Birth Announcement for Vera Vance, Comics Star

Oh, it's hard these days to remember what ordinary life used to be like.

But despite coronavirus, today is the pub date of my newest book. This one is especially dear to me, so I write this post to celebrate her birth and welcome her into this world so fraught with uncertainties. Here she is: Vera Vance, Comics Star.

Can't you tell just from looking at her, in the cover illustration by the brilliant Grace Zong, that Vera is herself no stranger to worry, but someone who finds joy in creating, anyway? 

The anxious, perfectionist only child of an anxious, perfectionist widowed mother, Vera has a passion for drawing, so she is thrilled to be attending a month-long comic-book camp in her school's after-school program. This entire book series, of which Vera's story is book two, is set in an after-school program called After-School Superstars, where each month - and each book - is devoted to a different themed camp. First up: Nixie Ness, Cooking Star, out last year. Next up after Vera, Lucy Lopez, Coding Star, out this fall. I just finished final revisions on Boogie Bass, Sign Language Star, out next spring. But Vera's mother (like my own mother) disdains comic books, setting up a dilemma for Vera, who secretly loves them herself but also craves her mother's constant approval.

Writing this book was bliss for me. One of my favorite themes as a writer is how characters can take what they learn in the world and draw from it greater understanding of their own lives. So in my book Being Teddy Roosevelt, as Riley reads a biography of TR for his school's biography tea, he is able to channel that president's can-do spirit to pursue his dream of being able to play the saxophone in instrumental music. In my book The Totally Made-Up Civil War Diary of Amanda MacLeish, as Amanda completes a school assignment on the Civil War, writing a fictional diary in the person of Polly Mason, who has one brother fighting for the North and one for the South, she finds a way to manage her divided loyalties to both of her divorcing parents. Now, in creating a comic about the heroic exploits of Little Spoon, who rebels against over-protective Big Spoon, Vera finds a way to embark on a hero's journey of her own.

At this frightening moment for our nation and our world, we're all embarking on a weird hero's journey just to continue muddling through with our lives somehow despite the unprecedented upheavals of coronavirus. I'm hoping I can get inspiration from my own sweet little Vera to keep on doing this: to create with joy despite constant worry and fear. I hope you can, too.