The Story Behind the Writing For my 30th birthday, I knew I wanted to do something crazy, do something out-of-the-ordinary (for me), do something edgy. So. I got a tattoo. (All right, don't roll your eyes, all you crazy people out there.) It was a stalk of wheat and the word dayenu. The wheat represents [...]
Last Saturday, we threw the party of our lives to officially launch our second book, The Monsterbet! We had coloring pages (<---they're free on our website), drawing prompts, a mix and match monster felt wall, monster puppets and pencils, build-a-monster creations, bookmarks, snacks, tattoos, and the rockingest photo booth our town has ever seen. I'll take some [...]
The Story Behind the Poem This poem contrasts the family I grew up in from when I was little and when I was in high school. I am the oldest of ten children. While it sounds really sad, I'm actually not sad about my upbringing! The line "before we were twelve" (as in twelve members [...]
The Story Behind the Poem This poem was to help me get over the embarrassment of ruining a main part of our first meal hosted as a married couple. (Note that I wrote it nearly 4 years after it happened. That's something pretty rough denial.) My cooking skills have vastly improved since then, but I'm still a [...]
The Story Behind the Poem The first three years of our marriage, we washed our clothes at a laundromat. Sometimes I'd bring a book to read, find the Sunday comics there, or paint my nails. Sometimes I'd go before work (5:30am!). Sometimes we went together. It was mostly...a good experience to be able to speak [...]
If you've been around here long, you know that I consider my books an extension of my family--my babies, if you will. And there's nothing more disappointing than for nobody to know about your new baby. When I published my first book and had that first copy in my hands, people started asking where they [...]
This poem is from the end of my first semester, freshman year of college. Being the oldest of ten kids had its crazies...and its lovelies. It took me a few months to come down from the high of Doing Whatever I Want, but I finally realized I reeeeeally missed my family. (My youngest sibling was [...]
Self-published authors are often not taken seriously, and I believe there is one main reason this is true. It's not for the quality of the writing. Not for the creativity of the ideas. Not even for not having a traditional publisher. It's all about the design. When your book doesn't look professional, it won't be taken [...]
I love the simplicity of such a short poem. I wrote the first one in high school and the second in college. As a high schooler, I felt quite scandalous using the word "naked" in my writing. But the second one rhymes, which you KNOW I love. Do you prefer one over the other? The [...]
I've shared a little about our publishing choices in previous posts, but today, I wanted to get more specific about the printing choices we've made. For your reference, we printed The Shoephabet with Blurb as a 60-page, 6x9" softcover trade book with economy color printing. With IngramSpark, we printed The Monsterbet as a 48-page, 6x9" soft and hardcover [...]