Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson
Familius is offering a discount of 40% off both Drops of Awesome books plus several other great titles now through Mother’s Day. They’ve curated a nice collection of Mother’s Day gifts.
As a bonus, if you order two books, you get a copy of Motherhood Realized for free.
I like free stuff as much as any Oprah audience member so I thought it was only right to pass this along.
Today is the official release day of 523 Ways to Be Awesome! It’s the second book in the Drops of Awesome series and I’m super excited about it.
I guess you could say that today is the book’s birthday and since I wrote it, David Miles designed it, Stephanie Yan edited it, and Christopher Robbins (not Winnie the Pooh’s homie) masterminded the whole thing, we are all accepting gifts and salutations through midnight tonight.
The book is doing well on Amazon already thanks to you Awesome people and Familius has been working hard to get this book and the last one into some epic retail locations. I’m not naming names, but someone I know has been stalking the book shelves at Whole Foods because… ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!… any minute every Whole Foods in North America will have one of these bad boys.
The whole thing is totally surreal to me.
Free range happy bacon.
$10/ounce soy cheese.
Handbags and leggings fashioned out of Kale and Hemp fibers.
Book
s by Kathryn Thompson.
All things that belong at Whole Foods.
We’re even working on scheduling a Costco book signing! You guys! I may get to hang out at Costco like the Blendtec guy, hawking my wares while people try to avoid eye contact and then eventually succumb to David’s gorgeous design and buy my book.
All of this is thrilling and I’m stoked. However, in some ways it puts me in a place where I desperately need to apply Drops of Awesome thinking.
The truth is… there is always something more I could be doing to send this book out into the world more effectively. In fact, there are so many things I could be doing to spread the word about 523 Ways to Be Awesome that it can be really overwhelming. I slip into focusing on everything I’m not doing, which is ironic, considering the theme and content of the book.
Yesterday I sat looking at the list of marketing tasks I wanted to do before the book was released. The list was vast. And the check marks were… not as vast. And I was a day away from launch. And I didn’t have long to focus on it because I had to make dinner and get my son to baseball so I could go run a softball practice for my daughter.
In situations like this, it’s easy to think, “I’m not doing my best to launch this project.”
But then you have to dig further, “I may not be doing THE Best, but am I currently doing MY Best?” These are not the same thing.
THE Best is a notion that there is one perfect right way. It’s rarely realistic and frequently frustrating. MY Best is an honest assessment of what I am capable of doing based on my current circumstances, knowledge, and abilities.
And maybe My Best isn’t as good as I want it to be. So, what can I realistically do to increase my capacity today without beating myself up about what my capacity looked like yesterday?
To help with this process, I’ve been keeping a weekly to-do list, rather than daily. I write down everything I hope to accomplish for the week. Then, each morning I break my day down into time chunks that work around the flow of my non-negotiables and appointments.
Then I add as many items from my weekly to-do list as I can fit into those time chunks.
This gives me a realistic picture of what I actually have time to accomplish in a given day and I’m not quite as hard on myself when I find that I can’t do EVERYTHING. Time is finite and all I can do is use my time well. Sometimes this means changing my non-negotiables, cutting down on the appointments and commitments, and saying “no” to a few more things so I can say “yes” to different things.
I don’t have all the answers to this because I still get frustrated sometimes when I know there is a better way to do something and I just can’t quite get there. But I do know that I am happier when I focus on what I’m doing right and on realistic positive change.
I wrote a book. Drop of Awesome.
I gathered a team of fabulous friends and supporters to help promote it. Drop of Awesome.
I have been studying and planning and learning how to better execute social media strategy and I become more focused every day. Drop of Awesome.
Thank you so much to everyone who is taking this journey with me! Let the launch day festivities begin.
523 Ways to Be Awesome, the second Drops of Awesome book, is set to bounce April 5th from Familius and I would love some help getting the word out.
I would love that help from you.
I would love to appoint you as an Ambassador of Awesome.
Ambassadors of Awesome agree to do their best to do their duty to tell people about all the ways they are currently or can become Awesome.
If you’re an Ambassador of Awesome, you agree to receive email from me and the marketing team at Familius. The emails will contain Awesome Missions that we’d love your help with. Of course, you choose which Missions work best with your schedule and your network.
In exchange for your willingness to help with the launch, you will receive an advanced digital copy of the new book 523 Ways to Be Awesome and access to a private Ambassadors of Awesome Facebook page where we will all share positivity and have a great time together.
There will also be other giveaways and incentives exclusive to the launch team as April 5th gets closer.
If you’re interested in joining our team, please let us harvest your information below. We will never give your info to anyone besides our small team and we’ll try not to overwhelm your inbox with Awesome.
Please sign up below if you’d like to join us.
Wanda is writing, writing, always writing. Sometimes she’s drawing but mostly writing these days. Where other kids are begging for video games or ice cream, Wanda begs for those things and paper, reams of paper, and fresh writing utensils. This kid can spend hours, actual literal hours sitting hunched over the table writing.
She writes my grocery lists and checks them off as we go.
She sits holed up at the table doing her entire week’s kindergarten homework packet the first day it’s assigned and when that’s done, she asks me if I can think of any more homework she can do. So I have her write letters. When she’s done writing letters, she writes books. Usually self-help books.
I don’t know how long this will last. But I love it. I love it to the point that sometimes it makes me cry. I will shriek with glee when I find one of her treasures lying around, shriek with glee and then drag Dan into the laundry room or back deck so we can giggle and squeal like prepubescent girls over the awesome literary prowess that is Wanda. I think she writes more words per week than I do.
The most recent book she wrote was a follow-up to her first self-help book, How to Treat People Kindly.
This one gets down to the specific, answering the age old question, How To Love Moms.
And she nails it.
[You can love your mom by helping do the dishwasher and maybe loving her and maybe cleaning up and maybe watering the plants. That is how you can be kind to your mom.]
Hard labor. That’s how you love moms. The end.
But she doesn’t just write self-help books.
You remember the sympathy card when I was prepping for the triathlon?
[Mom. I know that you can do the triathlon next year.]
Then there was the time her teacher asked all the kids to write the letters of the alphabet and Wanda had to add that special touch at the end because she wanted to make it clear that she DID know her ADCs. And she wanted people to seng.
Now, since the “criiathulon”, nearly every picture she’s drawn of me involves me running. I am a cute runner. And fierce.
However, Dan, who did not participate in any athletic events this year, had his picture drawn the same day as the one above, only apparently he didn’t run fast enough because he is burning alive with hot fire, which is also consuming his heart.
At the beginning of the school year, Wanda got into trouble for repeatedly calling out in class. Being the youngest in a family where the other four people think you’re adorable to the point of writing blog posts about your doodles, you get used to not having to wait your turn to speak. If mom says, “Don’t interrupt,” you can always go interrupt your older siblings. It doesn’t work that way in public school. Every kid is the youngest and the cutest and every kid needs to learn to raise her hand and wait.
So after a particularly rough week at the beginning of the year, Wanda asked what she should do for homework and I said, “Write a note to your teacher about how you’ll try to do better tomorrow.” She produced this:
[Mrs. M. I am so so so so sorry for shouting out in class. Tomorrow I will do better. On the back of the page there will be signs. ]
These are the signs:
[I will not shout in the classroom. Instead I will raise my hand. I will wait my turn. I will be patient. Love one another. Keep my hands to myself. I will listen to the teacher.]
Like Anne of Green Gables before her, she had a blast doing this penance. I like how she threw in some biblical verse for good measure. #loveoneanother #thoushaltnotkill
Speaking of church. These are her favorite songs:
[On a Golden Springtime and A Child of God.] Obviously.
She gets into these ruts. Or, more positively, if she were an artist, we’d call them “installations”. For a while every character she drew was wearing a Mexican wrestling mask.
Then all of her people were happy shapes.
Then everything was so so so so so so SO SO SO SO emphatic.
She told me that the reason she was so much bigger in this picture was because Laylee and I were really really far away. Perspective. Nice. But why do I have crazy twig hands? Is that also because I’m so far away?
This next one reassures me that even though moms aren’t “people,” we are still worthy of love.
[We love people AND our moms.]
And I’m the best one she ever had. That’s ever, you guys.
When she gave me this note below, she said it was to show that she loves me whether I’m happy, sad, or mad.
She always loves me and she always respects my feelings but if I’m sad, she… shoots an arrow through my chest. Or something. I think it’s sweet.
Here’s me running again, with Wanda. And as we run she wonders, “I wonder when I’m going to be 12.” Because Laylee is 12. And 12-year-olds get to do everything. I like that my name here is spelled like a high school cheerleader. “My name is Mommi, with an “i”.”
The thought bubbles are part of a growing trend where all the people are expressing themselves in thoughts and words.
The dragon here is expressing fire breath, which makes an “H” sound and the people are mostly screaming things like, “Aaaaaa!” “No no no no,” and “WITCH!” But one guy thinks it’s pretty “Kolle” or “Cool”. He’s the one smiling.
When one guy kicked the dangling smily/frowny/indifferent faced wind chimes, this girl was forced to ask herself, “Why kick?”
Most recently her obsession has been with stars. For two days she got all Beautiful Mind, drawing page after page after page of these:
But then they got boring so she started to give them faces.
And weapons.
[I’m getting ready to explode. I have two grenades. We’re going to the park to face off.]
While I love this greatly, especially how happy they are about their impending celestial gang fight, my favorite star art is probably this one below. There are several things I appreciate about this piece. First of all, a few of the stars have faces like Bane from The Dark Knight Rises, which she has never seen. Secondly, two are on a plate. Thirdly, the others are surrounding them with swords, grenades, bows, arrows, forks and knives. The stars on the plate are saying, “OW. We’re on a plate. AAAAAA. We’re on a plate, yeah,” and the incoming cannibal stars are saying, “Ooooo. Dang it. I was hungry. I’M HUNGRY.” There is a lot to love here.
To her sister and her aunt she passed this note during church, “Guys. You are cool. So cool that the whole world could explode.” That’s a lot of cool. Like serious sub-zero conditions.
Sometimes she designs video game characters.
This guy is 100 years old. [Your worst nightmare, the mouth. It does 100 damage. It also does one hundred and twenty damage.] Boom.
And she draws her favorite foods.
She likes to label things.
When she wrote her first long story about a year ago about her plan to sneak out on Christmas and see if Santa blessed her life with gumballs and a really favorite animal, we had no idea what was in store. I apologize to all the “chres” (trees) that give their lives to support her hobby but I just can’t bear to make her stop.
I have hundreds of these and I can’t really express how much I love them. The way you love that curl of baby hair you saved from your kid’s first haircut or the video of her smiling for the first time, or the memory of the time your middle schooler hugged you and said, “I’m so lucky to have you for a mom,” before remembering she’s a middle schooler. That’s how much I love her writing.
Maybe I should show her by emptying the dishwasher. That’s how you love people, right?Or does that only work for moms?
I didn’t know Laylee was certifiable but she has a card that says otherwise. I took her to Seattle Children’s Hospital for a CPR course for babysitters yesterday, handed her over to some strangers for five hours and she came out of it with this card and the ability to save your life, especially if you are pediatric in nature.
She is prepared to crack your ribs if necessary. She told me this. And, although it would be awkward, she is willing to remove any clothing that gets in the way. Because. And she was very clear on this. Your life is at stake and that’s more important than worrying about awkward nudity. I wipe away a silent tear of parental pride.
I spent the five hours sitting in a lobby at the hospital working on my manuscript for the next Drops of Awesome project due out from Familius in 2016. It’s a gift book about ways to be Awesome and it’s taking an awful lot of time and thought for so short and cute of a book. I hope you love it. You probably will. Re: you are awesome.
Later in 2016, we’re planning to release a third Drops of Awesome book, tentatively titled Autobiography of Awesome, a much more in-depth guided journal that gives you prompts to help you write the history of your beautiful life. I’m working on that right now too and it may be my favorite book yet. I’m so excited to use it!
To celebrate, we drove a mile to the U District and stopped at Full Tilt Ice Cream, where I proceeded to buy bigger-than-your-head waffle cones for everyone I could find who was a) my daughter and b) had just finished a CPR course. They were all super grateful.
I sampled the wares as well, just to be sure they weren’t poison and because my budding life saver refused to order chocolate-covered bacon as a topping on her cone. Something needed to be done with regards to that travesty.
One of us ended up with melted ice cream between our toes. Not naming names. Follow my eyes.
And we came home to a sweet and tired family who had spent the day at our small town’s yearly festival, a magical place where tractors,
unmarked wooden carts full of townspeople,
tanks,
time machines,
fruit people
and dancing Mexican horses
delight the crowds and show off our rich cultural sub-rural Washington heritage.
I was pretty sad to miss the fun, but, hey. If Laylee is willing to crack your ribs and rip your clothes off to save your life, I guess I’m willing to miss a parade with a tin man bee keeper riding in a flatbed truck. You’re welcome.
People. Crowds. Groups. Who wants to be one of them? One of many? I’ve got a new post up at the fabulous site I write for once a month.
Enterprise upgraded me to this cute little Jeep at no extra charge because of the possible pending snowpocalypse later this week.
Because of some work being done on the plumbing at my in-laws house, we got to drink bottled water the whole time I was there. I even brushed my teeth with bottled water. Whoever said book tours were not glamorous was obviously not me.
And raspberries in Utah in winter for breakfast? Living the high life.
Arriving at KSL Studios in Salt Lake for the taping of Studio 5 with Brooke Walker. None of the other guests had an entourage. I felt sad for them.
I had on my TV interview shoes.
And they gave me a mic.
They did not let me keep it.
They shot it like it was live, pausing between segments just long enough for commercial breaks and adding in titles, B-roll and voice-overs as they went.
Brooke was super nice and easy to talk to. She should do this for a living.
We both have excellent posture.
My sister caught this picture of me right before I went on. Nervous much?
And afterward, we got silly in the fancy chairs.
Then off to see my sister’s office in the Joseph Smith Memorial building. Gorgeous view from her floor.
Afternoon Drops of Awesome talk with friends old and new in Saratoga Springs.
Fun fancy “liquid awesome” Mary Kay stuff from one of my favorite people Myla and a thematically appropriate gift from Sina. Aren’t these cute?
I stopped by the temple where Dan and I were married and recreated this picture all by myself. I miss my boyfriend who’s at home winning Husband of the Year while I live it up in the UT.
Then fun times with the nieces and nephews at my sister Heather’s house.
And a book talk at my favorite public library.
I love these people.
And the CRAZIEST of all crazy faces. Wow. I straight up look like that sometimes.
This week I get to be an author on tour. The sentence I first came up with to begin this post was, “This week I get to pretend to be an author on tour,” but if we’re sticking with the Drops of Awesome belief that in the small moments of doing great things, we actually become the people we dream of being, then today? Tomorrow? I am a rock star author. I am leaving my home to go somewhere different and promote my book. I’m on tour.
I’ll tell you what there will be on this tour. Books. And good food. And great friends. And LOTS of vitamin C.
I’ve been fighting a cold since Saturday. Oh what a fierce battle it has been, but so far, so good. Thanks to some great advice from people who live on Facebook – *HI PEOPLE WHO LIVE ON FACEBOOK* – I have boosted the heck out of my immune system so the germs keep doing their worst but my body keeps shoving them back down.
This trip is something I’ve wanted to do since I wrote the original Drops of Awesome blog post in 2012. I have family and friends in Utah and a whole bunch of readers there, readers who should be friends and who hopefully will be after this weekend. I went to school there and I’ve been wanting to go back and connect with a bunch of people who have supported Drops of Awesome from the first day I put it online.
When you publish a small book, and honestly nearly any-sized book these days, you mostly promote it yourself. There aren’t big, extravagant book tours and I get it. They don’t really sell that many books. But this trip isn’t about selling books. Okay. It’s a little bit about selling books, as evidenced by the orders placed by Barnes and Noble for my events and the fifty-ton suitcase full of Awesome reading material I checked at the baggage counter. Mostly though, it’s about meeting people. And spreading Awesome. And seeing my new niece in person for the first time. And playing games with my sisters. And buying new clothes so I can be on TV because it is a fact that you can never be on TV wearing clothes that have been worn previously.
A word about the outfit. I love the outfit. The outfit took me three hours of concentrated shopping to find. The email from KSL recommended that I not wear black, white, red, patterns, sparkles… the list went on. Now, all of these recommendations were specifically to help me look better on TV and I’m grateful for them, but, MAN it was hard to find an outfit to meet those specifications. I did. It is accidentally purple. I know. Weird.
Now I talked about how I’m doing a lot of the promotion myself, but I’ve been lucky to work with a publisher that has a small staff of talented publicists who work way too many hours and they’ve helped me out a ton putting this Utah trip together and with other marketing stuff. When I said, “Utah,” they said, “How high?” and then they helped me schedule radio and TV interviews and book signings all in one weekend to maximize the trip.
And they’re not the only ones to hook me up. My brother-in-law offered to buy me a plane ticket down there with his bounteous air miles, and my family and friends have offered up so many spare beds, sofas, and air mattresses, I could stay for three weeks and sleep in a different bed each night.
It’s Wednesday night and I’m on a plane from Seattle to Salt Lake City. Sitting alone. Well, not alone exactly. But no one is asking me for snacks or where the potty is, or telling me their ears feel funny. It’s a strange way to travel.
Dan and several of my lady friends are taking care of the kids this week, getting them to their band practices and performances, Cub Scout meetings, music and dance classes, birthday parties and a whole lot of school. I’m super grateful because the truth is? I’m really excited for this time to get away to talk to people about ideas I’m passionate about. What could be more fun than this?
Event details can be found here.
My BYU Radio interview with Kim Power Stilson from earlier today can be found here.
I’ll be on Studio 5 with Brooke Walker on KSL in Utah on Friday at 1:00pm MST. (Link to come)
The pictures in this post are from a recent book talk and signing at King County Library in Duvall. Below are pictures of me making crazy-sauce faces while I speak. You know you want to see that in person! If you’re in Utah, come see me.
We’re so close, I can taste it. I guess I could actually taste it, if I wanted to. Although Drops of Awesome: The You’re-More-Awesome-Than-You-Think Journal doesn’t release for another week, I already have my copies in all their deliciousness.
That was an exciting day. Laylee said that me opening my box of books reminded her of George McFly getting his first box of books at the end of Back to the Future. I take that as the highest compliment.
I would also take it as quite a morale boost if you would pre-order Drops of Awesome on Amazon today. You can buy it any day but we’re trying to see how high we can get the Amazon rank to climb, so today would be especially helpful.
I love the book. The ideas within its pages have changed my life multiple times. Let’s call those times “course corrections.” And I really want to see the book and the movement spread throughout the world.
We need to start defining ourselves by who we are and what we do, not who we aren’t and what we don’t. We need to celebrate our victories, no matter how small to help us build momentum to do even greater things. And we need to know that a new story starts this instant. If you are taking positive action now, then you are the person you want to be.
Below is a preview copy of the journal. I hope it inspires you as you read and you want to share it with your family and friends. I can’t think of a more perfect gift for the sister, mother, friend, teacher, or dude who isn’t afraid of pink in your life. Who doesn’t want a gift that says, “I think you are amazing. I want to help you see just how awesome you are?”
I want you to see just how awesome you are! Please take this journey with me.
So, if writing a new book is like a honeymoon and editing it is like going to marriage therapy, then marketing a book is like begging your friends to tell everyone in person and online how awesome your marriage is and if possible give you money… because you truly believe that publicizing and selling the heck out of your marriage will help people be happier.
That’s where I am this summer.
Let me start by saying I love this book. I would go so far as to say I heart it. It’s like I took my Drops of Awesome post, broadened its audience appeal, wrapped it in marshmallow peeps, shot it full of healthful organic steroids, sent it to design school, sprinkled it with fairy dust, and squished it into a journal.
I want you to buy this book because I like you. I want you to buy this book so you will like your life more and so you can stop trying to figure out what to buy all your lady friends for Christmas. I a little bit want you to buy this book so I can justify sitting in front my computer eleventy-hundred hours each week and so I can afford to fly out to where you live and meet you.
During this process, I am learning new things all the time. For example, I knew it was a good thing if people bought my book. But, I did not know that if everyone bought my book on May-tember 49th at precisely 3:65pm, it would be EPIC.
RE: Amazon ranking.
I think.
These are mysteries of which you need never have knowledge, lest you publish a book or lest you want to help market mine.
So do you? Huh? Huh?
I am putting together a Book Launch Team for Drops of Awesome: The You’re-More-Awesome-Than-You-Think Journal. The book comes out in September and I would be grateful to anyone willing to help promote it. If you sign up to help, you will get… FREE EMAIL!!!
Basically, my PR friends from Familius and I will let you know what promotional action would be most helpful at any given point and in return for helping out where you can, you’ll get an early look at some of the content and my undying love and affection.
Also, I will incorporate all of your names into a piece of high-level preschool-style word art, which I will hang on the wall in my laundry room for at least one week.
Please leave a comment below if you’re willing to help me. I’m so excited for this project to make its way out into the world. I know it can do a lot of good. With your help, it can do a more lot of good than if I work alone.
