Late last year, I had the honor of reading from my chapter book to my youngest son’s second grade class. The kids responded with laughter, enthusiasm, and cries for more. It’s a great memory. The book is called “Amazing Adventures with DoBot the Robot, Book 1: T Rex Trouble”, and it’s the first book in a 5 book series. I am seeking representation for Book 1 which has been to my editor and back, and through rounds and rounds of revisions (I promise your teacher is asking for the minimum when they have you do two drafts). My current work-in-progress is the second book in this series, though like many people I get sidetracked by other things…my job, short stories that won’t behave, and the laundry.
The DoBot the RoBot series was inspired by my sons who encouraged me to write down stories I made up for them. I also wanted to read fun books featuring kids who looked like mine – stories featuring loving siblings biological & adoptive, stories in which how they came to be a family mattered but that weren’t about that -and I couldn’t find any. So I wrote one. Then I got ideas for more. And let me tell you, these stories have all the good stuff – anagrams and science, mysteries and magic. In the first book, we ride a mystical train with brothers Luke, Keoni, and Gordon. We encounter William Walter – a kind, grandfatherly man – and DoBot – a 7-armed rusty robot. We learn a bit about chemistry, the building blocks of the universe, and paleontology. We solve a problem with a runaway T Rex and have a lot of fun along the way.
What else can I tell you? Before I set aside (almost) everything to focus on DoBot, my short stories were published in eMuse, Powder Burn Flash, and Ranfurley Review. One story was even a finalist for Glimmertrain’s Short Story Award. That was exciting! I wrote a middle-grade novella called “The Pied Piper of St. May” that you can buy as an ebook or paper-back here.
I live in Colorado with some critters, a spouse & three sons. If I went to Hogwarts, the Sorting Hat would put me in Ravenclaw where I would become friends with Luna Lovegood (unless I was thwarted by nargles). If you’d like to come along on my adventures, you can subscribe to this site (the one you’re reading now) or follow me on Twitter.
