Newsletter – October 16, 2026
I got the proof copy of Verses Versus Curses last week and carried it on my morning walk every day for five days so I could show it to friends and acquaintances. One or two were complete strangers but were very happy that I showed it to them. A couple even had suggestions about promoting it with school librarians, parent groups, and venues.
You know what 80 to 90 percent said?
“Where can I buy a copy?”
One even said, “Now I know what I’m giving my grandchildren for Christmas!”
That was the plan! I had asked the folks at BookBaby what kind of target date I should have for getting it published in time for the holidays and they suggested October 1st. Andrea knew that wasn’t a hard-and-fast deadline but made her best effort to meet that date.
The final order was placed October 9th so that was pretty darn close. Especially considering the six hour time difference between us. (She lives in Denmark.)
Showing the book to so many people, I saw how they responded first to the illustrations—as expected—and then took the time to read a poem or two…or three. One 20-something read the whole thing from start to finish. I’ve not studied marketing but I know that Andrea’s artwork is going to spark the interest that makes a person pick up the book and look inside.
Andrea is also going to provide me with line drawings from the book that I’ll use to create coloring pages as giveaways.
A proof copy is a chance to hold and examine the book as it would be produced in a full run. So I sat down with the book in hand and even though I had seen the entire layout several times on the Canva app, I found two mistakes.
The mistakes were mine.
One line of poetry that should’ve been separated at the comma, continued for three more words before taking a new line. And on another page, a single word from a line of poetry got dropped down to the line below—sitting there sighing with all alone.
I checked the online version and it was exactly the same. How could I have missed it? I saw what I thought I was seeing rather than what was actually there. Who does that?
Everyone, apparently! [Insert political comment here.]
Fortunately, years of grading student papers honed my skills for catching typos.
I had Andrea run a corrected copy of the file before I submitted the full order. It should be available in stores by early November. Perfect timing.
My publisher also informed me that the ebook will only be available on Kindle and Apple Books because those are the two platforms that do picture book formats.
Watch this space for a release date.
TTFN
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I celebrated my 67th birthday this week and was amused to see this Family Circus comic in the newspaper. (A Boomer who gets a newspaper! Kinda on the nose, isn’t it?)
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My middle grade novel, The Most Amazing Museum of Los Angeles is available through The BookBaby Bookshop at https://store.bookbaby.com/book/the-most-amazing-museum-of-los-angeles
