Cool Things From Amsterdam

So there are a lot of cool things that come from seeing your book published in different countries–different titles, different covers, different marketing–but these little guys from The Netherlands are at the top of the list. They’re called flip books, and they’re a low-tech alternative for reading while traveling. (Standard hardcover also shown for comparison.)…

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The Perfect Book Club

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…

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Tell Me How It Ends: SPOILER WARNING

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? So here goes: First of all, as for the movie, it is not an actual thing yet. There have…

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Coming to a City Near You

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. Come see me! I’d love…

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Epigraphs and Babies

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…

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Good Things from Canada

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…

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A Big Pile of Books

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

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The Favorite Author Conundrum

  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? I dread it. I seem to simultaneously forget…

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Publishers Weekly review

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

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First Official Review

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.) AND IT…

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