Running a day behind because yesterday was nutso, but this is one of my favorite outdoorsy pictures. My friends said it needed to be a canvas print. I personally think the manure is a nice touch...
 I've received many awesome reviews (and I appreciate every one I get!) but I've always loved this one. It made me cry when I first saw it. In case you can't read my screenshot above:
"As a pretty friendless kid in elementary school, I identified closely with Daniel. As the mother if a child with only one friend, I saw the world through the eyes of Daniel's mom. But when Annie showed Daniel all the friends who helped him in his time of trouble, she brought tears to my eyes. The magic pencil is cool, but Daniel and Annie's friendship is cooler. Just one question: How come Daniel's mom can't make (edible) meatloaf? I loved this book. Now I have to find a nine year old to give it to."  Confession time: I have never taken a professional author photo. I should probably fix this, but I am the least photogenic person I know, and the idea overwhelms me. So, in the meantime, this is the best I have.
(If you search around my social media sites at all, you'll notice that I do have a headshot. I use that image a lot, but it actually was taken for my doula business. I don't love that picture anyway because I didn't know I was taking it and I'm dressed like, well, the scrub that I am... and no make-up. Redo!)  In no particular order, here's my current list of published works: DANIEL THE DRAW-ER, DANIEL THE CAMP-ER, the two books in my growing middle grade adventure/humor series. The last two (IT CAME FROM THE KID AUTHORS! EPISODE 1 and MOSAIC) are collections of short stories I am involved in.
Stay tuned! There's more where those came from! Some writers have one source of inspiration. I have a few...   The second in the DANIEL series, DANIEL THE CAMP-ER, was based on my own experience at fifth grade camp. For one very long week, I found myself the target of a very persistent boy who was, unfortunately, wearing a t-shirt hilighting some of his, ahem, talents. I don't want to give away too much, but we'll just say that we ended up friends. Just friends.
I didn't set off to write a book specifically about our failed summer romance, but it happened. After all this time, I'd really like to find that kid and tell him thanks. He made quite an impact on me. Obviously.  Now, I know you're thinking my first book was maybe DANIEL THE DRAW-ER, or something sophisticated like that, but... this was my true first book. I wrote this bad boy, titled NEW KID, when I was in the sixth grade. That was the year I attended public school, as you can see from the title, which was heavily influenced by the New Kids on the Block. This was a risky move on my part because I wasn't allowed to listen to the radio and certainly wasn't allowed to drool over boy bands.
If you look close enough, you can see the peace signs my friends drew on the cover--which I immediately covered up because peace signs were against the rules, too. The back cover, which I didn't take a picture of, is littered with the name of my New Kid of Choice. Can you guess who my future rockstar husband was? :-D I wrote the bulk of this story during school when I was supposed to be working on just about everything but writing a book. And then my friends would steal it to read when they were supposed to be doing just about anything but reading their friend's book. Good times. The story is about a girl who moves to a new town (duh!) and becomes friends with a ghost who wears Groucho Marx glasses and a boy named Derrick. But who cares about Derrick. We're talking about a ghoul with fantastic fashion sense! They all communicate with a device called a trigaphone, which is pretty much a triangle walkie-talkie. I pretty much invented the modern cell phone, if you think about it... but whatever. While this original story is pretty horrible, I've taken ideas from it and inserted them in some of my more recent books (Derrick became Derek, the gross jock in my upcoming YA paranormal; the orchard scene also ended up in the same book. The main character, Maggie, became a character in my YA contemporary romance). That's the fun part of being a writer--being able to write about whatever you want and mish-mash things together without most people recognizing it. Someday I will type this story out or figure out a cool way to preserve it (the folder is getting a little weathered, if you couldn't tell from the picture), but it's fun to take it to school visits. The kids really relate to the idea of the notebook pages in the folder, and the teachers all really relate to the NKOTB adoration. So, there you have it. My very first book. |
S. J.The random things that cross my mind go here... Archives
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