About "Who"

In November 2017, I decided to write a children's picture book . . . 

because picture books are short and short means easy, right?

This book started one morning while I was making breakfast. My toddler was been fascinated by all things kitchen at the time, so that morning he was sitting on the counter, 'counting' the eggs in the carton as he handed them to me.

Toddlers--if you don't already know it--generally like to talk, to talk a lot, and to talk repetitively.

That morning, he wanted to know where the eggs came from. That led to talking about other animals who laid eggs, and that led in turn to my book idea.

Working on one set of pictures.

I'd been trying to writing stories for years, but usually stalled half-way through with some version of writer's block. I wanted to avoid that this time, and I thought this project would be relatively short, easy, and doable. 

And it worked.

Who Laid the Egg? has just under two hundred words. It took me a couple of weeks to tease out the proper cadence, and then it took me a month or two to create the illustrations. (It also took more than a few late nights--working late after my kids were in bed).  And the idea was simple--yet so fun to work with.

A few options I played with for the book cover.

Turning the idea into a book was fairly basic. Getting it ready for publication has been a much bigger challenge, of course. I went from drawing the pictures (with soft pastels), to photographing them, to photo editing, to multiple iterations of rearranging two or three words in the text, to even more iterations of tweaking the images and the book layout.

I'm actually still finishing up a few little details, but I've got the main files finished, and I'm waiting for my second proof copy (the hardcover this time).

It should all be done by Saturday, though.

In fact, this weekend, I'm going to run a small giveaway/launch promotion to celebrate.

So...

See you back on Saturday for the launch!

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Update from November 2018: about a year after publishing Who Laid the Egg?, I decided to get the cover update. Here's the result!

Did a dinosaur lay the egg? Did a chicken lay the egg? Can you guess who laid the egg?

Discover some of the wonderful egg-laying animals in our world with this simple, easy-to-read story! This story introduces children to an ostrich, a chicken, a frog, a turtle, and other, more unexpected creatures as they learn what animals lay eggs.

An early-science story for toddlers and preschoolers.

Available online from Amazon and Barnes and Noble, as well as through Indiebound.org.