Christmas in July! (Daily Storystorm Winners, Finally)

Sure, it’s a cliché, but it’s a good one! After months of managing health issues between school visits, I’m finally announcing the daily winners from Storystorm. I will be emailing you over the coming days. Congratulations!

But before that, we have to talk.

Are you having a tough time in picture books? I am. Everyone I know is—mentees, critique partners, agents—I’m hearing it everywhere. Things are slower than usual in the already glacial pace of the publishing market. So, I’m here to tell you: it’s not you, it’s them.

We already know there’s nothing you can do to control what’s happening out there. What we can control is our own output. Keep your B.I.C. and “just keep swimming”. That is, write your butt off. (Wait, I thought Tara said to keep my butt in chair? I’m so confused!)

SCBWI featured an excellent “State of the Children’s Book Market 2024” webinar recently with Deborah Halverson. The playback is available at SCBWI.org and I encourage you to watch. There are indeed bright spots as we navigate through this rough patch. “Editors are craving humor to balance out the more earnest books” is one takeaway. Funny tales, character-driven manuscripts and intergenerational stories are wanted in picture books. And if you can get all three in one book, I suppose you’ve hit the trifecta!

But as always, don’t go writing to please the market. Write to please your muse. Shooting from the heart never goes out of style.

AND NOW, THE DAILY PRIZE WINNERS! Many thanks to Urania Smith and Mel Mwai for helping to randomly select.

I will be emailing winners directly to distribute the long-awaited prizes.

Thank you! I hope to be up and running here more often in the near future!