Lovin' Laughter (Holly Schindler)

Sooo...it's not purely YA, but one of my newest loves is humor. 

I mean, that seems like a no-brainer. Everyone loves to laugh, right? 

Most of my work has been pretty serious, though. Oh, sure, there have been light moments in all my books. But a flat-up humor book? I never would have tried it.

Well. Until the pandemic. That changed everyone's perspective, didn't it? 

I put up a collection of short stories (some of the main characters are young, others aren't so much). But the one thing they all have in common is that they're meeting for the first time. That's all they do, in fact--it was the one thing we were all so hungry for, right when we first went into lockdown. Wasn't it? just a chance meeting, a new face:

 

 

I put up a second installment a few months later, this time about a bunch of luckless small-towners on the day of the biggest state lottery drawing:

 

 

And at the end of the '21, I released my favorite humor collection--a little bit satire, a little bit parody, a little bit fable, a little bit allegory—and a whole lot of laughs, all aimed at poking fun at the silliness in this era of life called…adulthood. Some characters (like those in any YA) are coming into adulthood for the first time. Others are far older. "Princess Karen" has a showdown with an ogre, a young man makes his first trip to Toxic Masculinity, and Frank finds out what it means to be "over the hill":

 

 

I love writing humor. I mean, I love it. It just plain makes me feel good. It makes me feel lighter, happier. Writing humor feels like telling a friend a funny story and hearing them laugh. 

After all, connecting to someone through humor--why, that's the deepest connection, isn't it? Doesn't it mean that you agree, on a fundamental level, on so many things--politics or world views or outlook? 

I can definitely see more humor writing in my future...

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~Holly Schindler is the author of books for readers of all ages.