2023 is almost over

My Year with the Muppets School Author Visits

2023 is almost over

I haven’t done an end-of-the-year wrap-up in a while. Hell, I’ve only written one blog post in three years. During the Covid lock-down you would think I would have had more time to devote to this, but I didn’t. Anyway, here’s a look back at 2023, not the best year but not a bad year.

Back in January I had an opportunity to travel to New Jersey to do a school author visit at Keyport Central School, the school I went to growing up. It wasn’t my first time back but it is still a bit odd doing a presentation in the room where I ate so many lunches. It was fun and I got to walk around my hometown for a bit.

The Keyport Central School lunch room. I have been on that stage for choir concerts and 5th grade productions of The Wizard of Oz and A Midsummers Night Dream.

Growing up, I lived on the other side of Rt 35 from my school. I learned that I could walk a short ways down the highway to the railroad bridge and follow the tracks to the school. I also used to play and hang out under another, older wooden trestle bridge that went over the Luppatatong Creek which ran behind our house. In 1992, years after I moved away from Keyport, the railroad line was turned into the Henry Hudson Bike Trail. I had always wanted to walk on it and I took the opportunity. The trail now extends to the Atlantic Highlands. I’d love to walk the whole path someday.

Back when I used to walk across it there were no handrails and you could see the water below between the railroad ties. Fun times, it’s amazing I survived childhood.

In February I visited the first school that booked me through Arts For Learning Maryland. I had been accepted into their roster at the end of 2022. I’ve enjoyed working with them throughout this year and am looking forward to even more interaction this year. Maryland schools can book an assembly called “How a Book is Made” which is exclusive to them. I also do artist-in-residence workshops with them.

March was the highlight of my school visit year. Earlier in the year author Kim Norman contacted me. For personal reasons she was unable to do a scheduled multi-day visit and was looking for an author with room in their schedule for late February into March. That’s how I ended up traveling to Elko, Nevada for a week. I’d never been to Nevada and had never heard of Elko but I had a wonderful week there. I was supposed to visit 11 schools over 5 days. Unfortunately snow cancelled 3 of the visits but I was able to do virtual make-ups the week afterwards. I believe that Kim will be visiting them this coming March, Thanks Kim!

Elko, Nevada. Each school was completely different but all of the students were great.

Nothing important happened in April unless you count my 60th birthday. Melanie took me to Cape May, (back in Jersey again!) for a couple of days. Since we could not coordinate it for my actual birthday, my three kids came home for a celebration in early May. The weather was nice enough to take the boat out for the first trip of the season. We soon found out it would be its last.

A boat ride is fun until the boat almost sinks.

We had bought the boat from a friend in the Spring of 2020 for a pretty reasonable price. We figured it would be a good replacement for vacations we would not take during the lock-down. It was a 24′ Monterey, a much bigger boat than I would have picked out as the first boat I ever owned. We then had to trade in my small SUV for a Ford F150 so we could haul it. It was great having a boat during the Covid years, we really enjoyed exploring the local rivers that feed into the Chesapeake Bay. It was a powerful boat but we mostly enjoyed puttering around and hanging out watching Herons, Ospreys and Bald Eagles flying around.

Anyway, back to the incident. We were heading down the Tred Avon River towards Oxford, MD with the plan of docking and having lunch at a restaurant we like. We heard an odd sound and we noticed that the stern of the boat was low in the water. We cut the engine and checked things out. The bilge pump pumped out a lot of water and the engine would not re-start. We called a tow-boat and drifted on the river while we waited. If we had drifted close to shore I would have dropped the anchor but it was a pleasant day and there were not many other boats out. The tow boat guy said that if we had not cut the engine when we did we would have sunk.

We took the boat to a highly recommended repair shop where we were told how much the repair would be. Given the age of the boat we decided to try and sell it to someone who could fix it themselves. We were lucky and that buyer found us. We also were able to sell the new trailer we had bought and the old trailer the Monterey had come on. We didn’t make out too badly after two years of fun on that boat.

June was the month of book festivals and owls. I was invited to attend the Cecil County Children’s Book Festival and, of course, our own Chesapeake Children’s Book Festival at the Talbot County Free Library. We also were lucky to have a family of owls move into the woods next to our house. They would perch in the trees in our yard and occasionally sit on our roof. I learned that Bard Owls not only hoot, they hiss at you if you get too close.

A happy book-loving family at the Cecil County Children’s Book Festival. One of two young Bard owls, whoo, along with their mother, lived in our yard.

We had discussed waiting a bit before buying another boat but then Melanie spotted a listing for a 16′ bow-rider that was more suited for what we enjoy. So now we have another boat and we spent much of the Summer of ’23 out on the water. The smaller boat allows us to get into smaller rivers that we like exploring. The amazing thing about this boat is it fits in our garage where it’s now stored safely for the winter.

Our new boat, a much more appropriate sized boat for the kind of boating we like to do.

At the end of the summer I began working with my editor on final changes to my next book, Mac and the Millstone of Time. Covid had delayed it, but only by six months. They asked me to add a few new illustrations to it, which I happily did.

The cover for Mac and the Millstone of Time and one of the added illustrations.
The book comes out on March 28th, 2024.

We also went on a trip to the Smokey Mountains, a place I’d always wanted to see. It did not disappoint.

The view from our rental house near Gatlinburg, TN.

I didn’t do as many school visits as I would have liked this fall but I had a great one in southern Virginia in October. The school system had me present in a large high-school auditorium to the students from 3 elementary schools. The house was packed.

I did two assemblies with a full-house each time. It’s the biggest screen I ever used in a presentation.

They also ordered 847 copies of The Angry Little Puffin, one for each of the students. To coordinate signing them, since I draw a picture in each book I sign, I have been drawing a lot of puffins on labels. It took a while for the school to get the purchase order together but I’m going up to Schiffer Publishing in a few days to put the labels in and have them shipped to the school.

4 labels per sheet for 847 books is a lot of puffins to draw.

In early December I was back in New Jersey for the NJ School Library Association (NJASL) conference. I enjoyed meeting librarians and hanging out with other authors. I even got the chance to do a presentation called “How Far Can a Jersey Kid Go?” It was a fun couple of days.

Just after setting up my table on the first day of the conference.

A slide from the beginning of my presentation.

So, as I write this, we are in an AirBNB in (where else?) New Jersey. Melanie, Ian, James and I have been visiting NYC for a few days between Christmas and New Years. Enjoying the Rockefeller Center Tree, the Saks 5th Ave display, great food in Little Italy and Chinatown and some old and new places in and around the city. We even went to Coney Island (a place I never got to when I lived in Brooklyn for a decade). We enjoyed the aquarium and had hotdogs on the boardwalk.