Holly Schindler - Storyteller
I often say I started writing and telling stories, oh…shortly after birth.
If I don’t have a pen in my hand, I’m usually holding a cup of coffee…
It’s honestly not much of a stretch. When I was a little girl, I could most often be found either under a summertime Missouri shade tree or curled over my child-sized rolltop desk, writing and illustrating stories.
If I wasn’t writing, I was narrating stories straight into a cassette recorder (yep, I’m a child of the ‘80s). If I wanted to act a story out into one of those tapes, I’d recruit my brother, making him repeat lines of dialogue.
I still have all those old tapes. Boxes and boxes of them, safely stored away in a closet. I haven’t listened to them since the days when I was actually pressing the record button. Someday, I’ll get brave—crack into them and listen to what I was coming up with when I was nine, ten years old.
An example of an early—and typed!—story, complete with illustration.
This particular tale focuses on a rabbit searching for his next meal. Never fear—he and his full belly wound up living happily ever after.
As I got older, I became obsessed with music.
Of course, I was a lyrics fanatic. One of those kids who pored over liner notes. I got a guitar at sixteen—one of my most fond memories of that time are the Saturdays I spent driving across town to Third Eye Guitars, where the then-guitarist for the Ozark Mountain Daredevils (Bill Brown) taught me to play.
As soon as Bill found out that I was writing poetry, he started to teach me the ins and outs of songwriting.
Suddenly, I was writing and recording my own songs.
My love of story inevitably led me to teaching.
I studied English (creative writing and literature) in college. I taught writing courses at the collegiate level. After grad school, I worked with students one-on-one, teaching piano and guitar lessons and working with K-12 students on both reading and writing skills.
As much as I loved teaching writing, I also loved bettering those students’ reading skills. You just cannot beat the light that comes on when a student opens up to the idea that reading is actually as creative as writing.
My primary goal was always to give those students the skills they needed to tell their own stories.
But those students also inspired me.
Before I started teaching music and tutoring, I was only drafting books for adults. Working with the younger set inspired me to write works for them.
You can bet I’ve got a closet full of these guys, too.
My very first published book turned out to be a YA novel: A Blue So Dark.
It’s funny—I thought teaching in the afternoons would help keep me afloat while writing those earliest manuscripts. I didn’t know I would actually get career direction out of it!
In my publishing life…
I’ve published with smaller houses. I’ve also published with the Big 5. I established InToto Books, my own imprint for independent releases.
My work is critically-acclaimed and award-winning. I’ve received starred reviews from PW and Booklist. I’ve been featured on Booklist’s Best First Novels for Youth, School Library Journal’s What’s Hot in YA, and have been chosen as a PW Pick of the Week. I’ve won the silver medal in Foreword INDIES Book of the Year and the gold medal in the IPPYs.
But I missed my other pursuits—I missed my artwork. I missed music. I missed tall tales told out loud with sound effects. I missed working with students to better their own writing skills. That’s why I’m branching out, adding audio and art and courses.
The love of my life is story.
All my passions come back to it. Writing books. Illustrating. Songwriting. Even my love of watching old movies. Of plays. Of podcasts. It all goes back to storytelling.
And if I’ve learned anything about myself, it’s that I’ll always have to follow where the story leads. I’ll be adding more to these pages soon—more art, a podcast, writing courses and craft books to help authors.
It’s yet another chapter in my own ongoing story.