I promised I’d share more info about events in my last email… so there’s more of that below, along with a bunch of pictures and videos and updates from the road 📖✌🏽
First, though, THANK YOU to everyone who’s rated or reviewed Snow Struck on Amazon and Goodreads!
These early ratings do *something* with some kind of algorithm that helps gets my books in front of as many people as possible - they’re apparently pretty important, so I really appreciate the ratings (and if you haven’t left one yet… there’s still time)!
On Saturday, March 12th at 3PM EST I’ll be joining a bunch of big time Middle Grade authors to talk about mystery and adventure novels courtesy of the excellent Books of Wonder in NYC! Reserve your spot here.
On Wednesday March 16th at 7PM EST, I’m going to be talking with the awesome Caroline Carlson (who just sold her next two middle grade novels in a big auction!) about books and writing and publishing - this is an event that kids and adults are encouraged to attend… it’s not just for kids! Register for this event here.
I haven’t been doing a ton of public virtual events (most of my zooms are for school visits), so if you want to say “hi,” these are the two events to register for… and the Penguin event is my real virtual book launch for Snow Struck, so definitely sign up for that one if you want to help me celebrate!
If you’ve been following me on Twitter or Instagram, or Facebook… or TikTok 😂 you probably already know that I’ve been on the road over the past couple of weeks visiting bookstores and schools.
That’s right, schools!
I did my first in-person school visit in two years in the outdoor classroom of the Seaside Neighborhood School in Florida last week:
It was so awesome to talk with kids again, and I felt so lucky to be outside in the sunshine — and to be on tour with Rachel, so these kids could meet a real live literary agent and YA author! I posted a couple more pictures from the visit here.
Afterwards I signed books on the porch at Sundog Books, which is about a 3 minute walk from the Seaside Neighborhood School. I also ended up juggling on the porch at Sundog to get the attention of passersby who might not have seen the chalkboard signs 😂
I made a TikTok about that visit that you can watch here - I had so much fun hanging out on the porch at Sundog and chatting with students and readers and unsuspecting vacationers that I lured into the bookstore with my juggling.
That’s my new #1 piece of advice for authors: learn how to juggle!
After Florida, we visited Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama - one of my new favorite bookstores!
Because we were passing through on a Saturday morning, Thank You Books invited me to lead their Saturday morning story time… which was so much fun! I made another TikTok about that visit that you can watch here — and I posted some more pictures from that event on Instagram.
Rachel and I didn’t realize how cool Birmingham was and we kind of fell in love with Thank You Books, so we’re definitely planning on coming back!
After Thank You Books, we drove up to Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee!
I posted more pictures from that visit on Instagram and made a video of the very sweet bookstore dogs that you can watch on TikTok — one of the dogs is a service dog that reluctant readers like to read to because she doesn’t judge them 💖
We had so much fun in Nashville that we’re already planning our next trip down - but for now, the next things on my radar are those two virtual events and a bunch of Zooms with schools!
If you’re a teacher or librarian and you’d like to set up a virtual (or possibly in-person) visit, you can get in touch with me by responding to this email — and if you’re new to this email list, I have a bunch of free resources for parents and teachers and librarians that you can download here (and you can also find more info on my website)!
I think that’s it from me for now — I’m still catching up on everything I’ve missed while I was on the road, but THANK YOU to everyone who’s helped me make Snow Struck “New and Notable” and thank you to everyone who’s registering to (virtually) hang out with me at Books of Wonder and Penguin Bookshop!
I have more events on the horizon - Rachel and I will be visiting Zelienople Public Library on April 2nd and I’m scheduled at The Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books on May 14th. There’s a lot of fun stuff in the works and I’m really hoping this can be a busy year full of lots of travel and road trips, but more on that later…
Hope to see you soon!
Your friend,
PS: If you’ve picked up some Snow Struck merch from my TeePublic store, please tag me in pics! I love seeing these shirts (and mugs and totes and masks) out in the wild :)