June What Am I + Jenny Grant Update

Greetings! Another Copy & Paste from My Recent Email Newsletter

🔎What Am I Game!

Guess the mystery object for a chance to win your choice of any Circle C or Goldtown audiobook. Giveaway runs Tuesday, June 9 – Tuesday, June 16 @ 5pm PT. Winner will be notified by email and also published in next month’s What Am I newsletter.

Note: Notice it says the winner is posted in the “next month’s” newsletter. Not here on the blog. All entries welcomed (including international) since the prize is digital. 🎧

Guess Here!

Speaking of digital products. For the longest time, I could never ship books or anything else to Canada, Australia, and the UK, etc. But now that I sell only digital products (E-study guides, lapbooks, paper dolls, and audiobooks), international customers can purchase these with no hassles on my website. All you need is your name and your email. Way easier!

Instant Downloads

BRITTNEY A. won the May What Am I Contest. She was #13 out of 81 correct guesses and 101 entries in all. She chose the gold and fool’s gold for her prize. The mystery object is a ROPE.The second-most guessed answer was “twine.” Unfortunately, I could not accept answers that combined both “rope/twine” because that is giving me two guesses, and you can only guess once. 🫣 Keep that in mind for future mystery object contests.

TIMBERLAND TRAILS SERIES UPDATE

I turned in the manuscript for book 2, The Narrow Escape, to my editor at Kregel Publications. Now, both books are finished. Book One, Trouble in Tacoma, has already been edited, and the editor found very little to ask me to revise, and she really enjoyed the story! (I hope you do too.)

I decided to include a “History Fun: Fact or Fiction” page at the end of the book (instead of a regular History Note) to let readers decide for themselves if some of the situations in books one and two are true events, or something I made up for the story. I think you will enjoy this little quiz rather than simply having another history page to read. For example, here are two from Book One, Trouble in Tacoma: What do you think?

FACT or FICTION?

1. A woman in early Tacoma walked around town with a parrot perched on her shoulder. Sailors brought parrots into port towns all the time, but did a woman really carry one around on her shoulder while running her dry goods store?
2. Two adventurous frontier kids once crossed a railroad trestle over Commencement Bay. Tacoma’s shoreline was a maze of wharves and railroad tracks in 1880, but did a railroad trestle stretch out over the bay during that time?

Also, I was playing around with images and came up with a sea creature that Jenny and her brothers Micah and Gideon unexpectedly encounter during a rowboat ride across Puget Sound in Book Two, The Narrow Escape.

So, what do you think happens? Do the kids capsize? Do they have to swim to shore? Is this even based on reality (Hmm, a great FACT or FICTION question for the end of book 2 maybe?) Also, what kind of sea creature is this?

Feel free to reply to this email and let me know your thoughts. The Narrow Escape (working title) releases next August 2027, and we’re well on our way to getting this fun adventure into your hands. Here’s a quick summary:

Danger and adventure face Jenny and her brothers when they start their own ferry business to Vashon Island, using an old rowboat they find washed up on the beach. Fog, unexpected surprises, and being shipwrecked on a remote stretch of beach add up to a nail-biting adventure for the three Grant kids.

Stay tuned for more Jenny Grant updates. I will definitely need your help once my marketing manager sends me a questionnaire to fill out later this summer or fall. In addition to answering a bunch of questions, they ask me to share my vision for the cover art. (As you well know, I have MANY visions and opinions about cover art.) 🤠🫣

When I tried to turn the above image into a cover to possibly share with my publisher later on (so they can create/illustrate a cover), it went downhill fast. It’s hard to show this creature and the characters all in the same vertical layout. So this idea is “out.” But never fear. I have other ideas.

In a future email, I will ask you to give me your official thoughts/votes on two cover concepts for book one, Trouble in Tacoma (to show Kregel’s graphic design team what my characters look like so they can create them). I prefer painted, realistic-looking covers for historical novels, kind of like the sample above (as opposed to the cartoony covers I see on so many contemporary middle-grade books these days). I will also share a couple of possible covers (officially) for your thoughts on The Narrow Escape, when the time comes.

🎵BIBLE VERSE FOR JUNE

For those of you who wanted to listen to the Bible verse of the month in song (June 2nd email) but ended up on a random page of my website, I apologize. I was messing with the URLs and it made the link to the music go awry. I have fixed it and if you click the button you can listen to 1 John 3:1 in song. “Behold, what manner of love the father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God.”

1 John 3:1

👉 Stay tuned for a fun email in a couple of weeks (June 23). Wedding Bells for “Cory”? A fun interview with some “cover” kids, and two activity packs for summer fun.) Don’t miss the next issue! Subscribe here 👉

Note: My intention is to also paste the newsletters in the blog, but sometimes I forget. Like today’s post. It should have been posted yesterday. Whoops.