crooked house

Staff Pick at Powell's

If I Wrote a Book About You was a staff pick at Powell's, arguably the best bookstore in the world.

Blog Book Tour!

My dear friend Sara O'Leary asked me to participate in this blog book tour. This is very exciting and momentous for me because I wouldn't qualify to do it if my first picture book hadn't JUST been published. So thank you, Sara, and yay!

Sara is the author of the gorgeous Henry books and a kind of magical, generous mentor figure to me. (If you can have a mentor who is basically the same age as you.) I first stumbled upon When You Were Small in Munro Books when I was living in Victoria, B.C. and I remember being STRUCK. I was both absolutely charmed and incredibly envious. It was exactly the kind of book I wished I'd written. The other two books in the series are just as amazing.

Sara has a number of wonderful new books coming out that I've been lucky enough to read in draft form and I can't wait to see them in print. They include This is Sadie, illustrated by Julie Morstad and published by Tundra Books, and a series of baby books, published by Owl Books and illustrated by Soyeon Kim. I'm SO curious about the illustrations.

Q: What are you working on?

Right now, I am working on four new picture book ideas and honestly, I am afraid to talk about any of them. What if I jinx them? So I won't say anything more about that. I am also working, in a very vague, now-and-then sort of way, on my collection of Grim Stories, which is more YA than anything else, I suppose. And I am thinking about working on a collection of short stories for adults. Does thinking about working on something count as working on it? Probably not.

Q: Why do you write what you do?

Because I can't write anything else? Seriously, though, I am really drawn to constraints. I love flash fiction -- short stories that are less than 1000 words long and ideally much shorter than that. Every single word matters. When I had children and started reading to them, I realized that picture books work the same way. Only the text has to interact with the pictures, too, and that can be a fun challenge.

Q: How does your writing process work?

Ideally, I get flashes of inspiration and work really hard, for a day or two, trying to capture them on paper. Then I let them sit there for a while before going back to edit them. I love writing when writing is like this -- the flashes of inspiration feel like magic, the writing tends to pour out of me, and I even enjoy the editing process. But, unfortunately, you can't just command yourself to have flashes of inspiration. So I only work like that when they come. When they don't come, which is most of the time, I just...try hard. It's like exercising. And, like exercising, I don't do it often enough. It also takes a long time to see the results.

So now it's my turn to nominate someone else: Lindsey Yankey and her gorgeous Bluebird!

Isn't it stunning?

 And why not visit some of the other authors and illustrators who have answered these questions on this blog book tour?

Susan Juby

Sophie Blackall

Carin Berger

Viki VanSickle

Kyo Maclear

And of course: Sara O'Leary. Thank you so much for asking me to participate, Sara, and for hosting a giveaway of my book!

Sara O'Leary Is Giving Away a Copy of "I Wrote a Book About You!"

My dear friend (and writer extraordinaire) Sara O'Leary answers some interesting questions about writing  over on her blog and also offers a copy of my newly published picture book "If I Wrote a Book About You" to a lucky Canadian winner. To enter the contest, all you have to do is leave a comment on her blog post or  tweet something about why you love picture books to @saraoleary using the hashtag #stephka and she will enter your name! Good luck! And thank you so much, Sara!

A Conversation About Mothers in Children's Books

The lovely Kerry Clare, editor of The M Word, will be discussing the portrayals of mothers in children's literature with other contributors to the book. I would love to be there -- it sounds fascinating. And see that, down there in the right-hand corner? That's If I Wrote a Book About You, which will be included in the discussion if copies of the book get to Parentbooks in time! (Although it was officially "published" on May 30th, copies of the book don't appear to be available in stores yet. Hurry, little book! Flap your wings!)

You Can Actually Buy My Book!

This feels surreal. I just googled If I Wrote a Book About You and discovered that you can preorder it at any one of a number of places! It will be available on Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Chapters, Powells (my beloved Powells!), and Barnes & Noble. It will even be available at Walmart's site.

In my googling, I also discovered that the first result for "If I wrote a book about you" links to the lyrics of one of Beyonce's songs. She sings, "If I wrote a book about where we stand, the title of my book would be 'Life with Superman.'" Clearly, she needs a copy of If I Wrote a Book About You for baby Blue Ivy. Maybe we could make a special gold-plated one.

If I Wrote A Book About You

See that? That's Simply Read's spring 2014 catalog, with an illustration from my first picture book, called If I Wrote A Book About You, on the cover! I'm so excited!

I can't wait to have this book in my hot little hands. It was illustrated by the talented Denise Holmes -- you can see more of her lovely work over at her blog. Many thanks to my dear, wise friend Sara O'Leary, who held my hand throughout the whole process, and to my lovely editor Kallie George at Simply Read.