Most of you already know, I wrote a children’s book in the last 6 months. The release date is August 6th, and it is available now for preorder. It is a cute book about a rock hyrax named Rocky who struggles with being so small. One night, he is called on to help because he is small, and Rocky asks God for courage.

The release date is Josh’s birthday, because it is my gift to him. I’ve talked about writing so many books during our marriage. During our trip to Kenya, Neil loved the rock hyraxes we saw at Lake Nakuru, and that night at bedtime, I told him a story. He loved it, so I wrote it down and shared it with the other boys and Josh. Josh challenged me to finally write a children’s book from that story.

It was so much more difficult than I knew to write a children’s book. I thought you just write it, send it off for editing, and bang, there it is. Turns out you have to edit a ton, get an illustrator, edit more, get a book designer, finalize the book, find the company to print the book, and then comes the huge (worst part to me) marketing job. There are so many more details than I knew, and I’m glad I didn’t know because it would not have made it this far. Even when I was ready to give up Josh and the boys would not let me! They gave me lots of hugs even when I was in tears and overwhelmed by something not working right or uploading incorrectly.

I hope you can preorder the book or order it after August 6th and enjoy one of our family’s favorite things in life: snuggling together, reading!