixty minutes of the world I wished I lived in. And then in 2007, just after I moved across the state, just when I needed something familiar to take with me, Gilmore Girls ended. Seemingly forever (not so, according to recent buzz from Netflix, but should a Gilmore Girls mini series of sorts actually come to fruition that will be another blog entry for another day...I can’t even get my hopes up about that right now). So my roommate and I were left with our extra long coneys, our tater tots, our honey mustard, a diet Cherry Coke for me, a Dr. Pepper for her, and another void to fill.

In 2007, Lost was right up there with Gilmore Girls on my list of ‘Must See TV’. But in a not-at-all lighthearted, not-at-all quirky, not-at-all whimsical, not-at-all the world I wished I lived in sort of way. I’m an absolute baby when it comes to any sort of horror-inducing entertainment, and most weeks Lost was right at the edge of my limit, so I didn’t think it would make for a very enjoyable dining experience.

Which brings me to Pushing Daisies. You’ve probably never seen it. Only six million people watched it every week, which in today’s TV world would keep you on the air for ten years, but in the fall of 2007, six million viewers got you cancelled after two seasons. Pushing Daisies was everything I loved about Gilmore Girls taken to the extreme. It was bright. It was colorful. It was funny. It was clever. It was lighthearted. It was quirky. It was nothing but whimsical. And it was about murder. Each week, a murder was solved by the pie-maker, who possessed the gift (or curse) of bringing people back to life with a single touch, and his childhood sweetheart Charlotte Charles, who the pie-maker just happened to bring back to life in the first episode.

Which got me thinking. Could I write a story about a serious subject and make it lighthearted and whimsical?

A short story entitled ... "Unquestionably Questionable" ... was the result of that thought.

Click the picture below to read the story.

Unquestionably Questionable

JessicaHoltWrites@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 18:43:48 GMT

The child was unquestionably questionable. Everyone who knew her knew that. Yet no one who knew her really knew her at all.

The Creator who created her created her well. She possessed all the basics. Two eyes, two ears, a nose, a mouth, two arms, two legs, two hands, two feet, ten fingers, ten toes, and a trunk to hold them all in place.

Yet her basics weren’t so basic. She was perfectly symmetrical, which, contrary to common belief, is not so common. Her milky-white skin was flawless. No birthmarks, no moles, not even a man-made bump or bruise. To touch her was like touching porcelain. Constantly cool even on the warmest of days, and smooth as the smoothest silk.

Inside her perfectly symmetrical eye sockets were two perfectly symmetrical eyes. In the center of those two perfectly symmetrical eyes were two perfectly symmetrical irises. They were baby blue, and their color was constant, never dependent on her daily attire.

Below her two perfectly symmetrical eyes and a symmetrically-centered nose were two perfectly placed lips. She was much too little for lipstick, but her Creator had created her lips in such a way that lipstick would never be necessary. Salmon is the normal shade of lips in their natural state, but scarlet was the only shade her lips had ever shown.

On top of the head that held the perfectly placed lips, the symmetrically-centered nose, and the two perfectly symmetrical eyes was a halo of hair, and it was as blond as blond can be. The bottom of her bangs brushed the peaks of her eyebrows, and the remainder rested right underneath her ears.

Her eyes opened at exactly 7:00 AM every morning and blinked exactly 8400 times before closing at exactly 9:00 PM every night. Her lips never curled up, never curled down, and never separated, except to take five bites of breakfast, eleven bites of lunch, and a dozen bites of dinner every day.

Her movable parts all moved. She wasn’t deaf, as evidenced by her ability to move all of her movable parts on command, and she wasn’t blind because she moved those movable parts without bumping into that which could be bumped into.

Not only were her outsides odd, her insides were also. Her beating heart beat exactly sixty beats per minute, never more, never less. And within each minute, she inhaled and exhaled exactly eleven times. Her voice box was capable of voicing a voice, but no sound had ever sounded from it.

To the possessors of the ever-present eyes that eyeballed the girl, she was most mysterious. The only indication that she was a living being was the slow rise and fall of her chest and the occasional blink that for a brief moment covered her baby blues.

And she was the only child in all of Heaven.

Heaven really was quite heavenly. At its center was Central Street, stretching from one end of Heaven to the other. If one began at the beginning of Heaven and traveled in a straight line down Central Street, one could tour the entire town in ten minutes if traveling by automobile.

The first mile of Heaven was identical to the last. On either side of Central Street was a curb, sixteen inches of sod, a sidewalk, and six additional feet of sod, all leading to a cookie cutter cottage.

Each cookie cutter cottage stood nine feet from the next. At twenty-two feet wide, a total of sixty-eight cottages lined each side of Central Street, totaling one hundred thirty-six residences in the entire town.

Each residence rose fourteen feet off the ground. A twenty-two foot wide porch spanned the twenty-two foot wide front wall of each residence. Two wide windows were on either side of an even wider door.

Each of the one hundred thirty-six residences was painted a particular color, and each color was unique. Soft Sapphire and Sparkling Cerulean may be similar, but they are certainly not the same.

One to two residents resided in each residence, with an average of two hundred inhabitants of Heaven at any given time.

After one passed sixty-eight uniquely colored cottages, one would reach the center of Central Street. Central Street continued to the right and left, forming a diamond before returning to its straight path. Ten attached two-story buildings lined each side of the diamond. Situated on the right side were the post office, the bank, the doctor’s office, the dentist’s office, the courthouse, the funeral home, the repair shop, the flower shop, the mechanic’s shop, and the gas station. Situated on the left side were the soda shop, the market, the diner, the furniture store, the clothing store, the general store, the single-screen cinema, the ice cream parlor, and the eleven-lane bowling alley.

In the center of the diamond, surrounded by a garden, was the Christian Church of Christ. It was bigger than any other building in Heaven, as almost all two hundred inhabitants of Heaven entered the church every single Sunday.

Every Heavenite worked in Heaven, except for those who had retired after reaching retirement age. Retired residents spent their time tending their tulips, watering their wildflowers, cultivating their crops, and reading their reading materials.

One particularly peculiar retired resident was Polly Priestly. Her short stature was shorter than all the other hers in Heaven, aside from the child, of course. Her wide width was wider than any other Heavenly woman. Her white ringlets wound quite close to her head. Her age was old, but her beauty was still breathtaking.

She resided in house number thirty-three, its color timeless turquoise. Turquoise tulips lined her lawn. Tomato was the only crop she chose to cultivate.

Every morning she gathered the growth from her garden into her basket. She then toted it past thirty-two colored cottages and the soda shop until she reached the market. She delivered her delivery to the market manager for seventeen cents a tomato. Her daily delivery earned her anywhere from five to fifteen dollars, and that was more than enough income for Polly Priestly to live a heavenly life in Heaven.

One morning in early autumn as Polly Priestly was making her way home from the market she came upon the most peculiar sight she’d ever seen. A half-sized human figure was crumpled along the curb. Polly peered down at the perfectly pristine pint-sized person with puzzlement. She was most-surely a she, simply wearing a simple sundress with tiny toes sticking out of strappy sandals.

Two baby blues blinked blankly, the half-sized human staring beyond where Polly stood. Polly struggled to see what the small stranger was staring at, but she saw nothing but a normal Heaven.

“Morning,” said Polly as politely as possible.

The petite person made no movement.

Polly reached with her right arm and tenderly touched the smooth skin crumpled on the curb.

After no acknowledgment, Polly placed her basket on the sidewalk and scooped the crumpled being from the curb, elongating her as she lifted.

Once uncrumpled and elongated, she was not very long. Her limbs hung loosely from her little limp form. Her blinking baby blues shifted to the sidewalk and stayed there.

Polly had never seen such a sight. A perfectly proportioned human, yet less than half the size of all other humans in Heaven.

I’ve come across something seriously strange, Polly thought to herself. I must seek suggestions.

Polly set the stranger inside her basket and turned back toward Central Street, backtracking to Dr. Dunn’s doctor’s office.

Dr. Dunn examined every inch of the little life stretched out in front of him on the examining table.

“I haven’t seen such a sight in seventeen seasons,” he exclaimed, ending his examination.

“What did you determine, Doctor?”

“Polly Priestly, you brought a baby in your basket.”

Polly placed her pupils on the tiny person on the table. “A baby?” She barely whispered the word. Babies weren’t born in Heaven. Babies didn’t belong in Heaven.

“This tot looks to be two, possibly three,” Dr. Dunn disclosed to Polly.

“How on earth did it enter Heaven?” Polly proclaimed.

“I can’t offer a conclusion.”

“What do you advise I do?”

“I advise you take the tot to your cottage, cook her something creamy, comfort her if she cries, and sing her to sleep.”

“And after I’ve accomplished those instructions?”

“Repeat until she is returned to her rightful residence.”

Polly carried the creature to her cottage. She set her on a stool while she cooked a cup of creamed corn. She spooned out a spoonful and slipped it between the babe’s lips. For a minuscule moment, Polly feared that the child would choke. But then, the child began to chew. She swallowed seven spoonfuls before blocking a bite with her crimson colored lips.

Now, what next? Polly pondered. Comfort her cries.

But she didn’t shed a tear. The tiny tot sat on the stool and stared into space with her blinking baby blues.

Polly stared at the small stranger, while the small stranger stared into space. After what seemed to be an eternity, the baby’s blinks began lasting longer, indicating the need for a nap.

Polly slid her off of her stool and carried her to the couch, laying her little body beneath a blanket. She knelt next to her and softly sang a sweet song. Before long, the baby blinked one last blink and drifted into dreamland.

Days turned into weeks, weeks into a month, but no mother ever entered Heaven to retrieve her child.

Eight days after her arrival, Polly still had not gotten the tot to tell her her name.

I must call this stranger something, Polly thought, because while she was still strange, she was less of a stranger every day. I’ll call her…Caroline.

Each day was a repeat of the one before. Good morning, Caroline. Eat your eggs, Caroline. Take that tomato from the vine, Caroline. Come Caroline, we must make our trip to the market. Sit on this stool while I cook your corn, Caroline. One more big bite for Polly please. Something sweet being sung to sing her to sleep. Come sit with Polly, Caroline, while she completes her crossword. Dumplings for dinner, Caroline, with custard for dessert? Come baby, let’s get you in the bath. All clean, Caroline. Shall we sing one last song before bed, Caroline? Good night, Caroline.

The tiny tot did as she was told. She behaved beautifully, even while the preacher preached his lengthy sermons on Sunday, sitting silently beside Polly in the pew.

The possessors of the ever-present eyes that eyeballed the child all attended the Christian Church of Christ on Sunday. Their gaze was always on the girl, glancing away only if Polly caught their eye.

“From where did she arrive?” was the most common question, followed by “How long until she leaves?”

“I know not,” Polly would simply state, eagerly escorting an oblivious Caroline out of the Christian Church of Christ and accompanying her home.

Hale was next to Heaven, yet it was nothing like it. Twelve apartment buildings lined the two lane road that twisted through the town. Two hundred tenants lived in each of the identical buildings.

The bottom floor of each building housed a business, but none were run by residents of Hale. Residents of neighboring neighborhoods—never Heaven—owned the buildings as well as the businesses at the bottom of them.

Humans came to live in Hale only when they had nowhere else to go. Most of these humans brought along with them a handful of half-sized humans, hoping for housing and health care and help with their hunger.

If tenants of Hale were fortunate enough to be employed, they weren’t employees of Hale. They boarded the only bus that bussed them to the neighboring neighborhoods every morning, spent the day doing whatever is was they did, and then boarded the same bus which dropped them off in Hale at the end of the day.

No cars occupied the streets of Hale. Only bicycles and baby buggies and the occasional bus ever bumped along Hale's boulevard.

Unlike Heaven, half-sized heathens made up the majority of Hale. From eighteen months to eighteen years, they ran aimlessly around Hale all day long, contributing nothing but snotty noses and croupy coughs. Those who were tinier than eighteen months bounced their days away in the baby buggies that their mothers marched up and down the town.

Once a week, a week's worth of food was brought to each building. It was then rationed out to each residence, based on how many residents lived in each residence.

The few men who lived in Hale made it their mission to escape, thinking nothing of leaving their women and children in Hale the minute they found adequate employment in a neighboring neighborhood. Needless to say, the bus that bussed tenants of Hale out in the morning was always more crowded than the bus that bussed them back in the evening.

There was no happiness in Hale, only heartache and hopelessness. The only hope came briefly when a boy child was born in Hale, that he might, eighteen years from that moment, escape.

But for at least eighteen years he would have to endure Hale, which halted all hope anyone ever had.

So Lucy Littleton and her little ones had nowhere to go but Hale. She secured one studio apartment—which was all Hale offered—in building number six.

She received food for five every Friday, and if she was running out before the week was over, she wouldn't eat. That would normally be noble, feeding your children before yourself, but it was as though she would forget about the one in her womb.

She hoped beyond all hope that the baby was a boy. Because not only had Lucy been unlucky in the choosing of the fathers for her children, she had also been given only girls. Four little female Littletons, with no hope of ever leaving Hale.

Lauren and Lydia Littleton were two weeks shy of turning two when they first inhabited Hale. Their sisters, Lanie and Layla, were seventeen days short of seven months. And the baby that she hoped was a boy still had six months inside.

Six months later, Lucy got her first glance at the littlest Littleton. What lay before her was a beautiful baby girl.

Lucy sobbed over the life that this little she would surely endure. As she cried, the creature in her arms began to coo, offering a brief moment of comfort for her mother. The sound was so soft and lovely, Lucy knew what she needed to name her.

And that's how the baby became Lyric.

Lucy was lucky enough to know the one way little girls left Hale. But it took a commitment and a courage that couldn't come quickly.

Lydia and Lauren were five, Layla and Lanie were four, and little Lyric was halfway to three before Lucy had all of Hale she could handle.

Early one October morning she dressed her girls in their cleanest clothes and shiniest shoes and led all five of her little Littletons to the bus stop.

The other Haleyons sitting at the stop were astonished at the sight before them. It didn't happen often, but on the rarest of occasions the youngest inhabitants of Hale would be brought to the bus stop.

That wasn't where they stayed, though. They took twenty steps past the stop before Lucy instructed them to sit on the stoop. A little line of Littletons lined the lane, waiting for something, but what it was they did not know. Lucy listened intently until off in the distance she heard the bus bumping up the boulevard.

She gathered her girls and kissed each child on the cheek. "We shall see each other soon," she assured each one.

She hustled her children into the street, stooping over them and shielding their faces. What she didn't notice was that the littlest Littleton had slipped away from the huddle.

As the bus bounded toward them, Lucy screamed for Lyric, but Lyric wasn't listening.

She was safely on the sidewalk when she noticed her mother and sisters still standing in the street. She also saw the bus quickly approaching them.

As the bus tried to screech to a stop, Lyric screamed for her mama and tried to reach her. But the bus beat her to it. Her mother and sisters were hit head on while Lyric slammed into the side.

She was thrown to the curb, where she lay in a crumpled heap.

Lyric Littleton was lifeless.

Lucy looked out onto her lovely lawn. The green grass glistened in the bright sun. The warm weather was perfect for playing outside. She watched through the kitchen window as her girls took turns swinging on the swing set and sliding down the slide. Nothing made her happier than seeing the happiness on five little Littleton faces.

They had been in Heaven for more than a month. It truly was a glorious place. Pure perfection in ways no one on Earth could ever imagine. It made the Heaven on Earth appear a little less heavenly.

There were no accidents, no animosity, and no addictions. No blemishes and no brokenness. No crying and no cursing. No debt and no dishonesty. No embarrassment and no envy. No frailty, no fear, no fights, and no force. No grief and no greed. No heartache, no hurt, no health scares, no hunger, no hate. No injuries, no indignation, and no intolerance. No judgment. No killing. No loneliness and no laziness. No mourning. No needs. No obesity, no obscenities, and no obnoxiousness. No pain, no pettiness, and no problems. No quarrels. No rudeness. No suffering, no sickness, no shame, no sorrow, no sadness. No theft and no thoughtlessness. No ugliness and no uncertainty. No venomous words. No worry or want. No excrutiation. No yearning and no yelling. No zealots and no zaniness.

Heaven was as perfect as it could possibly be. There was only one problem. Not a problem per se, a predicament, which plagued Lucy because she knew her plan had not gone quite as she had planned it.

Lucy knew that for the moment at least, her little piece of Heaven was not meant for five little Littletons. It was meant for four. There were four swings on the swing set. There were four bicycles and four baby dolls. There were four little bedrooms with four little beds. There were four little chairs around the five-person table.

The Creator who had created them left little question as to which Littleton did not yet belong in Heaven. Above one little bed pretty pink letters spelled out 'Lauren'. In another bedroom bright blue letters spelled 'Lydia'. Pastel purple spelled 'Layla', and bold burgundy 'Lanie'.

Lyric was the only Littleton left.

The predicament, Lucy lamented, was that Lyric was still living.

It took Lucy five days to figure out why Lyric possessed no possessions in Heaven. But that fifth morning, she woke up with the littlest Littleton lying beside her in the bed. Lucy’s last moments in Hale had come flooding back as she slept. She had assumed that Lyric's life had been taken by the bus, not head on like the rest of the Littletons, but from the side, so that she could be with her family in Heaven and not have to endure Hale any longer. But the details of her dreams led to no denying that Lyric hadn't died.

Her soul was with her sisters and her mother in Heaven. But her little body, it still contained a beating heart and breathing lungs and blinking baby blues.

Lucy's realization was met with such sadness over her little singleton being left all alone in Hale. Her solace came in the fact that Lyric seemed blissfully unaware that she was somewhere she wasn't supposed to be. So Lucy determined that Lyric could remain in Heaven, because her body was but a shell without its soul.

One day, almost a month later, Lyric sat with Lucy in the hanging hammock while her sisters swung on their swings.

She seemed distracted, not like the Lyric who had inhabited Heaven for more than a month.

Quietly, she climbed into Lucy's lap, until they were face to face. Lyric softly set her head on her mother's shoulder.

"Mama, my Heaven is as happy as your Heaven."

Lucy listened as Lyric revealed her revelation.

"My Heaven has Polly. She sings songs to me and cuddles me and kisses me." She spoke softly and sweetly with her three year old vocabulary. "Somebody scooped me off the sidewalk in Hale and flew me to Heaven and set me down on the sidewalk there so that Polly could find me. All my boo-boos were gone when I got there."

Lucy knew then that it was she who was unaware. Her daughter was divided between Heaven on Earth and the eternal Heaven.

Lyric stated one last statement. "She calls me Caroline, Mama. Isn't that pretty?"

Lucy's baby was begging her to let her live. Suddenly, Lucy's burden was lifted. A peace pacified her soul.

"It's the most beautiful name I've ever known, my baby girl. You go and you live, and we shall see each other soon."

"So soon, Mama."

With that, Lyric slipped off the hammock and skipped over to her sisters, and happiness was once again restored in Heaven.

The next morning, Lyric was not lying next to her mother. But Lucy knew that she did not need to look for the littlest Littleton.

Lyric Littleton was living.

Polly Priestly awoke to a most mystifying murmuring. The sound sounded as though it was coming from the couch where Caroline quietly slept.

It sounded like a sound that Heaven had all but forgotten. If Polly's ears weren't deceiving her, what she heard were the sweet murmurings of a pint-sized person.

Has someone come for Caroline? she wondered as she walked down the hall. She almost hoped it wasn't true, that this little child she had grown to love could be leaving.

When she reached the living room she was astonished at the amazing sight before her. Caroline was crouched on the couch, watching out the window, singing the simple song that Polly sang to her every evening.

Polly practically passed out at what was taking place before her.

Suddenly, Caroline spun around to face Polly. Her baby blues locked into Polly's light lavenders. The lips that had never curled up, down, or otherwise began to creep upward.

The voice box that had never voiced a voice started to speak.

"My mama calls me Lyric Littleton. She's in Heaven with my sisters. Not this Heaven, the spirit one. She said I could come live with you. You can call me Caroline. She thinks it's pretty too."

With that, Lyric fell into Polly's outstretched arms and an everlasting love leapt into their souls and bonded them both forever.

And that’s how Caroline Lyric Littleton became the only child to ever inhabit Heaven.

Caroline reached adulthood, as all children should.

She made it her mission to make Hale no longer hellish. After seven years of hard work, residents of Hale were self-sufficient. Families became fuller, with fathers sticking around. Unemployment became nonexistent. Buildings were brought down and houses were built in their place. Cars became common. Businesses were booming in the place where prison was once preferred.

Lucy Littleton watched with wonder at all of Caroline’s accomplishments.

And she waited—patiently, peacefully, and proudly—to one day, once her life had been lived, have the littlest Littleton reunited with her in Heaven.

"Unquestionably Questionable" by Jessica Holt

Click The Picture Above To Preview Jessica's Latest Novel...

48 No Interstate ... Plus 2

JessicaHoltWrites@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Sun, 29 May 2016 02:46:57 GMT

Behind My Eyes continues its first National Tour .... In a way .....

Sometimes things just work out.

Sometimes those things are small, like when I was little, and I prayed that Sweet Home Alabama would come on the radio, and it did.

Sometimes they’re bigger, like when my post-college roommate told me she was going to be at a beach about an hour north of my grandparents’ house if I wanted to plan to make a trip while she was there, and then about two weeks before the trip she texted me to tell me that she got the beach wrong, it was actually Surfside Beach, and she hoped that wouldn’t be too far for me to still come visit. Well, it just so happens that my grandparents’ house is at Surfside Beach! We laughed about how it would be funny if we were neighbors. Well, I laughed. Chuckled is more like it, and I don’t know whether she laughed or not because all of our communication was done through texts, but she probably at least chuckled too because it seemed more than doubtful that in a town that runs 16 avenues north of Surfside Drive and 16 avenues south of Surfside Drive we would even be within reasonable walking distance of each other. Biking, yes. Walking, no. Then, what do you know, Rebecca and her family’s rental house ended up being on the exact same street as my grandparents’ house. What we thought was going to be one visit on one day turned into sharing beach access all week and seeing each other almost every day.

Sometimes those things don’t seem very big when they happen, but when you think back on them you realize just how big they really were. For example, I had left my parents’ house after Christmas last year to go back to my apartment. I was almost to my apartment when I realized I had forgotten my purse, which had my wallet in it, which had my license in it. If you know me at all, you know that I am not one to break laws (or even suggestions) so I decided that since I was closer to my apartment it was best to go on there and have someone bring me my purse. I was driving a couple of car lengths behind a pickup truck with a gigantic Christmas tree lying in the back of it. As I had the thought, what if that tree fell out of that truck, I realized I was moving over to the other lane. Literally a second later, the Christmas tree fell out of the back of the truck and landed in the lane. There is absolutely no way I could have avoided it if I had still been behind the truck, and there’s also no way I could have successfully driven over it. So not only would I have been on the losing end of an accident with a Christmas tree, I would have been on the losing end of an accident with a Christmas tree and without a driver’s license. The truck kept going, by the way. And I know they know the tree fell out because it was so big that the whole truck bounced when it happened. So more than likely, someone did have an accident with a Christmas tree that day because it was almost dark when it fell into the road. I’m just thankful it wasn’t me.

And sometimes those things seem just as big as they are. A copy of Behind My Eyes has now traveled through 34 states in less than two months. And before the next month is over, it will have traveled through the remaining 16. What were the chances that my brother and sister-in-law would have the crazy idea to zigzag across the continental United States on nothing but back roads a few months after I had a book published that needed some great photo opportunities? Slim. What were the chances that I knew someone who was going to Hawaii during that same time frame? Slimmer. What were the chances that I knew someone who was going to Alaska during that same time frame? Even slimmer. But I did and I do, and a copy of Behind My Eyes will have had its picture made in all fifty states before the summer has officially begun.

Below is the 48 No Interstate road map, showing where Nick, Laura, and the book have already been as well as where they are going to be in the future.

And if you missed it on my Facebook or Instagram pages, here is Hawaii:

And a few others:

You can still follow the 48 No Interstate trip on the web ...

On Facebook ...

On Instagram ...

On Twitter ...

And you can find all the pictures of Behind My Eyes in various locations across the USA on Facebook ...

And on Instagram ...

Happy Memorial Day Weekend, Everyone!

48 No Interstate

JessicaHoltWrites@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 20:01:30 GMT

Behind My Eyes begins its first National Tour .... In a way .....

Well, I’ve done something I said I would never do. I’ve started posting on Instagram. Technically, I started posting on Instagram back in December, but that one picture sat there, all by its lonesome, for four months.

I was never anti-Instagram. I’ve been visiting other people’s Instagrams for years. I was just against having to learn how to use it myself. The truth is, it’s not that hard to post a picture and write a caption about it. What is hard is having to regularly find Instagram-worthy photos to post, especially when you’re somebody who has hundreds of pictures of her dog but not too many of anything else.

But now, thanks to my brother and sister-in-law’s Spring vacation and their willingness to advertise my book along the way, I finally have a slew of Instagram-worthy photos to post. And by Spring vacation, I’m not talking about going to the beach for a week and then coming home. I’m talking about a trip that will literally last all but about eight days of the season.

Nick, Laura, my book, and two car magnets advertising my book have embarked on a 48 No Interstate adventure. Unfortunately I did not embark with them (somebody has to stay behind and watch their dogs), but thanks to their extended trek and a couple of other people who happen to be going to Hawaii and Alaska in the next couple of months, Behind My Eyes will have traveled through all 50 states before the summer is over.

The 48 No Interstate tour is currently on state number 6. Nick and Laura are documenting their trip on Facebook (Facebook.com/48nointerstate), Instagram (Instagram.com/48nointerstate), Twitter (@48nointerstate...I haven’t made the Twitter leap yet), and Pinterest (I don’t even know how to tell you to find them there, but if there’s a search bar of some sort, typing in 48nointerstate would probably be a good start).

Photos of my book at various landmarks across the United States can be found on my now up and running Instagram page (Instagram.com/jessicaholtwrites). And a few copies of my book will find new homes along the way, the first being Pinky’s Eatery in Tampa, Florida.

One last thing. To the few Instagram followers I unknowingly accumulated over the last four months, I’m sorry you’ve had nothing to actually follow, but I greatly appreciate the fact that you found me on Instagram and wanted to keep up with me that way. Now you can.

The Six Segment Story Stack to Start Twenty-Sixteen

JessicaHoltWrites@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 23:32:28 GMT

You’ve made it to the final segment of the six segment story stack to start twenty-sixteen. Thanks for reading!

Unquestionably Questionable, Week 5

Copyright © 2016 by Jessica Holt

Polly Priestly awoke to a most mystifying murmuring. The sound sounded as though it was coming from the couch where Caroline quietly slept.
It sounded like a sound that Heaven had all but forgotten. If Polly's ears weren't deceiving her, what she heard were the sweet murmurings of a pint-sized person.
Has someone come for Caroline? she wondered as she walked down the hall. She almost hoped it wasn't true, that this little child she had grown to love could be leaving.
When she reached the living room she was astonished at the amazing sight before her. Caroline was crouched on the couch, watching out the window, singing the simple song that Polly sang to her every evening.
Polly practically passed out at what was taking place before her.
Suddenly, Caroline spun around to face Polly. Her baby blues locked with Polly's light lavenders. The lips that had never curled up, down, or otherwise began to creep upward.
The voice box that had never voiced a voice started to speak.
"My mama calls me Lyric Littleton. She's in heaven with my sisters. Not this Heaven; the spirit one. She said I could come live with you. You can call me Caroline. She thinks it's pretty too."
With that, Lyric fell into Polly's outstretched arms and an everlasting love leapt into their souls and bonded them both forever.

And that’s how Caroline Lyric Littleton became the only child to ever inhabit Heaven.

Caroline reached adulthood, as all children should. She made it her mission to make Hale a little less hellish. After seven years of hard work, residents of Hale were self-sufficient. Families became fuller, with fathers sticking around. Unemployment became nonexistent. Buildings were brought down and houses were built in their place. Cars became common. Businesses were booming in the place where prison was once preferred.

Lucy Littleton watched with wonder at all of Caroline’s accomplishments.
And she waited…patiently, peacefully, and proudly… to one day, once Lyric’s life had been lived, have the littlest Littleton reunited with her in Heaven.

The Six Segment Story Stack to Start Twenty-Sixteen

JessicaHoltWrites@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Wed, 17 Feb 2016 21:58:56 GMT

Unquestionably Questionable, Week 4

If you missed the first seven parts of Unquestionably Questionable, please go back and read my last two blog entries first (or my last three if you want to know the story behind the story). Otherwise, proceed to Part VIII.

Lucy looked out onto her lovely lawn. The green grass practically glistened in the bright sun. The warm weather was perfect for playing outside. She watched through the kitchen window as her girls took turns swinging on the swing set and sliding down the slide. Nothing made her happier than seeing the happiness on five little Littleton faces.
They had been in Heaven for more than a month. It truly was a glorious place. Pure perfection in ways no one on Earth could ever imagine. It made the Heaven on Earth appear a little less heavenly.
There were no accidents, no animosity, and no addictions. No blemishes and no brokenness. No crying and no cursing. No debt and no dishonesty. No embarrassment and no envy. No frailty, no fear, no fights, and no force. No grief and no greed. No heartache, no hurt, no health scares, no hunger, no hate. No injuries, no indignation, and no intolerance. No judgment. No killing. No loneliness and no laziness. No mourning. No needs. No obscenities and no obnoxiousness. No pain, no pettiness, and no problems. No quarrels. No rudeness. No suffering, no sickness, no shame, no sorrow, no sadness. No theft and no thoughtlessness. No ugliness and no uncertainty. No venomous words. No worry or want. No excrutiation. No yearning and no yelling. No zealots and no zaniness.
Heaven was as perfect as it could possibly be. There was only one problem. Not a problem per se, a predicament, which plagued Lucy because she knew her plan had not gone quite as she had planned it.
Lucy knew that for the moment at least, her little piece of Heaven was not meant for five little Littletons. It was meant for four. There were four swings on the swing set. There were four bicycles and four baby dolls. There were four little bedrooms with four little beds. There were four little chairs around the five-person table.
The Creator who had created them all left little question as to which Littleton did not yet belong in Heaven. Above one little bed pretty pink letters spelled out 'Lauren'. In another bedroom bright blue letters spelled 'Lydia'. Pastel purple spelled 'Layla', and bold burgundy 'Lanie'.
Lyric was the only Littleton left.
The predicament, Lucy lamented, was that Lyric was still living.
It took Lucy five days to figure out why Lyric possessed no possessions in Heaven. But that fifth morning, she woke up with the littlest Littleton lying beside her in the bed. Lucy’s last moments in Hale had come flooding back as she slept. She had assumed that Lyric's life had been taken by the bus, not head on like the rest of the Littletons, but from the side, so that she could be with her family in Heaven and not have to endure Hale any longer. But the details of her dreams led to no denying that Lyric hadn't died.
Her soul was with her sisters and her mother in Heaven. But her little body still contained a beating heart and breathing lungs and blinking baby blues.
Lucy's realization was met with such sadness over her little singleton being left all alone in Hale. Her solace came in the fact that Lyric seemed blissfully unaware that she was somewhere she wasn't supposed to be. So Lucy determined that Lyric could remain in Heaven, because her body was but a shell without its soul.

One day, almost a month later, Lyric sat with Lucy in the hanging hammock while her sisters swung on their swings.
She seemed distracted, not like the Lyric who had inhabited Heaven for more than a month.
Quietly, she climbed into Lucy's lap, until they were face to face. Lyric softly set her head on her mother's shoulder.
"Mama, my heaven is as happy as your heaven."
Lucy listened as Lyric revealed her revelation.
"My heaven has Polly. She sings songs to me and cuddles me and kisses me." She spoke softly and sweetly with her three year old vocabulary. "Somebody scooped me off the sidewalk in Hale and flew me to Heaven and set me down on the sidewalk so that Polly could find me. All my boo-boos were gone when I got there."
Lucy knew then that it was she who was unaware. Her daughter was divided between Heaven on Earth and the eternal Heaven.
Lyric stated one last statement. "She calls me Caroline, Mama. Isn't that pretty?"
Lucy's baby was begging her to let her live. Suddenly, Lucy's burden was lifted. A peace pacified her soul.
"It's the most beautiful name I've ever known, my baby girl. You go and you live, and we shall see each other soon."
"So soon, Mama." With that, Lyric slipped off the hammock and skipped over to her sisters, and happiness was once again restored in Heaven.

The next morning, Lyric was not lying next to her mother. But Lucy knew that she did not need to look for the Littlest Littleton.

Lyric Littleton was living.

Coming next week

The Six Segment Story Stack to Start Twenty-Sixteen

JessicaHoltWrites@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 01:34:12 GMT

Unquestionably Questionable, Week 3

If you missed Part I through Part IV, please go back and read last week’s entry. Or you can find the story behind the story in the January 23rd entry. Enjoy!

Hale was next to Heaven, yet it was nothing like it. Twelve apartment buildings lined the two lane road that twisted through the town. Two hundred tenants lived in each of the identical buildings.

The bottom floor of each building housed a business, but none were run by residents of Hale. Residents of neighboring neighborhoods (never Heaven) owned the buildings as well as the businesses at the bottom of them.

Humans came to live in Hale only when they had nowhere else to go. Most of these humans brought along with them a handful of half-sized humans, hoping for housing and healthcare and help with their hunger.

If tenants of Hale were fortunate enough to be employed, they weren’t employees of Hale. They boarded the only bus that bussed them to the neighboring neighborhoods every morning, spent the day doing whatever is was they did, and then boarded the same bus which dropped them off in Hale at the end of the day.

No cars occupied the streets of Hale. Only bicycles and baby buggies and the occasional bus ever bumped along Hale's boulevard.

Unlike Heaven, half-sized heathens made up the majority of Hale. From eighteen months to eighteen years, they ran aimlessly around Hale all day long, contributing nothing but snotty noses and croupy coughs. Those who were tinier than eighteen months bounced their days away in the baby buggies that their mothers marched up and down the town.

Once a week, a week's worth of food was brought to each building. It was then rationed out to each residence, based on how many residents lived in each residence.

The few men who lived in Hale made it their mission to escape, thinking nothing of leaving their women and children in Hale the minute they found adequate employment in a neighboring neighborhood. Needless to say, the bus that bussed tenants of Hale out in the morning was always more crowded than the bus that bussed them back in the afternoon.

There was no happiness in Hale, only heartache and hopelessness. The only hope came briefly when a boy child was born, that he might, eighteen years from that moment, hop on a bus and never come back.

But for at least eighteen years he would have to endure Hale, which halted all hope anyone ever had.

Lucy Littleton did not have luck on her side. She left her home in Hampton when by twenty years old she had two sets of twins and a singleton on the way. There were three different dads, none of whom were willing to do their daily daddy duties, and Lucy's parents no longer wanted to parent, either Lucy or the littlest Littletons.

So Lucy Littleton and her little ones had nowhere to go but Hale. She secured one studio apartment (which was all Hale offered) in building number six.

She received food for five every Friday, and if she was running out before the week was over, she wouldn't eat. That would normally be noble, feeding your children before yourself, but it was as though she would forget about the one in her womb.

She hoped beyond all hope that the baby was a boy. Because not only had Lucy been unlucky in the choosing of the fathers for her children, she had also been given only girls. Four little female Littletons, with no hope of ever leaving Hale.

Lauren and Lydia Littleton were two weeks shy of turning two when they first inhabited Hale. Their sisters, Lanie and Layla, were seventeen days short of seven months. And the baby that she hoped was a boy still had six months inside.

Six months later, Lucy got her first glance at the littlest Littleton. What lay before her was a beautiful baby girl.

Lucy sobbed over the life that this little she would surely endure. As she cried, the creature in her arms began to coo, offering a brief moment of comfort for her mother. The sound was so soft and lovely, Lucy knew what she needed to name her.

And that’s how the baby became Lyric.

Lucy was lucky enough to know the one way little girls left Hale. But it took a commitment and a courage that couldn't come quickly.

Lydia and Lauren were five, Layla and Lanie were four, and little Lyric was halfway to three before Lucy had all of Hale she could handle.

Early one October morning she dressed her girls in their cleanest clothes and shiniest shoes and led all five of her little Littletons to the bus stop.

The other Haleyons sitting at the stop were astonished at the sight before them. It didn't happen often, but on the rarest of occasions the youngest inhabitants of Hale would be brought to the bus stop.

That wasn't where they stayed, though. They took twenty steps past the stop before she instructed them to sit on the stoop. A little line of Littletons lined the lane, waiting for something, but what it was they did not know. Lucy listened intently until off in the distance she heard the bus bumping up the boulevard.

She gathered her girls and kissed each child on the cheek. "We shall see each other soon," she assured each child.

She hustled her children into the street, stooping over them and shielding their faces. What she didn't notice was that the littlest Littleton had slipped away from the huddle.

As the bus bounded toward them, she screamed for Lyric, but Lyric wasn't listening.

She was safely on the sidewalk when she noticed her mother and sisters still standing in the street. She also saw the bus quickly approaching them.

As the bus tried to screech to a stop, Lyric screamed for her mother and tried to reach her. But the bus beat her to it. Her mother and sisters were hit head on while Lyric slammed into the side.

She was thrown to the curb, where she lay in a crumpled heap.

Lyric Littleton was lifeless.

Coming next week ....

The Six Segment Story Stack to Start Twenty-Sixteen #2

JessicaHoltWrites@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 01:49:33 GMT

Unquestionably Questionable, Week 2

Since the story part of last week’s blog entry was relatively short, I’m including it again this week for anyone who may have missed it. If you read part one last week, feel free to skip to part two.

The child was unquestionably questionable. Everyone who knew her knew that. Yet no one who knew her really knew her at all.

And she was the only child in all of Heaven.

The first mile of heaven was identical to the last. On either side of Central Street was a curb, sixteen inches of sod, a sidewalk, and six additional feet of sod, all leading to a cookie-cutter cottage.

Each cookie-cutter cottage stood nine feet from the next. At twenty-two feet wide, a total of sixty-eight cottages lined each side of Central Street, totaling one hundred thirty-six residences in the entire town.

Each of the one hundred thirty-six residences was painted a particular color, and each color was unique. Soft Sapphire and Sparkling Cerulean may be similar, but they are certainly not the same.

One to two residents resided in each residence, with an average of two hundred inhabitants of Heaven at any given time.

She resided in house number thirty-three, its color timeless turquoise. Turquoise tulips lined her lawn. Tomato was the only crop she chose to cultivate.

Two baby blues blinked blankly, the half-sized human staring beyond where Polly stood. Polly struggled to see what the small stranger was staring at, but she saw nothing but a normal Heaven.

“Morning,” said Polly as politely as possible.

The petite person made no movement.

Polly reached with her right arm and tenderly touched the smooth skin crumpled on the curb.

After no acknowledgment, Polly placed her basket on the sidewalk and scooped the crumpled being from the curb, elongating her as she lifted.

Once uncrumpled and elongated, she was not very long. Her limbs hung loosely from her little limp form. Her blinking baby blues shifted to the sidewalk and stayed there.

Polly had never seen such a sight. A perfectly proportioned human, yet less than half the size of all other humans in Heaven.

I’ve come across something seriously strange, Polly thought to herself. I must seek suggestions.

Polly set the stranger inside her basket and turned back toward Central Street, backtracking to Dr. Dunn’s doctor’s office, desperate for a diagnosis.

Dr. Dunn examined every inch of the little life stretched out in front of him on the examining table.

“I haven’t seen such a sight in seventeen seasons,” he exclaimed, ending his examination.

“What did you determine, Doctor?”

“Polly Priestly, you brought a baby in your basket.”

Polly placed her pupils on the tiny person on the table. “A baby?” She barely whispered the word. Babies weren’t born in Heaven. Babies didn’t belong in Heaven.

“This tot looks to be two, possibly three,” Dr. Dunn disclosed to Polly.

“How on earth did it enter Heaven?” Polly proclaimed.

“I can’t offer a conclusion.”

“What do you advise I do?”

“I advise you take the tot to your cottage, cook her something creamy, comfort her if she cries, and sing her to sleep.”

“And after I’ve accomplished those instructions?”

“Repeat until she is returned to her rightful residence.”

Polly carried the creature to her cottage. She set her on a stool while she cooked a cup of creamed corn. She spooned out a spoonful and slipped it between the babe’s lips. For a miniscule moment, Polly feared that the child would choke. But then, the child began to chew. She swallowed seven spoonfuls before blocking a bite with her crimson colored lips.

Now, what next? Polly pondered. Comfort her cries.

But she didn’t shed a tear. The tiny tot sat on the stool and stared into space with her blinking baby blues.

Polly stared at the small stranger, while the small stranger stared into space. After what seemed to be an eternity, the baby’s blinks began lasting longer, indicating the need for a nap.

Days turned into weeks, weeks into a month, but no mother ever entered Heaven to retrieve her child.

Eight days after her arrival, Polly still had not gotten the tot to tell her her name.

I must call this stranger something, Polly thought, because while she was still strange, she was less of a stranger every day.

I’ll call her…Caroline.

Each day was a repeat of the one before. Good morning, Caroline. Eat your eggs, Caroline. Take that tomato from the vine, Caroline. Come Caroline, we must make our trip to the market. Sit on this stool while I cook your corn, Caroline. One more big bite for Polly, please. Something sweet being sung to sing her to sleep. Come sit with Polly, Caroline, while she completes her crossword. Dumplings for dinner, Caroline, with custard for dessert? Come baby, let’s get you in the bath. All clean, Caroline. Shall we sing one last song before bed? Good night, Caroline.

The tiny tot did as she was told. She behaved beautifully, even while the preacher preached his lengthy sermons every Sunday, sitting silently beside Polly in the pew.

The possessors of the ever-present eyes that eyeballed the child all attended the Christian Church of Christ. Their gaze was always on the girl, glancing away only if Polly caught their eye.

“From where did she arrive?” was the most common question, followed by, “How long until she leaves?”

“I know not,” Polly would simply state, eagerly escorting an oblivious Caroline out of the Christian Church of Christ and accompanying her to the home that was only hers no longer.

Coming next week ....

The Six Segment Story Stack to Start Twenty-Sixteen

JessicaHoltWrites@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Sat, 23 Jan 2016 10:02:19 GMT

Unquestionably Questionable, Week 1

First, the story behind the story:

The year was 2007. I had just moved from Upstate South Carolina to Charleston, and every week I had a very important appointment with my roommate. It involved a trip to Sonic and a TV show called Gilmore Girls. The tradition actually started when I was a Freshman at Wofford College. Thursday night was still Must See TV back then. At 7:30PM, four of my hallmates and I would walk to the campus coffee shop. I would order a white chocolate mocha, they would order their beverages of choice, and we would take them back to the room with the largest TV (not mine...it was a white 13” TV/VHS combo) and watch Friends.

Friends had been a part of my life for five years by then. My 8th grade band teacher referenced it one day during class, I went home and watched an episode, and I was hooked. And just so you know how hooked I was, before the days of DVD collections, I recorded a rerun of every episode, in order, on VHS, creating my own version of a Friends box set.

Friends was the one constant in my life as I took the leap from high school to college. Friends was the one thing that gave me hope that the world hadn’t totally fallen apart when, one Tuesday morning two weeks into my Freshman year, I came in from an 8:00 Calculus class, turned on my little white TV, and instead of Regis and Kelly, found Matt Lauer and Katie Couric talking about the plane that had just flown into the World Trade Center. I had only been watching for a minute when the second plane hit the other tower, and in that moment ‘horrible accident’ turned into ‘intentional attack on the United States’. For two days I thought nothing would ever be the same...there would be ‘before September 11’ and ‘after September 11’. All I wanted was for something that existed ‘before September 11’ to exist, unaltered, ‘after September 11’, for something to be familiar and comforting.

I very specifically remember wondering if Friends would come on that Thursday night. My version of the story goes that all day long was news, news, news, and then suddenly at 8:00 the news stopped and Friends appeared on the screen. It offered a glimmer of hope, thirty minutes of familiarity in the midst of fear and confusion, an occasional laugh that felt both inappropriate and necessary at the same time. Whether or not the timing happened the way I remember it really doesn’t matter. What does matter is what I realized from that experience, that sometimes things that seemingly don’t matter at all can matter the most. If it brings happiness, or joy, or a brief escape from the real world to even one person, it matters immensely.

So you can imagine my sense of loss when Friends ended in 2004. Or maybe you can’t. I’m not sure if it’s normal to grieve over the loss of a TV show. But normal or not, coffee and Friends night had evolved into Zaxby’s and Friends night, and in the fall of 2004 I found myself sitting on the couch with a Wings ‘n Things and nothing to watch.

Now to make what should have been the longest part of a short story the shortest part of a story that got much longer than I meant for it to be.

Gilmore Girls turned out to be a welcome replacement for Friends. And if I’m being honest, while a Friends episode on Nick at Nite before bed is always enjoyable, I have never seen a better-written or better-casted show than Gilmore Girls. It was lighthearted. It was quirky. It was a little bit whimsical. It was sixty minutes of the world I wished I lived in. And then in 2007, just after I moved across the state, just when I needed something familiar to take with me, Gilmore Girls ended. Seemingly forever (not so, according to recent buzz from Netflix, but should a Gilmore Girls mini series of sorts actually come to fruition that will be another blog entry for another day...I can’t even get my hopes up about that right now). So my roommate and I were left with our extra long coneys, our tater tots, our honey mustard, a diet Cherry Coke for me, a Dr. Pepper for her, and another void to fill.

In 2007, Lost was right up there with Gilmore Girls on my list of ‘Must See TV’. But in a not-at-all lighthearted, not-at-all quirky, not-at-all whimsical, not-at-all the world I wished I lived in sort of way. I’m an absolute baby when it comes to any sort of horror-inducing entertainment, and most weeks Lost was right at the edge of my limit, so I didn’t think it would make for a very enjoyable dining experience.

Which brings me to Pushing Daisies. You’ve probably never seen it. Only six million people watched it every week, which in today’s TV world would keep you on the air for ten years, but in the fall of 2007, six million viewers got you canceled after two seasons. Pushing Daisies was everything I loved about Gilmore Girls taken to the extreme. It was bright. It was colorful. It was funny. It was clever. It was lighthearted. It was quirky. It was nothing but whimsical. And it was about murder. Each week, a murder was solved by the pie-maker, who possessed the gift (or curse) of bringing people back to life with a single touch, and his childhood sweetheart Charlotte Charles, who the pie-maker just happened to bring back to life in the first episode.

Which got me thinking. Could I write a story about a serious subject and make it lighthearted and whimsical? What follows is the result of that thought.

The child was unquestionably questionable. Everyone who knew her knew that. Yet no one who knew her really knew her at all.

And she was the only child in all of Heaven.

***

Part II next week. And by next week, I really mean next week this time.

The Six Segment Story Stack to Start Twenty-Sixteen

JessicaHoltWrites@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 01:18:15 GMT

The truth is, my job leaves little time to do much else at the beginning of the year. So starting next week I’ll be posting the first of a six-part short story I wrote. Or maybe seven part because the story itself is really not all that short. But it’s heavy on alliteration, so I want the title to not be completely out of place. If it will take you more than five minutes to read each segment, it may become The Seventeen Segment Story Stack to Start Twenty-Sixteen because short and sweet seems to be the key to a good blog.

This week, with the few precious moments (there those Precious Moments are again, and I wasn’t even trying to tie them in this time) of free time I have left, I will answer the question of why my dog is called Mutt. His official name is Lucas Max Calle Muttknight, and here’s why.

English was not Mutt’s first language. It wasn’t even his second language, but that’s another story for another day. All I’ll say about that is that when a dog spends his first two years of life with a deaf dog, he’s led to believe that “listening” in the traditional sense is more a suggestion than a command.

Mutt spent much of his puppyhood in a strictly Spanish-speaking household. By the time I met him, Lucas had already come and gone. It was four pound Max who was sitting in the street, his little curled tail all a-quiver, waiting to greet me as I pulled into my new driveway for the first time. It was love at first sight for both of us, and Max kept me company for hours before he was eventually retrieved by Juan, his Spanish-speaking owner.

It was Juan who told me the puppy’s name, but apparently when someone with a thick Spanish accent says the word Max, it sounds a lot like Mutt. So Mutt he became. Max when he was with Juan; Mutt when he was with me. Mutt wasn’t a very pleasant sounding name for such an adorable dog, but who was I to change the name of a dog that wasn’t mine?

Fast forward three months to the day Juan showed up on the front porch with Max and the 45 lb. bag of Kibbles ‘n Bits. When Juan stepped off the porch that day empty handed, Max was no more. I had this wonderful idea to change Mutt’s name to Calle, which means ‘street’ in Spanish. I thought I’d still be leaving him with his roots but also incorporating how we met. He would have none of it. So I moved on to Knight and started calling him Muttknight, thinking it sort of sounded like ‘midnight’ so people wouldn’t think I was crazy when they heard me say it and also thinking I could just drop the Mutt part eventually and be left with Knight.

Knight was around long enough to have that name engraved on his tag for a while. He’s even called that by the people at the Pet Mobile to this day. But he would never let go of that first part of the name. So now he’s just plain old Mutt. A name no one ever intentionally gave him, but clearly who he wants to be. And if he’s happy, so am I.

Letters to Santa and A Simpler Time

JessicaHoltWrites@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 02:58:50 GMT

For those of you who were hoping to hear how Mutt got his unfortunate name this week, you’ll have to wait one more week. It’s still coming. But this week, I thought I would ring in the Christmas season with a couple of my old letters to Santa.

It’s amazing what you can find in your parents’ attic when you really do some digging. I was up there over Thanksgiving, “helping” bring down the Christmas decorations in between sifting through boxes of old toys, when I came across two of my elementary school bookbags.

First, I would just like to say that bookbags have come a long way since I was a kid. I don’t think anyone even uses the term bookbag anymore. They’re all called backpacks, because they have enough specifically-shaped pockets and crevices that should your first grader ever get lost in the wilderness for a week, he’ll probably be fine as long as you filled all of those pockets and crevices with the items they were meant to be filled with.

Somehow my classmates and I managed to get through elementary school without a cylindrical mesh pocket for our water bottles. And by water bottle, I mean Hi-C juice box or Capri Sun, because no kid brought water to school as their drink of choice when I was little. We drank teeth-rotting juice during the week and then swished our fluoride as a class on Fridays right before we watched Reading Rainbow, and I would dare to say that the majority of us still have our original teeth, and for the ones who don’t, it likely wasn’t a direct result of not having a water bottle as a constant companion as a child.

Our bookbags didn’t have a Velcroed pocket specifically designed for our cell phones. And by cell phone, I mean the walkie-talkie that allowed us to communicate with the one friend we chose to give the other half to, assuming our classrooms were in close proximity to each other and our teachers didn’t catch us using them. And for those of you thinking cell phones didn’t exist when I was in elementary school, they did, but if the name of your school had Elementary or even Middle in its title, you didn’t have a cell phone. And I do realize the pocket would have been as tall as the bookbag itself and the phone would have probably weighed more than a textbook, but I’m just making a point.

We didn’t have four pockets in decreasing size jutting out the front of the bookbag, with pockets within those pockets, requiring us to remember exactly what was in which pocket. We had bookbags. Bags for books. If we needed something specific, we unzipped the one zipper on the whole bag, turned the bag upside down, dumped its contents on the ground, found what we were looking for, tossed everything back into the bag, and zipped it back up. It was a simpler time, and somehow we all survived.

But this is about finding letters to Santa in the attic. Oh, you know the one thing I didn’t find when rummaging through my old toys? A single Precious Moments figurine. For those of you who have read the ‘About the Author’ section of my website, you’ll understand why that’s significant.

Anyway, the letters. In the bookbags, I found a couple letters I wrote to Santa. I was kind of proud of myself after reading them, because while I clearly still wanted him to pay me a visit, I was honest with him about my shortcomings and realized I needed to use a bit of persuasive writing to secure myself a spot on his ‘nice’ list. So, without further ado, here are my childhood pleadings with Santa.

“Dear Santa, How are you. I am fine. I haven’t been wonderful this year but I’ve been okay. My Grandparents are coming to my house for Christmas. Please leave something in their stockings. Please leave my dog, Lady something for Christmas. She has been a good dog this year. I would like some games and books for Christmas. Have a good Christmas. Love, Jessica Holt.”

“Dear Santa Claus, I know you think I’ve been terrible this year. I know you don’t think I deserve any presents this year, either. I feel the same way. But, I’ve been thinking. You’ve already made my presents for this year. And you worked real hard on them. I know you can put sticks and stones in my stocking, and give my presents to some one else, but I’ve got a better idea. You can give me half of my presents this year. If I’m not good next year you don’t have to give me anything. You can pick the presents you give me. Sincerely, Jessica Holt.
PS. If you do this for me I’ll give all your reindeer an extra carrot.
PPS. If that’s not enough, the cookies are in the cabnet under the microwave. You can have as many as you want.”

And finally, to take it all the way back to the first grade:

“Santa Claus wears a red suit. Ihop he doesn’t mind that i am going to say that he has a big fat belly like a boul ful of Jelly! he Just gose to people that are good but how do you get to evry biddy that has ben good in just one night Santa? i dont no how you do that i gess your raindeer are just fast? he seys he will put roks in your stoking if you are not good he seys hohoho he likes us”

I wish for you a peaceful, restful, joyful, stress-free holiday season. Remember, it once was a simpler time, and somehow we all survived.

What to blog about .....

JessicaHoltWrites@gmail.com (Jessica Holt) — Sun, 15 Nov 2015 00:00:00 GMT

I’m still deciding what this blog should be. Should it be filled with lighthearted musings? Should it be filled with my opinions on current events? Should it be filled with serious subjects that might actually be of some benefit to someone someday? Should it be a combination of all three? I don’t know yet. So today, it’s going to be about my dog. Because you can’t go wrong writing about a dog.

This week’s topic will be food, because in my dog's world, you can’t go wrong talking about food.

This was Mutt about five years ago. This picture was taken about a week after my next door neighbor showed up on my doorstep with him and a 45 lb. bag of Kibbles ’n Bits and told me he was moving soon and thought Mutt should stay with me. This was also about three days after Mutt was diagnosed with a terrible case of mange that required weekly vet visits for two months. Funny how those two events coincided, huh? This was before the wearing of a sweater afflicted him with sudden, debilitating paralysis. And this was before Mutt realized there was a world of culinary adventure beyond his lifetime supply of Kibbles ’n Bits. A series of questionable stomach aches sent the barely touched bag of kibble to the grateful dog down the street, and Mutt found himself eating all-natural dog food filled with an array of fruits and vegetables that make my own diet pale in comparison.

This is Mutt today. He’s developed quite the sophisticated palate when it comes to dog food, but people food is a different story. The same tongue that enjoyed the hard-boiled quail egg and calamari from the can of wet food will spend five minutes licking what used to be a boiled peanut in the street. If there’s even a crumb on the ground within a one mile radius, he knows exactly where it is and the quickest way to get there. I tend to forget about the Froot Loop trail leading from the mini van to the apartment door a quarter of a mile away. I don’t think about the french fries strewn about beside the pickup truck half a mile in the other direction. My mind is rarely fixated on the distant neighbor’s grill that seems to be in use almost every night. It’s not until I’m being pulled down the sidewalk by what feels like an eighty pound dog, but is really just an eighteen pound dog on a mission, that I realize where we’re headed. And even when the Froot Loops have been run over so many times they’ve been reduced to rainbow powder, and the fries have been rained on so many times they’ve turned to mashed potatoes, and the grill droppings have sunk so far into the ground that a shallow hole must be dug to find them, Mutt’s out there, rain or shine, keeping the streets clean of anything that is or ever was edible.

Not only does he have a nose for food, he has an ear for it too. Mutt knows about 150 words, and about 143 of them are related to food. Ask him about breakfast. You’ve got his attention. Ask him about dessert. Ear perks and head tilts galore. Say the word treat or anything that rhymes with it, and he’s trying to wave at you, shake your hand, sit, dance, and give you a high five all at the same time. Just don’t ever say one of those food-related words without following through, because he will stare at you with such unwavering intensity that you’ll find yourself wondering if he has some kind of special mind control over you. And he does, because he wins the stare contest. Every single time.

Next week’s blog topic:

Yes, I’m the one who named my dog Mutt. Yes, I think it’s a pretty horrible name for a dog. Yes, I tried to change it. More than once. Still do every now and then. It was all a big misunderstanding. How could the naming of your dog be a misunderstanding, you say? I’ll explain next week. Unless I decide what my blog should be before then. But I don’t have high hopes about that.

So to sum up: If you come back here hoping to see more adorable pictures of my dog next week, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. Not yet, anyway. Soon. Maybe. Hopefully. But I’ll still throw a picture in every now and then.