Book update

Three Grumpy Trucks has been in the top 10K books on Amazon since the beginning of November, which is a nice surprise.

There have been several days in which both Three Grumpy Trucks and Beep! Beep! Go to Sleep! have been in the top 20K. I don't think that's happened to me before. Beep! Beep! is three years old at this point--it has had (and continues to have) a great run. 

An Italian version of How to Become a Knight is in the works, as is a Chinese version of Three Grumpy Trucks. (I'm up to three languages: a Chinese version of Ten Tiny Toes and a German version of My Grandma's a Ninja are already out.)

Naughty Ninja Takes a Bath is still on track for publication in 2019, and Library Books Are Not for Eating is still on track for 2020. No recent news on either--I'm assuming the illustrators are cranking to hit their deadlines and all is good.

I just submitted a new manuscript to my agent about father and son dinosaurs going on a long journey to find a new home. It's sweet vs. silly. I wrote it on the 15-hour flight home from Taiwan, and I was happy to finish it, because I have not been as productive in 2018 as I intended to be. I think Josephine was starting to grow suspicious.

I'm planning to finish and submit two more manuscripts by the end of the year--from the four or five that are swirling in my head or in various states of revision on my laptop. 

I will tell you that I feel very, very blessed. That is my mantra, and I know I keep repeating it ad nauseam. But I am grateful to be alive, grateful to have people in my life whom I love and who love me, grateful to be able to put food on the table for my family (even if it's Domino's every other night), and grateful to be able to walk into a bookstore, smile and think, "He-he, I wrote that."

Thankful

I'm thankful for many things, but most of all for family.

Babysitting

This will come as no surprise, but can I just tell you how much fun it is to have toddlers in the apartment? Even someone else's?

We colored dinosaur pictures, snacked on yogurt raisins, walked Bailey, took an elevator ride to the second floor, tried to stand on our heads.

Exciting moment of the evening: I got Samuel's old Thomas the Tank Engine trains out of the closet.

I suspect they were asleep within five minutes of leaving the apartment. I suspect they are talking about trains today.

Honeymoon in Taiwan

 

  

Thoughts on love and marriage

We are married. He-he.

Love is the fundamental underpinning of my life. It is what I was raised with. It is what I have raised my own kids with. It has kept me sane. It has taken me outside of myself and showed me how wonderful it is to care about another person more than I care about myself. It really is the glue that binds us all to each other, and keeps the world turning, and keeps life going. I'm a big fan of love.

I'm also a big fan of marriage. Some people like being single. Being single is all about exploration, freedom, learning about oneself, blah, blah, blah, me, me, me.

Look at this girl and tell me I should be single.

Don't be afraid of love or marriage. If you're lucky, it's only until you die.

Don't be that person who says "I want perfection." 

God forbid you should find a person that either of you believes is perfect. Imperfection is what makes us interesting.

Don't be that person who says "Before I can really love someone else, I need to love myself." 

Okay...sure, whatever. Then suck it up and move forward.

Don't be that person who says "Marriage is just a piece of paper."

Life without commitment, ceremony, and celebration is like being a cow. Don't waste your life away standing in your pasture chewing your cud and waiting to die.

Life is short. Make love. Make babies.

Look at this girl. May you be as happy as I am. May you find love.

The weekend before the big weekend

In the midst of our last-minute frenzy of wedding planning, my co-workers threw me and Jo a surprise engagement cocktail party on the rooftop of a co-worker's apartment building on Friday evening.

Great night for a cocktail party--and we were surprised.

On Saturday night at 10 PM, Ethan and I decided we should hit the town. We ended up at Chelsea Piers hitting $50 worth of golf balls into the netted chasm between Manhattan and New Jersey.

I met Jo for lunch today--a place on 19th Street called Burgers & Lobster. We're taking our families here for dinner this coming Saturday night--first-time meeting.

We are far from prepared for next Sunday. But we are pretending not to be panicked.

Book reading in Brooklyn this weekend

I'll be reading at Powerhouse on 8th Bookstore in Brooklyn this Sunday, September 28!

More info here.