New Cover Design: Time For Bed, Baby Ted

I'm not sure if this is the final cover, but I love this new design. What do you think?

Sign up on Amazon to be notified when it's available. Go to Amazon and type in Debra Sartell, or sign in at http://www.indiebound.org to find the nearest independent bookstore to you and if they're not carrying it yet, ask them to order it.

It's the perfect baby book. Add it to your BABY REGISTRY and don't forget FATHER'S DAY, June 20, 2010.

It's not a series yet, but I'm working on, Time To Get Out Of Bed, Big Boy Ted. I love the idea that Ted grows up a little and has to get up to go to school and so starts a scheduled life that will stay with him at least 12 years and probably more like 70. Kay got the character of Ted so right the first time around that I'd love to see how he grows in her eyes.

So I'm back on my old schedule of writing every morning at 5:30 a.m. I hope to have something to show my critique group at our next meeting. It's difficult for me to show my writing at critique group because I don't write the whole manuscript all at once and then do rewrites, although I have done that with a few manuscripts. Instead, because this is in rhyme I play around with the words, rhythm and movement within the constraints of the story until something evolves and clicks into place. It's how I like to write, more like solving a puzzle.

How to sell 10,000 copies of my first book? Looking for ideas from anyone. But I've been thinking and I have a couple of ideas about how to use facebook. So, my dear friends both ideas require your participation and I'm counting on all of you. Idea #1, if every one of my 175 friends buys one of my books and they tell 175 of their friends and they buy one and those friends tell 175 of their friends, and well you get the idea. Okay idea #2, if any of my friends would like a little visit from yours truly in the spring then they could send me the name of their favorite independent bookstore nearest them and I'll try to set up a signing and we can have a sleepover. Sounds like fun friends!

In the meantime, I'll keep attending those media and promotional workshops and try to come up with more BIG ideas.

The dedication of my book was a tricky decision. I wonder if it's a tough decision for other writers to make? Originally, I was going to dedicate, Time For Bed, Baby Ted, to Darrell, Cole and Stella. They are my inspiration, support and love. But I also wanted to dedicate it to my critique group, Amanda Conran, Anne Beldon, Kathryn Otoshi and Daniel Weinstein, because they are my trusted, insightful friends with whom I have been my most vulnerable with for the past 8 years. And then there's my agent Caryn Wiseman who had faith, helped me tighten it up and then sold it to Holiday House? And then there's Mary Cash at Holiday House who loved it enough to take it to a meeting and pitch it to her staff. And last, (although she was actually first in the process) but absolutely, certainly not least, there's Andrea Brown, who read my manuscript right there on the spot when I asked to take a look at it at a Book Passages Children's Book conference. Andrea laughed and then invited me to come to Big Sur to work on it with her. I'm indebted to all of you and thank you more than these words can convey. But in the end, this first book had to be dedicated to my mom, Nelda Wegman, who dedicated her life to me and my sisters and brother. My mother became a single mother with four children, after my father passed away in the spring of 1960 in a car accident.

And so my dedication: TO MY MOM, WHO TUCKED FOUR OF US INTO BED EVERY NIGHT.

So how does one give thanks to all the others who inspired, critiqued, had faith, pitched to their staff and laughed? Write another book.

June 6, 2009
First blog so I'm a little intimidated, but you gotta start sometime and now's my time since I spent the majority of today at a Hands-On Social Media Intensive. Wow, there's so much to learn before my book, Time For Bed, Baby Ted comes out in March 2010. I have loved working with Holiday House Publishing and a big thank you to Pam for being so wonderfully helpful and supportive. Hat's off to Holiday House and a bow to my agent Caryn Wiseman at Andrea Brown Literary Agency for selling my book.

While working with Pam on the flap copy for, Time For Bed, Baby Ted, I wrote my bio and in it I explained that I started writing Children's Picture Books shortly after receiving my first 35 mm camera, because I discovered that I loved writing about the photographs I snapped. Then I sent Pam this photograph of my husband Darrell and baby Cole that inspired me to write Time For Bed, Baby Ted, and she thought it was hilarious. Really, Kay Chorao has captured baby Cole so well in Ted and she never saw the photograph. So I am very excited that Holiday House is going to use this photograph on the flap instead of a picture of me. It's so perfect.