It’s that exciting and sometimes slightly nausea-inducing moment when I realize that something that I made up while sitting alone in my office in cat-hair-covered yoga pants is actually going to go out into the world with my name on it!

Coming to bookstores, libraries, and bookshelves near you (I hope) is my newest book for nine-to-twelve-year-olds (Ish. My fifteen-year-old son informed me he thinks it’s my best book so far, so I guess older readers might like it too). This Would Make a Good Story Someday is the story of Sara Johnston-Fischer, her two moms, her younger sister Ladybug, and her older sister Laurel, and their summer travels on a cross-country train trip. But of course that’s not all it’s about.

It’s about, in no particular order:

• Learning Latin

• Learning to open your mind

• Computer safety

• Grand Canyon safety

• Duck safety

• Elvis Presley

• Dying

• Living

• Texans

• Writer’s block

• Hair dye

• Friendship

• Sisters

• The environment

• Snoring

• Writing

• Roman centurions

• Coffee

• Family

• What makes a good story

I’ll be honest with you. This was a hard book to write, and  in some ways a hard book to celebrate. The writing of it was hard for no particularly good reason. As I talked about on the wonderful Mr. Schu’s blog, I struggled mightily to find the core of this story. I don’t know why — it’s not that different from my other books — but for whatever reason I wrote in circles for months before finally unlocking Sara’s story. Still, I got there eventually, and wound up pretty delighted with the final product.

But now here we are, in the spring of 2017, and my mind isn’t really on book celebrations. There are hard conversations about really important things — health, equality, justice — happening all around us, and I’m spending a lot of time thinking, writing, and acting to support the values I believe in. With all of that in the background, it’s hard to feel like shouting from the rooftop “HEY YOU BUY MY BOOK!!”

But here’s the thing I believe. Stories ARE worth celebrating. Stories are how we connect with each other, how, as it’s been famously said, we find windows into other lives, mirrors that reflect our own lives, and doorways to step through and experience a world beyond our reckoning. Stories. Matter.

I write silly books, and this one is no different. There are shenanigans and mishaps and some hopefully amusing physical humor (at least I amused myself writing it, which is always the goal, to be honest).

I hope readers find their way to this book and laugh and roll their eyes and cringe at Sara and her ridiculous family. But I hope they also recognize that they are asking some of the same questions that we are all asking these days, and while there are no easy answers, talking always trumps silence.  I hope readers laugh at the scene through the windows of this book, but also step through the doorway and share Sara’s life.

So go ahead. Get yourself to your local independent bookstore, or a Barnes & Noble, or even the big online behemoth, and see if you think it’s a good story. I certainly hope you will!

Read on,

Dana