Sometimes you push and push to make things happen, and sometimes you just have to let go. I’ve reached that point with my Scotland books. We have a shareable digital proof of Blue Boy; I sent it to a small group of people, got some rave reviews, and one reporter in Scotland interviewed me two weeks ago. But the article didn’t run over the weekend as expected, and part of me doesn’t even want to follow up. My illustrator wants to change some of the art, and I will need to amend my acknowledgments page—again—if I finally find a Black disabled sensitivity reader. I’m not giving up but boy, it’s been hard. We finally have a finished cover for the time-travel novel—which I love!—and last night I spent over an hour listing FIFTY issues that have to be corrected. And that’s *after* my freelance editor friend Laura went through the manuscript line by line! Laura’s the only friend to read the book through to the end…and she loved it but I still wonder why no one else shared their impressions. Too busy? Too bored to finish the book? I just made a video for some kids in VA who sent me questions about my writing process: “Who helps you make a book?” As I was listing all the people involved in the Dragons in a Bag series, I thought about the many hats I have to wear when I self-publish a book: author, editor, art director, publicist, marketer. Doing TWO at once means twice the work and so I finally had to accept that I probably won’t have the books ready by the end of the month. I leave for Glasgow on the 16th and expect to have everything available online by then, but that wasn’t the original plan. I can’t make people meet deadlines or respond to emails, and at the end of the day, no one else is responsible for my work. That’s the scary part of self-publishing—you get all the praise and all the blame. Trying to take some deep breaths and not force the process. I just heard back from a potential sensitivity reader so fingers crossed she doesn’t find too many issues with our blue boy…if she does, I’ll have to step back and figure out how to proceed…

The Bodleian Library is having a family day on the 21st and I’ve been invited to present! So I changed my travel plans and will go to Glasgow first before returning to London, taking the train to Oxford, and then flying over to Dublin for my first trip to Ireland. I’ll be back in Chicago for my 51st birthday and don’t have any plans so far. After hibernating for most of August, I’m gradually getting back into the world…I met a wonderful group of families at Glenview Public Library last week and took a bus tour of the South and West Side on Friday after being interviewed by historian Essence McDowell earlier in the week for a film she’s making to promote Lifting As They Climbed: Mapping a History of Trailblazing Black Women in Chicago. I haven’t written anything new since finishing The Ship in the Garden in early August and that’s weighing on me…the historic sites on the tour were super inspiring so hopefully I can turn these Scotland books in and turn my attention to one of the many novels I keep vowing to finish…