Archive for February, 2019

Deep breath!!!

Friday, February 15th, 2019

Well, after a year away from the publishing world, I’m heading back in.  I have four (FOUR?) books coming out in 2019, and I’m sure I’ll be posting about them, as time goes by.  But today is sort of the beginning.

Two bits of news:

Charlie and Mouse: EVEN BETTER (third in the series) will be out in April. And I just found out it’s a Junior Library Guild selection, so that’s exciting! Honestly, the months just before publication can be a little terrifying. You’ve worked so hard to make something good, but it’s been a private matter, personal. And now, suddenly, it hits you that other people are going to see the thing you’ve made, and judge it, so you begin to question all your creative choices.  JLG is, in many cases, the first indication that you’ve done a good job. JLG books are selected before trade reviews, and before before people start posting their thoughts to Goodreads. So it’s a very soothing thing to find out JLG liked a book. WHEW.

And also… we’ve just revealed the cover of my next novel, My Jasper June. The book won’t be out until September, but I wrote a little something about it for the Nerdy Book Club, and you can see the full cover (teaser above) if you head over there to check it out.  I poured a lot of myself into this book, and I worked on it for five years, on and off. Seriously. I hope you’ll like it.  I really REALLY hope you’ll like it.

That’s all for now, but more soon. When next I post, it’ll be from China!

It’s been a long long long long time…

Thursday, February 7th, 2019

I don’t post here often, and for that I apologize.  Though I’m not sure this blog gets much traffic these days, so maybe that’s just fine…

But so much has happened since November, that I felt the need to take a moment and say so.

First of all, we had an election! (it didn’t go exactly as we hoped, but good things happened, and the I’m optimistic for the future. Stacey Abrams is a goddess. We haven’t heard the last of HER.)

Then we had a bar mitzvah!  (and WOW, did Mose do an amazing job. We were overwhelmed and moved by having so many of our loved ones here. The whole thing was incredible)

Finally, I finished a book…  (which will be in bookstores in September, and I hope you’ll give it a go.)

Of course, many other things happened too.  But these three November events were enough to turn me into a very tired lunatic.  And I’ve just now barely recovered, to be honest.

And that’s a good thing too, because we’re heading into a busy (if not quite SO busy) spring.  I’m at work on a graphic memoir called FAIRY HUNTER, with hopes to finish it over the next few months.  And Charlie & Mouse EVEN BETTER will be out in April, so I’ll be on the road (WI, MD, MO, CA, and CHINA) quite a bit, doing events and school visits to support the book.

Maybe I’ll see you out there…