Let’s do this

I’m not sure I can even call this a blog if I haven’t looked at it in four years. But today I thought I’d dust it off and talk about a book I’m working on. 

Right around November 2024 I found myself in a bit of a funk. And so did my kiddo.

We were both struggling with a feeling of helplessness. Knowing that our loved ones in the LGBTQ community would soon be losing rights weighed heavily on us. We feared that half the population would lose body autonomy. Oh, and our planet is dying and racism still exists and people are pretending that Jesus wouldn’t want to feed the hungry and somehow inclusion is now bad.

I made a decision that I shared with said kiddo, whom I guess agreed that his old mom’s ideas aren’t always dumb: It might make us feel better if we try to improve one little smidge of the world.

He’s in. I look forward to sharing his experiences.

As for me, I’m confident that 13 years of school author visits have resulted in a few rescue converts, directly saving the lives of shelter dogs. Connecting with kids through writing and animal rescue is insanely rewarding and is the icing on the cake. The cherries on top are the friends who sponsor school visits so kids who might not own any books get their own copies. So amp it up, right? Let’s write a new book. And explore the schools in my new home state of Maine.

Rather than use my own worn-out ideas, I enlisted the help of a group of third graders at Sacopee Valley Elementary School in Hiram, Maine. I furiously scribbled their excellent ideas for a funny book about my weird little brown dog, Javier. Over the past couple of months I’ve written and rewritten and second guessed myself. I have an amazing pet portrait artist working on the illustrations. We are projecting the drop date to be sometime in October.

I’ll update here (or maybe I won’t) as we go through this process and as I try to do as my late friend and activist Shawn Lang would want us to do right now: Go out and change the world.