Kid stuff

A few months ago, I submitted the manuscript for my children's book, The Yellow Rose. Today I was offered a contract for it to be published. Hooray! The book, which is written for children aged 7-10, will be published by Gypsy Shadow Publishing. As noted in a previous blog post, GSP is also the publisher of my poetry book, Love is Like a Rainbow: Poems of Love and Devotion. I'm very excited that this book will be published and look forward to seeing the book in print sometime in the near future! (No publication date has been set just yet.)

Also, today I was browsing the message board over at Static Movement. Just reading some of the threads and seeing how things are coming along with the anthologies rescued from Lame Goat Press after they shut down. I was interested in one thread in particular, about an anthology formerly titled Yams for Our Youth. It is now titled Yams for Our Children. Something just made me click on that to read more about it. Apparently, it's an anthology of PG-rated stories with a real child you know as the star of the story. Very cool! And, they are still accepting stories for this anthology! I emailed the editor and she sent me the following information about it:

"I just want fantasy stories written with a child or children you know in mind. They should be happy stories, and fun to read. No font requirements, I'm going to change that anyway. Underline for italics isn't required, just send as you would like for it to be published. In the subject line put Yarns, or Children so that I'll know which anthology it's for before opening, and send along a little bio written in first person, and include something about the child/children it's written for. The word limit should be around 3,000 tops, no min."

You can read more about it here.

I thought it was interesting that I came across this, because recently, I was working in the garage with my oldest child, and I said something to her that caught the attention of my muse. I laughed and said, "That would be a good title for a story." Now I'm putting that together with this call for stories, where such a story would fit quite well, and I'm thinking of writing it up and sending it in. Given that I found this call for stories the same week I thought up that idea for a story, I think it's a sign I should give it a shot. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!