I have to tell you something: no matter how many books one publishes, it’s ALWAYS exciting!

That said, the official blog tour for my upcoming picture book, I Am Today (POW! Kids Books), is underway – even though the book isn’t even out yet. In case you missed my explanation a couple of Fridays ago, the publication date has been delayed until Dec. 21 due to that nasty shipping/supply chain crisis you keep hearing about. So instead of the orginal date of Oct. 5, it got pushed out til Nov. 30…and then that publication date got pushed out!

Yet, even though the new publication date is Dec. 21 it is, unfortunately, still tenuous – because the publisher is at the mercy of the distribution network. We’re HOPING it’s out Dec. 21, and just crossing our fingers until it happens. This is why we’re trying to push pre-orders; not only to try to sell the book, naturally, but to build awareness of the book among booksellers, as well as to increase their awareness of me, as an author.

So we’re celebrating the release of a book that’s not here yet! The blog tour is fully underway because we didn’t want all the wonderful participants to have to change their schedules. Moreover, pre-orders can be very helpful for an author, and not just because it helps increase sales. (for a little more explanation on why publishers like pre-orders, check out my previous post)

Just who is part of this cavalcade of kidlit excitement?

When I first looked at this list, I felt that this was probably the longest-running blog tour ever for a picture book! At nearly a month-and-a-half, it’s like the tour that never ends…but we were fortunate that some bloggers were able to move their post dates to later in December. This way we can share the news early on for those pre-orders I was talking about, and also celebrate the actual release of the book when it happens (hopefully) later in the month.

Kelle Moye kicked things off a couple of weeks ago when she featured a guest post from Yours Truly at her blog, Unleashing Readers. I shared with her readers the unusual method I employed for coming up with the book’s title – and the entire theme of the book, by extension – and suggested ways teachers can do the same thing as writing prompts. I hope you’ll check it out!

Yesterday, the incredible team of Brenna Jeanneret and Josh Monken at the You May Contribute a Verse podcast posted an interview we had a couple of weeks ago. We cover everything from my process of writing picture books to submitting without an agent to why I chose to leave a perfectly good fulltime job to try and make a go of this whole writing thing.

And today, Brian Gehrlein places I Am Today in his Picture Book Spotlight with an in-depth interview with me about the inspiration behind the book (kids muddling through a pandemic), my unusual process of creating it (sticking non-grammatical words together to see what happens), and why I love writing picture books that don’t follow standard, traditional narratives (I call them story skeletons).