Hey there! I hope your Valentines Day is wonderful. Don’t forget to surprise your special someone. As the years go by, it’s become harder and harder for me to get things for my wife. For one, we’re very content people and don’t really need much to make us happy. She already told me not to get her flowers.... hmmm.... Is she testing me? Anyway, some fun things have cropped up, like an agent with 25 years of foreign rights experience is going to help push my book at the Bologna trade show this year (the biggest event for children’s publishing). Hopefully something will come of that. I'm also doing some school and library visits in the next few weeks, so that should be fun. My schedule is still pretty open, so if you have any school/library contacts, please let them know about me and my audiobook (ISBN 978-0-9819227-3-7). Thanks!

Well, this has been a very eventful month for my little two-year-old son, Jared. I was in my office when I heard some sudden tumbling noises from the stairs. You guessed it. Jared fell from the very top and either sprained or broke his ankle (They've taken like 3 x-rays so far, but we won't know for sure until they take another one next week). Whew! The poor guy was just starting to walk with support from others and climb up and down the stairs. In fact, he had an appointment the next week to see if he could get some braces for his feet (we set up that appointment months ago). Now that’s out the window for the next few weeks or months.

Okay, so now that the pain was finally subsiding on his ankle, he just got some MAJOR dental work done this week. They pulled out his two front teeth, gave him six crowns, and filled three or four cavities. The kid's only two years old! That’s what happens when you don’t use your mouth to eat or drink for an extended period of time (he still gets some of his food from a tube at night). Fortunately, the government footed the bill because of his special needs. I can't imagine how much that would have been. He was at the office for 8 hours. They had to get a special anesthesiologist to put him under, and the surgery took like 3 hours.

I’ve been waiting to make the changes to my audiobook cover until Paraworld Zero placed in its tenth contest, which it just did. Okay, so maybe I’ve got a little bit of "Monk" in me. By the way, if you haven’t seen that TV show, you’re missing out.

Here are some newsworthy items in the publishing world:

1. Amazon is releasing the Kindle 2.0 eBook reader Feb 24th. It now has more shades of gray, 7 times more storage, longer battery life, text-to-speech technology, and is thinner and faster. Get more info HERE.

2. We already know how bad the economy is, but it’s especially bad for the book business. The publishing world has already been suffering for years because of horrible distribution issues and returns. To give you an example of how bad it is, HarperCollins (one of the largest publishers out there) just announced that they’re closing their "Collins" division. Ouch! At the midpoint of its fiscal year, earnings were down 75%.