With the arrival of 2017 comes the year I hope to publish Book #3! As I talked with my designer and illustrator about future projects, we all felt like one more alphabet book made sense, something to “complete” the series before venturing into another genre. This doesn’t mean I’ll never write about the ABCs again but that I could feel good about moving on with the completion of this book. We were given lots of ideas, suggestions, requests.

I was at our local library (we’re what they call “regulars”–really, friends!), and I was talking with a children’s librarian (shout out to Miss Stephanie!) about another alphabet book and what would be inspiring and not necessarily typical. We threw around the idea of Disney princesses to give girls a little more buy-in to our books (although, many girls do love the shoes of The Shoephabet and the silliness of The Monsterbet). But licensing those trademarked names sounded like a nightmare to me, so we kept brainstorming.

I dug into my life, my values even. What books do I love to read to my own children? What makes it timeless or classic? If you’re in the homeschooling world for more than a minute (which we have been), classic literature is king. And the most basic classic literature is nursery rhymes. Now we were getting somewhere. But nursery rhymes are so short already; could I really write a short poem…about a short poem? Then it dawned on us–FAIRY TALES.

And so I’ve spent this whole school year so far including fairy tales in our Morning Time, fairy tales in my personal reading, fairy tales in our movies. I’ll show more sneak peeks as the time comes; you are going to LOVE it. About half and half for boy and girl fairy tales. Well-known and lesser-known tales. I’m all a flutter in anticipation! I’d be happy with a Fall publication, but with four littles and homeschooling and, you know, staying alive (and prayers for my illustrator to adopt a child…or two!), it’s hard to guarantee anything.

For other writing, I’ll still share personal poetry (when it’s your heartbeat, it stops for nothing!) and do craft shows and write other kid- and writing-related posts. But I anticipate it’ll be slower than once a week. You’ll be fine; your news feeds and inboxes have plenty of other things to keep them company in the meantime.

Blessings!
Sarah