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A few weeks ago, fellow Charlesbridge author Chris Barton listed the next seven things he planned to do to support his forthcoming picture book, The Day-Glo Brothers. He then invited seven authors with new books---moi among them---to chime in with seven things they were doing for their new books.

Well, as you know, I've filed the last month under D for doozie, which put me *waaaaay* behind on blog reading, so I'm just chiming in now. Okay, Chris, here goes...

The next seven things I plan to do to support Bubble Homes and Fish Farts:

1. Give a "Ten Things Every Children's Author Should Know" talk at my local library: February 9, 2009 at 7 pm, Chilliwack main branch. (If you're counting shameless plugs in this blog post, this is #3)

2. Create and send a handout template to the folks at the Vancouver Aquarium for them to photocopy for my March 14 book launch there. This means I get to test different bubble solutions to see what works best for the super duper bubble makers kids will make at the launches. Have I mentioned being an author is fun?

3. Go through my eight pages of teacher guide notes to create science and language arts activities for a Bubble Homes and Fish Farts guide.

4. Be Jan Fields' February Guest Chat Author at the Institute of Children's Literature a.k.a. ICL. I'll be talking about "Funky Nonfiction". For more info, click here and scroll to #4.

5. Chase down and fiddle to get web-ready and print images to complete my online press kit.

6. Sit on the CWILL "How to Get Published" panel at the Vancouver Public Library.

7. Be the March guest blogger at "Unabridged" , the Charlesbridge blog.

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If you're interested in book marketing, head on over to Bubble Stampede, (sounds like I'm sending you to the OK Corral, doesn't it? LOL!), where Laura Salas and I are talking about where we're aiming our marketing efforts.

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Yup, it's summer 2008. Yup, that seems awfully far from spring 2009. But if you have a book scheduled for a Spring 2009 release, now is the time to get going on promotion plans. That's where I'm at with Bubble Homes and Fish Farts [Charlesbridge], and my friend Laura Salas, poetess extraordinaire and all-around cool person, is at with her first trade picture book poetry collection, Stampede: Poems about the Wild Side of School [Clarion] .

As Laura says on her blog, "If I had to sell things for a living, I would surely be sleeping under an overpass somewhere." Oh, do I know that feeling! So we've decided to team up on an exciting project together. Oops, almost let the cat out of the bag. We'll be ready to take the brown paper off the windows soon, but for now the project remains top secret. Stay tuned for more news next week!
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