Fairy Tales

What are some of your favorite fairy tales? I loved reading fairy tales as a kid. I grew up in the 1970s and remember watching a lot of them either in animated films or incorporated into cartoons. Loony Tunes has so many fairy tale themes in their cartoons. As a kid, I had a lot of them in book form though -- I still do, for that matter. Some of my favorites are ...

• Sleeping Beauty
• Cinderella
• The Three Little Pigs
• Goldilocks and the Three Bears
• Three Billy Goats Gruff
• Tom Thumb
• Rumpelstiltskin
• Rapunzel
• Little Red Riding Hood
• Hansel and Gretel
• The Gingerbread Man

Click here for a list of fairy tales. Fairy tales tend to be on the dark side, so I'm not sure why I've always been attracted to them. My next book, The Marshmallow Man, is actually a retelling of The Gingerbread Man, but with all new characters and a new ending. There's just something about these old stories I love. I've always made an effort to read these stories to my kids. Do you think most kids today are familiar with these stories much?

How about you -- what are some of your favorite fairy tales?

How do you promote?

Like all writers, I'm interested in ways to promote my books. Mine come from a small publisher, so most of my sales are online or word of mouth. Unlike bigger publishers, my books aren't automatically shipped to stores nationwide. Those of us with books from smaller publishers have to work a little harder getting ours in stores. That's not to say those of you with books from larger houses don't work just as hard. I know you do. What are some things you've done to promote them? I'd love to hear some new ideas!

I recently sent out media kits to local stores that might be interested. I did them by mailing, so I will need to follow up. I also have my blog and I'm on Facebook and JacketFlap. Both Dilly and my Critter Series have fanpages on Facebook. I'm kind of playing around with the idea of making a website just for Dilly, but I don't know if that would be worth the time and effort. What do you think? I belong to a homeschool group and have sent information through their email system. A few have said they've passed my information onto others. I'm going to see if any of them have stores in the area that might be interested in carrying my books. I have yet to do any book signings or readings at local schools, but I'm open to that. I've also started hanging up flyers on all the local bulletin boards. I'm not sure if that will do any good, but I figured it wouldn't hurt. All it costs is a piece of paper and a thumbtack. There's a local paper here that accepts free online classified ads, so I have my books listed there. The other day I saw someone on Facebook mention they were signing books at their local farmer's market. Has anyone tried that? I've seen craft-like things at our local markets, but never books. I might have to look into that if it's not too expensive.

Unfortunately, our local libraries won't carry my books because they are not hard cover. They said soft cover books only get checked out 1-2 times before they start falling apart. That's pretty sad, but I guess some kids can be pretty rough. Not much I can do about the library thing, but they do have a bulletin board in the hallway, so I have my flyer there -- right at eye level of a five-year-old! I have business cards and I've also made bookmarks, magnets, and postcards. Some of you have been wonderful helping me promote my books by blogging about them, offering contests, doing author interviews, and stuff like that. A few have even given copies of my books to your kid's schools. I appreciate that so much! I'm always open to doing book reviews for other people's books. If anyone would like to do that with me, just let me know. And finally, to all of you who have even looked at my book covers or read anything I've ever written about them -- thank you!

Death Valley

Have you ever been to Death Valley National Park? It's an incredible place. It's a weird place. It's almost an out-of-this-world place. We drove for nearly an hour and never even saw a bug hit the windshield. Some parts of the park are so devoid of life that it's scary. I suppose when people hear the name Death Valley, they think of relentless heat. Temperatures can go over 120 degrees in summer. The camping season doesn't even begin until fall. Spring is the best time to visit because the place comes alive with wildflowers. We were there in 2001, right after Nathan was born. We went in February and it was below freezing at night -- and we were in a pop-up trailer -- brrr!

The picture above was taken at Badwater Basin -- 282 feet below sea level. There are some spectacular places to see in Death Valley, even more so if you have a 4x4 that can go on rougher roads. There are incredible sand dunes in the park. The girls brought snow discs and had a blast sliding down the hills. There's another place called the Devil's Golfcourse, which you just have to see to believe. One of the highlights for us happened right as we were leaving the park to go home. A roadrunner ran out in front of our car and a few seconds later we saw a coyote behind it. It was straight out of Looney Tunes. Even though it seems desolate, wildlife is abundant. The park is home to coyotes, mountain lions, ravens, ground squirrels, roadrunners, rattlesnakes, scorpions, and even bighorn in the mountains.

Death Valley was home to the Timbisha Tribe of American Indians. It didn't get it's English name until the time of the Gold Rush when prospectors decided to cross the valley searching for gold. Only one death was reported during that time, but the name still stuck. Gold and silver were found in the valley, but it was salt and borax that people eventually came for. The picture below was taken at the sand dunes. Rick looks pretty ticked off, but he's not. It's exhaustion. He thought it would be fun to run to the tallest sand dune they could find. They're farther away than they look! If I ever get back down to California, I want to go back to this park. It's one of those places you just have to see and experience for yourself.

What comes to mind when you hear the name -- Death Valley?

Walking Dilly Puppet

This was yesterday's craft project for our Dilly Week at school. This project was originally from Family Fun Magazine and the Family Fun Crafts book. We simply turned them into little Dilly finger puppets. Kids can put their fingers into his legs and make him walk around. Later today I will type up the directions and add it to Dilly's Activity Pages, which you can find on my website. I will post more of our projects as the week goes by. Today we're doing something with tissue boxes! I hope you enjoy seeing them. Go Dilly!

Dang, it's windy!

We had to run up to town this afternoon to return something to Walmart. When we left the house, it was raining and the winds were really picking up. There were branches down everywhere and we noticed a few trees down in our neighborhood. When we came home, we saw this (picture above) in our yard. Bummer. It was one of our favorite trees. Our next door neighbors have an aspen lying across their lawn. I guess the winds got pretty wild for the short time we were away. Rick's got the tree all cut up now and we're hoping we don't lose any more. The 30+mph winds are supposed to stay around until tomorrow night. This tree landed about 6 feet from our house. The scary thing is that the tree to the left of it is way, way taller.

I had a yucky night. Some of you know I get really bad back spasms from time to time. When I went to bed last night, I had a funny feeling in my chest. I thought maybe I had eaten too much at dinner or something. I woke up at 1:30am with the spasms and then realized that was the pain I was feeling earlier. I should have recognized it. So, I was miserable for nearly 2 hours until my medications kicked it. I got out our massager pad thing and that helped a lot. But of course, I'm a zombie today from the meds and still not feeling all that great. Between back spasms and downed pine trees, it's been a yucky day. I hope yours is going better!

It's Dilly Week!

This is Dilly Week for the boys at school. It's only for craft projects, as we're still doing all the academic stuff. The boys love Dilly, so they're looking foward to it. I have posted a few of my Dilly crafts on my blog before ...

• Pipecleaner Dilly
• Dilly & His Christmas Pickle
• Dilly Finger Puppet

I have all new crafts planned for the boys this week, so that will be fun. I just realized I don't have Dilly's Craft Page up on my new website though. Awhile back, I separated it from Dilly's Activity Pages, but now I'm thinking I will add them back into the same file. If you go to my website and click on A New Job for Dilly, there's a link to activities your child can do after reading the book. I will try to get the crafts back up there as soon as I can.

Jones Wild Animal Park

Crazy night last night! I stayed up late working on my website and getting frustrated because every time I uploaded it online, something wasn't working right and I couldn't figure out why. In the meantime, I heard something on the deck, so I got up to see what it was. It was this little raccoon. I took some pictures, but they didn't come out all that great. Anyway, he munched on the seeds for awhile and then wandered off, so I went back to my computer. A bit later, I heard noise again, so I figured he was back. I grabbed my camera and walked up to our glass doors again, hoping to get some better pictures. Except, it wasn't my raccoony friend.

It was a BEAR!

And it wasn't just any old bear either. It was a BIG black bear! I mean, really big! It's back almost went up to the railing on my deck. A big, big bear! Since I was expecting the raccoon, I stumbled with my camera and got a good picture of my shirt reflection in the window. By the time I got ready to take another one, the bear had made eye contact with me and ran down the deck and back out into the yard. I had gotten pretty relaxed about leaving the seeds out, especially with all the late snow. And besides, we haven't seen any bears here in a very long time, so I thought maybe all the construction over the hill had sent them somewhere else. I was wrong. This guy was huge. I'm not sure if it was the cub that used to come around a little over a year ago, or if this was a new one. It certainly wasn't the momma bear that used to come around. All I know is that this sucker was BIG! However, we brought everything in and he didn't come back during the night. At least not ON the deck, but he could have been wandering around under it or in the yard. I know they do that a lot even when we don't see them.

Anyway, I'm pooped now because I stayed up past 1am, which is something I never do. And then it was one of those restless nights where I left the blinds open and slept with one eye open as well. I did, however, finally figure out why my website was acting up, so at least I got that fixed. As I said before, I totally redesigned my site. I was initially going to make it more colorful and child-like since I write picture books. However, I found a black & white template I liked a lot, so I went with that instead. Click here if you would like to see the new site. If for some reason something doesn't look right or work right for you, please let me know so I can try to fix it. Thanks!

Oh, and one more thing -- guess what I dreamt about? Yep, bears! I dreamt there was a momma bear and a cub on my deck. I was on the phone with my neighbor, so I told her I had to call her back. I went to shoo the bears off and the cub jumped down first, followed by the momma bear. Next thing I know, I'm over the deck railing (which is a long way down) shooing the baby off again. Suddenly, I see the momma bear's back is ON FIRE! I run up to this huge black bear -- remember, this is a dream, which is hard to tell with me sometimes -- and I'm whacking the fire out with one of my manuscripts! She stands there looking at me like I was nuts. Crazy night!