Let me start with this: I’ve been burned by book clubs. This goes back more than a decade–alright, nearly two decades–when I tried my first (and only) book club and recommended Roddy Doyle’s The Snapper to a group of a dozen or so women. When we met back a month later, no one had thought the book was funny. Or moving. No one thought anything, really, except that the punctuation was weird.

Let me tell you the two most common questions I’ve heard in the three weeks since Fierce Kingdom was released: 1) What’s the deal with the movie? 2) What happens at the end of the story?

The book is finally here! Tomorrow, July 25th, Fierce Kingdom should be perched on a bookshelf near you, anxious to be bought and read. And while the book is lazing around doing nothing, I’ll be traveling from city to city doing readings and signings and, hopefully, sampling some local donuts.

I realize that in all the interviews I’ve done leading up to publication for Fierce Kingdom, no one has asked about the epigraph. So I’m going to talk about it anyway.

Here it is: “I just want to know if a sound can create a boy. Or, if a woman becomes a mother when she thinks she hears a baby crying for her.”

Second day of book tour in Canada, and there are all sorts of good things in Toronto. Soup dumplings at Lee Chen’s. Nanaimo bars. Summer weather that’s way better than Alabama.

But the first two things we always look for in a city are doughnuts and playgrounds. Toronto has loads of both. There’s this great playground near Corktown Commons under an overpass…

On Friday I signed 1,200 copies of FIERCE KINGDOM at the Books-A-Million headquarters. Here’s the before and after:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll be starting the official book tour for FIERCE KINGDOM in a little less than three weeks, so I’m starting to think about what questions I’ll likely be asked. There’s one I have no doubt about: Who’s your favorite author?

A softball question, right? No problem?

And here’s the second big review for FIERCE KINGDOM…I might quibble a wee bit that the toddler is not “cranky” and that it’s not exactly a “horror story.” But, okay, quibbling would be pretty ungracious. It’s a starred review and the Pick of the Week!

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-7352-2427-8

Alright, so I’m not sure if Kirkus Reviews counts as the first official review of FIERCE KINGDOM. But I’m old school and think that an actual printed version you can hold in your hand MATTERS. So, to my knowledge, this is the first print publication with a review. (Which is actually online. Tricky.)

I’ve spent a lovely couple of days in Toronto thank to Penguin Random House Canada, but this may be the highlight: cookie versions of Fierce Kingdom. So tasty, too.