Books

An Awesome Book Tour

November 20, 2014 by Kathryn

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.

Drops of Awesome!

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.

Glad to Be Dad

June 11, 2014 by Kathryn

As is seasonally appropriate, I’ve been thinking a ton about dads this past week. As part of my mental celebration of all things fatherly, I opened up the book, Glad to Be Dad: A Call to Fatherhood by Tim J. Myers. Tim is writer, songwriter, professional storyteller, and for several years he was a stay-at-home dad. I found out about him through Familius, the publisher for my upcoming Drops of Awesome book.

Glad to Be Dad is a thoughtful look at the joy, pain, and depth of experience that is fatherhood. It’s a call to action for fathers everywhere to recommit to fatherhood as a life’s work and it was beautiful to read.

When I say it was beautiful, I mean that in the most manly, at times laugh-out-loud funny way. The book is full of personal stories, research, and a lifetime of parenting wisdom that doesn’t come off as pompous. Tim Myers has lived life in the trenches and gives a very real perspective on parenting as a daily unending labor of love and somehow manages to capture a glimmer of the truly joyful nature of raising children. It is a book about the importance of “capital F” Fatherhood, fully realized.

Near the beginning of the book, Tim talks about how refreshing it would be to see a nativity scene in which Mary was asleep and Joseph was holding the baby Jesus. I first began reading the book in December and the same day I read that paragraph, I went to see a live nativity and was so pleased when I saw an attentive Joseph bringing Mary water, while tenderly holding the baby.

Reading this book, I often recognized myself or my children in its pages and it motivated me to tune in more as a parent but also to cut myself some slack. There is no perfect way to be a dad [or mom]. It also made me grateful to be married to a non-helpless, non-zombie husband who engages with our kids and who never sees his time with them as “babysitting.”

It’s a book about how to be a more engaged father, but it’s not preachy. It’s a book about women and men better understanding and appreciating each other in family relationships, but it’s not trite. It’s a book about being torn between two worlds, the world dedicated to family and the world of everything else. Mostly, it’s a book about finding joy with the life you have and the people you love most.

Consider Glad to Be Dad as a last-minute gift for the fathers in your life.

Book Review: 12 Weeks to Greater Peace, Joy & Love in Your Family

February 4, 2014 by Kathryn

When Jennifer Jones Smith approached me about reviewing her book 12 Weeks to Greater Peace, Joy & Love in Your Family on my blog, I was excited to read it. Who couldn’t use more of love, peace and joy in their most important relationships?

There were several things I enjoyed about this book. Jennifer Jones Smith is sincere and passionate about families. Her words feel like a labor of love, the compilation of years of experience as a wife, mother, and friend who knows what it takes to make home more heavenly. The book has a striking religious component to it, which I was not expecting, but which I identify with because belief in God is such a strong part of my family experience.

I really appreciated her focus on self-compassion and empathy and how we need to love ourselves and learn how to act in spite of fear in order to build our families. She cautions against comparing ourselves to others and encourages compassion to be turned outward as well.

Many of my favorite quotes from various religious and other leaders and speakers were spread throughout the book, providing an added layer of perspective that I enjoyed.

I have yet to try the 12 weekly assignments that she suggests at the end of each chapter but several of them rang true to me as exercises that would bring greater peace and joy into my home.

One thing that intrigued me about the book when she first contacted me was that Jennifer is an Energy Healing Practitioner, a profession that fascinates me and about which I would like to learn more. Alas, the book is less about energy work and more about common sense practical ways to improve the feeling in your home and the connections within your family. Energy work is mentioned and a few of the exercises focus on energy manipulation, but I still feel like I need to do quite a bit more research to understand the basics of this form of healing.

With the launch of her book this week, Jennifer Jones Smith has provided a link to bonus content for readers who purchase the book February 5th on its launch day. Here is the link. Enjoy!

A Mysterious Birthday Party

February 27, 2013 by Kathryn

Laylee is TEN! Her oldness and lack of being young astound me. You feel me?

Laylee’s a book nut, so her birthday parties often revolve around favorite literary masterpieces. A couple of years ago we did a Princess Academy theme and this year it was The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart. If you haven’t read the series, I highly recommend the books. They’re fun, sweet, smart and exciting. Dan actually likes them better than the Harry Potter series.

Book parties work well for me because they’re fun, inexpensive, close to home, and they get all of Laylee’s friends reading something together.

This series is about a secret society of extraordinarily gifted children, recruited by Mr. Nicholas Benedict to save the world. They are fighting against an evil man named Ledroptha Curtain who has built a “Whisperer” machine that controls the minds of all the people it broadcasts to. Much of the work the children do involves solving riddles and puzzles, and escaping the evil 10-men, a group of suit-wearing assassins.

So for our party, I recruited Laylee’s friends to help us build an anti-whisperer (made of spray-painted garbage found in my recycling bin and garage) to stop his evil plot.

The invitation read:

Laylee is turning 10 and we’re celebrating with an adventure.

Mr. Nicholas Benedict has an important mission that only these girls can complete. I’m afraid to say that the fate of the entire world rests on their shoulders.

They must use their greatest skills, cunning and teamwork to stop the mysterious Mr. Curtain who plans to take over first Duvall and then the world. Mwahaha!

And… they’ll only have 2 hours to do it. We will be going on the adventure rain, snow, or shine so dress appropriately. It is likely the clues will lead us all over town. We will come back to the library at the end for cake, if we make it out alive.

(Please consider reading the first book in the Mysterious Benedict Society series by Trenton Lee Stewart prior to the event, although this is not required.)

-Sincerely,

Number 2

The day of the party, I stood outside of the library to greet the girls, dressed as Number 2 in my mustard yellow clothes and red wig, chomping on a carrot. (Number 2 always nibbles on something because she never sleeps and therefore needs more energy to keep her going.)

I checked them in on my clipboard and sent them to our base in the library meeting room, where Dan, dressed as Mr. Benedict, greeted them and gave them a briefing on the seriousness of the situation and what would be required of them.

Periodically, he would fall asleep, as the narcoleptic Mr. Benedict is prone to do, and I would catch him before he hit the ground. Amazing acting skills on that Dan Thompson. He told the girls to start their quest by speaking to the person who gives directions to dead trees.

The Librarian! She gave the girls their first clue:

The numbers represented letters and number of words in each line represented a number. So we ended up with a call number that took us to a book about firefighters. The firefighter book had the following clue.

So we headed to the fire station, where we found a piece to our machine and another clue.

So, the burned edges work with the fire station clue because it’s supposed to be a relic taken from a burning building. But once I started burning edges, I was physically incapable of stopping so I burned all of them. It gives them a certain mystery and I really really like lighting things on fire.

On the way back to the base to decipher the clue, I realized that the party was going much too quickly so I told the girls I had seen a 10-man near the library and we would need to take the long way around, several blocks out of our way to avoid being seen and possibly captured. We marched all over town before ending up back at the library.

They solved this clue by figuring out the missing words and then using the first letter of each word to form a new word, “GRANGE”.

“THE GRANGE!” they all yelled. “I KNOW THAT PLACE!”

So we headed to the Grange, all the girls thrilled that they were figuring things out on their own.

The final clue led us (maybe too obviously) to the giant clock located out front of City Hall.

Now, at this point, the girls thought I had made up everything about how the 10-men were here in Duvall, following us around, trying to thwart us, but as we headed out the library doors, they saw a suspicious man in a dark suit and glasses standing across the street, right in front of the clock… with a briefcase… and watches on both wrists.

“It’s a 10-MAN!” they squealed and dropped to the floor inside the library.

My friend Mike, an actor who I’d asked to help with the party, was right on time. I told the girls I’d distract him so they could go retrieve the clue. They watched with bated breath as I crossed the street, bumped into Mike and ran off down Main Street, with him in hot pursuit. When we were out of site down an alley, the girls hurried across the street and found the clue tucked under some shrubbery near the clock.

We didn’t get a picture of Mike chasing me, or even one of the 10-man, but Dan’s cousin Jeanie who was visiting for the weekend depicted it like this:

The final piece of the machine was the back end of a flashlight. When screwed on, the machine lit up and then we could follow the final clue and celebrate.

Overall, I think it was a success. One girl mentioned to me that it was pretty embarrassing to be walking around town with me in that wig so I told her to walk further ahead if it made her more comfortable but, for the most part, they completely played along.

The party favors were little red buckets, meant to be similar to the red bucket from the book, carried around by main character Kate, full of supplies that can be used to get you out of any sticky situation. I gave them each a flashlight, a cool pencil, some licorice “rope,” an eraser, and a kaleidoscope, because Kate carries a kaleidoscope that secretly doubles as a spy glass.

If I had it to do over again, I would have made more clues and made them harder to decipher. I would also have used Morse code. But I can’t really complain. Laylee’s happy with how it turned out, and the world has been saved.

You’re welcome.

Mindful Eating – A Review and Giveaway

November 19, 2012 by Kathryn

Do you have as hard a time with food as I do over the holidays? Let me rephrase. Is food one of the most exciting and simultaneously terrifying parts of the holiday season? Do you swear you’ll “be good tomorrow” as you lick the frosting out of the bowl and eat carbs faster than you can taste them?

If so, then you need to head on over to my food blog, Bite Upon Bite, where I’m doing an interview with Dr. Michelle May, author of Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat and a giveaway of her book.

She’s amazing and I think her thoughts will really help me, and hopefully you, find peace and joy with food this time of year and beyond. Food is wonderful for a reason. Let’s enjoy it, without putting back on all the weight we’ve been working so hard to lose!

I want to be sure and give a big thanks to Coca-Cola for hooking me up with this interview opportunity.

The giveaway is open until 9pm PST on Wednesday, November 21st. Head on over there now and throw your name in the drawing.

Mockingjay – A Review – SPOILER ALERT

August 27, 2010 by Kathryn

I devoured the first two books in the Hunger Games series in one sitting and have been counting down the days to the release of Mockingjay this week. I was one of the first to purchase it Tuesday morning and I carried it around with me all day like a security blanket. Then I read it. All night I read it. And it was over.

Like all good things that come to an end, it left me feeling a bit deflated. Now what? I often feel that way when I finish a good book, movie, or TV series. The characters have become my friends and I just don’t want to say goodbye. My sadness at the end of Mockingjay was a little different though.

The three book jackets tell a vivid story. Book one shows the Mockingjay small, almost timid, with its head down, clutching the arrow as though picking it up for the first time. Book two shows the bird as robust, surrounded by the color of flame, ready to take on the world. The cover of book three is pale blue and shows the Mockingjay with its wings spread out, surrounded by light. The book jacket radiates hope and rebirth. Then you open the first page.

Keep reading at your own risk. Highly opinionated commentary and spoilers abound. …

Mother’s Day Gift Book Idea

May 5, 2010 by Kathryn

If you’re still looking for a last minute Cinco de Mayo/ Mother’s Day gift, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to the girls who put together The Mother in Me, a really lovely compilation of poems, essays and reflections by young LDS mothers.

A friend who was part of the project sent it to me for review a year ago while I was pregnant with Wanda. And since I was… well… pregnant with Wanda and barfing constantly I let a lot of things slip and never posted a review.

I’m sure she’s not expecting to hear from me now but I wanted to let you know about it. The writing is beautiful and very real and I think you’ll enjoy it. Heck. It would make a great Mother’s Day present for yourself because chances are you’ll see yourself in the pages you read.

I recognize that most of my readers are not LDS, but some are and the book is quite tender and affirming of the role of mothers in a way that I think crosses religious boundaries.

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The Librarian of the Apocalypse

January 25, 2010 by Kathryn

My house is filled with books. Like Elizabeth Bennet fictionally before me, I do not consider myself a “great reader.” I just love books. I love to buy them, check them out from the library, smell them, attempt to write them, touch them, look at them and occasionally dive in and read them. My house is filled with books.

My house is filled with books and there are over a hundred I have yet to read. I will find myself at a bookstore, online, at a garage sale, in the grocery store, staring at a book and it will pull me in with its tractor beam of knowledge. “I will be so much smarter, more interesting, happier, taller if I own that book,” my self says to myself. I then purchase the book and hold it and pet it and love it and put it on the shelf or in a pile by my bed where books go to die. My house is filled with books.

My house is filled with books and every so often I think it’s time to part ways with a few of them. Some have been sent to me to review and once I started to skim them, I realized that I was not interested in reading them. I don’t feel right selling a book that was sent to me for a review but went unreviewed because I did not think it would interest my readers. I don’t want to make money on that kind of booty so I keep the books. Some I think might be interesting to someone, somewhere, sometime and deep down in my heart I want to be the one to provide that perfect book to the person who wants it. In my pre-child bearing life I was a librarian. My house is filled with books.

My house is filled with books and I have truly convinced myself that I need to keep the collection going so that in post-apocalyptic Washington, my house can become the town library. I will sort and label and catalog all the books, even the ones I don’t like, because others on my street might like them. Should I keep the book on animal anatomy? Well. There’s a vet on my street and he might be post-apocalyptically interested in my animal anatomy book, especially if his books are all destroyed in the blast. My house is filled with books.

Today I made a decision.

Any book that I am only keeping around IN CASE I find myself in the position of being The Librarian of the Apocalypse is no longer welcome in my home. Today my house became filled with about 60 fewer books. When the apocalypse comes, you’d better have your own copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting because mine’s heading out the door. And also, what you can actually expect when you’re expecting during the apocalypse will probably not be covered in the edition I currently have on tap.

Library Patrons Suck Less

January 5, 2009 by Kathryn

Coming out of a movie theatre the other night Dan and I couldn’t help overhearing a conversation between 4 teenagers. One of them had lost his wallet and they were all trying to find it. He said he was desperate to retrieve it, if for nothing else, to keep hold of his military ID. His friend chimed in earnestly, “Yeah, and your library card.”

To that his friend said, “Oh. I don’t think I have a library card.”

“What?! You don’t have a library card?!!

You gotta have a library card!

You can use a library card for anything.

If you don’t have a library card, you *&!?%# SUCK!”

His friends just stood there, semi-dumbstruck by his rabidly loyal defense of one of our country’s most beloved public institutions. Maybe he changed their minds. Maybe one or all of them went out to get library cards the next day.

Whatever happened, I think his diatribe should be put on a poster in an elementary school somewhere with a smiling portrait of Raven-SymonÃ©, holding a copy of Stuart Little.

Show me How — Review and Giveaway

November 19, 2008 by Kathryn

***And the Winner chosen by random.org after removing any duplicate comments by the same person (Which I then added back in) is Heather Lafter. More great giveaways are coming this month. so keep trying!***

Have you ever wanted to know how to make your own chain-mail bikini, grow rock candy, properly open a pomegranate, carve a radish rose, tie a bowtie, remove various stains from clothing, peel and devein a shrimp, get your kid to eat vegetables, serve a banana as an octopus, or understand vitamins and their proper doses?.

Are you the coach of your kid’s soccer team but you don’t have a clue about the rules and techniques of the game?

Do you wonder how long various foods stay good in the refrigerator?

Do you want to try to heal yourself with home remedies or perform first aid?

Are you horrible at Dave Letterman’s “Know Your Cuts of Meat” game and want to brush up on which cut of meat comes from which part of any animal’s body?

Do you want to know how to pick the best airline seat, tie basic sailing knots, mount a camel, compose a memorable photo, pick a lock, or mold a false fingerprint?

Have I got a book for you. It was sent to me by Harper Collins and it’s called Show Me How — 500 Things You Should Know — Instructions for Life from the Everyday to the Exotic. The book covers fashion dos and don’ts, beauty how-tos, cooking, crafting, survival skills, romantic instruction and a ton more. From the incredibly useful to the hilarious, it’s fun just to “read” all the way through. But it doesn’t involve a lot of reading because it’s almost completely picture based. The illustrations are fun and although I plan to use it as a conversation-piece on an end-table in my living room, I’ll also likely refer to it for basic instructions on how to do just about everything.

Reading through, I kept thinking, “OH MAN! I wish I’d had this last month or last year when I needed to…” Because I didn’t have this book or apparently a brain or internet connection, I gave a perfectly fine cast-iron skillet away to Goodwill because it had become rusty. Never again thanks to the page on derusting a cast-iron pan.

With Thanksgiving on the way, I’m grateful for the straightforward instructions for weaving a lattice-top pie, roasting and carving a turkey and making perfect gravy from drippings.

Thanks to this book I now know that a Vesper is an actual alcoholic beverage, not invented by James Bond, and how to make it should I ever eschew my teetotaling ways.

This is one of the best coffee table books I’ve come across and it would make a great gift. Although if you win it, you’ll probably have a hard time giving it away so you’ll need to buy another.

To enter this giveaway, please leave a comment listing one thing you’ve always wanted to know how to do. I’ll draw a random winner Saturday at 10pm PST.

And I’ve got more great giveaways and gift guides coming up! Squeee!!! I’m so excited for Christmas.

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