Signs of winter are everywhere! It’s freezing outside. I hope it snows soon. 🙂
Cold breakfast for a chilly morning:
In the mix:
- Vanilla Greek Yogurt
- Canned pumpkin
- Way too much cinnamon
- 1/2 cup oatmeal
- Pecans
Some Very Exciting News!
You might already know about this (because I’m a very bad secret keeper), but I have some very exciting news!… Back in October, I traveled to New York to speak to the Ally Katzz Tween Summit about Operation Beautiful.
While I was at the Summit, I happened to speak to a woman who worked in a children’s division of Penguin Books (Gotham, which published Operation Beautiful’s first book, is a branch of Penguin). That conversation relaunched discussions between myself, my literary agent, and the awesome folks at Grosset & Dunlap about bringing a tween and young-teen (8 to 14 years old, loosely) Operation Beautiful book to the market.
(Side note: I’m in the process of putting together a ‘How I Got My Book Published’ post that includes tips from other published authors and book agents. Stay tuned for this!)
From the start, everyone involved could see that a tween book would be perfect. As the site grows older (Operation Beautiful’s 1 Year Anniversary was in June), I have noticed that the audience is definitely tending to the younger generation – and doesn’t that make you SO HAPPY?!
About two weeks ago, we finalized negotiations for my second book (the working title is Operation Beautiful Tweens, but that’s definitely not going to be the final title). I’m going to focus on tween-specific topics such as:
- Body confidence / going through puberty
- Friendships and family relationships
- How tweens feel about love and relationships
- Fashion and makeup
- Eating healthy and fun exercise
- Bullying and cliques at school
- Being different
- The woman who shaped their understanding of the word “beautifulâ€
- How magazines and movies make tweens feel about their bodies
- How tweens help their community through volunteering or random acts of kindness
(The ‘adult’ version of the book focused on a lot of the topics we discuss here on HTP, like finding a healthy balanced, ignoring energy vampires, and avoiding the superwoman syndrome.)
The book will come to market in Summer 2012, which means that I have to complete the first draft of the book in to my publisher in 77 days. That’s a tight time frame, but I wrote the adult book in 2.5 months so I know I can do to this! Starting tomorrow, my schedule is going to be consumed by book writing, so expect lots of wine and coffee in my immediate future. 🙂
Very soon – hopefully by the end of the week – I’m going to start collecting notes for the book. The first book included so many creative notes and stories, and I cannot wait to see what tweens come up with for this book!
If you know a tween or young teen, I hope you tell them about the call for submissions – I would love to include their note in the book!
And thanks to everyone reading this. Without you, none of this would’ve ever happened. I NEVER forget that. Thank you so much for reading HTP and supporting Operation Beautiful! You are beautiful, too. 🙂
Congratulations! Your first OB book was amazing and inspiring. Keep up the good work 🙂