It started when I met the legendary Seymour Chwast in Philadelphia during the national Illustrator’s Conference (ICON3). I had been invited to speak during the event and Seymour was on the Board of Directors. During one of our conversations, I asked, “So when is your next children’s book coming out?” to which he replied, “Oh…there are no good manuscripts out there right now.” Not hesitating even a moment, I blurted out, “Well, I have one!” This was, I admit, uncharacteristically bold, but I guess I figured I had nothing to lose and that this moment would never come again in my entire life.

Well, I’m pretty positive he was just being polite when he said I could send it to him. But luckily, he loved it and asked if he could send it to his agent in New York. YES! YES! YES! I screamed (in my head), but after I contained myself, I emailed back, “That would be fine.”

Another person who helped us during this process was our friend Joe Michaels. Besides having excellent taste in music, Joe is a great champion of creativity. When the book was about to come out, he casually mentioned that he knew someone who did videos for authors. One email later, Joe had introduced us to Todd Stevens, co-executive producer for the Emmy Award winning show, Friends and co-founder of the extraordinary online book promotion company, ExpandedBooks.com. Todd flew out from L.A. to film Rick and I at our first-ever book reading.

The reading was set-up at a local daycare that our son had attended. The week before the filming, we prepped the kids by going from room to room reading Such a Silly Baby to children between the ages of two and four. After reading to one group in particular, the children came up, giving us hugs and kisses and telling us how much they loved us. It was absolutely wonderful!

Posted by Steffanie August 29, 2008