Saturday, March 24, 2012

Pet Personality

Our cat was not impressed with my daughter's idea of a photo shoot. With apologies to ICanHasCheezburger:


We already knows we haz mad skills on this thing. We doesn't have to show you.

But I bet you guys can come up with a better caption. Hit me with them in the comments, please!


Thursday, March 22, 2012

Dedication Dilemma

Oh happy day when I realized I needed to write a dedication to Counting on Fall, my forthcoming Fall 2012 picture book. But then I realized I had a dilemma.

How do I dedicate it to someone without offending someone else? The first book I got to dedicate to anybody was easy. It was Let's Go! The Story of Getting from There to Here and I dedicated it to my mom and dad. I mean, as a first dedication who could blame an author for dedicating it to their parents, right?

Now, though, the choices expand: kids, hubby, two crit group friends who've been with me a long, long time, other writers who have encouraged me, fabulous editors, two sisters, nieces and nephews.... Yeah.

But the more I thought about it the more I felt like I had to recognize my immediate family. You know, those people who live with me day in and day out and put up with my various moods, various piles of laundry left unfolded around the house, various thrown together meals because I was too busy writing all day, various other chores left undone, and so on.

Even in my immediate family there are several people to choose from. So who is first? Uh-oh. But the concept of first rattles around in my brain:
  • interestingly Counting on Fall is the first of a series 
  • and it's about counting, so the concept of first is in there 
  • and I have a firstborn child 
  • and I like to write my dedications in a way that they have a bit to do with the book itself (as opposed to just a "To Soandso") 
Is this all starting to gel?

But what about the other three books in the series? Three? Why yes, I have two more kids and a hubby which of course equals three more people. This is looking better and better.

Now what about alluding to the book content in the book's dedication? I roughed out some ideas for matching content to people...yes, it might work!

So I wrote the first dedication as an allusion to firsts for my firstborn and it's now set in stone. I'll have to do the second one shortly and I'll have my fingers crossed that this plan works out.

And from there, because I don't want anyone to feel left out, I guess I'll just hope I have to face more dedication dilemmas in the future.