You may ask yourself, “well, how did I get here?”

Coming up with the first post for your blog is a little intimidating. Not junior high asking someone to a dance or out on a date intimidating—more like contemplating taking a sketchy highway, up the side of a cliff, to see what the view is like from the top intimidating. Although, I imagine our junior high friend could be feeling that same type of intimidation. It’s been a while since I had to be concerned with those problems. In the moment, as you stand below that menacing cliff, you may ask yourself, “where does that highway go to?”

Without getting into a whole mess of philosophical mumbo-jumbo about the world at large, let’s agree, in this case, it leads to the first Monkey Blog post. What is the Monkey Blog? It’s where you will find my thoughts, and the occasional monkey input, on some of the following subjects:

• writing (with a focus on picture books, mainly mine, but perhaps others as well)
  • see below for more on this
• kids (specifically my experiences raising two boys)
• assorted geekery (if that isn’t a word it should be)
• occasional reviews of cool things
  • board games
  • movies
  • books
• and, more… (always wanted to say that. Like there’s awesome just around the corner)

As a small part of the blog I am going to detail the promotion and release of my picture book Warning: Do Not Open This Book! I’ll be adding some background history such as how I wrote the book, found a publisher, and got to the point where it’s release is imminent. I already have some great info and stories to share for this part of the blog and you can expect the first to be out next Tuesday.

Yes, that’s right. Tuesday. Barring an out of season super-storm, or other surprise issue, regular blog posts will come out every Tuesday. You can subscribe to them by using the subscribe link on the right. Some weeks might see an additional post, especially as we ramp up to the release date of my book. That date is August 27, 2013. Perhaps you should write it down. I’ll wait. This is important.

OK. Are you done? Thanks for doing that. Now, go tell 10 people about the book release, and good things will happen, like you could win the lottery, but only if your people tell ten new people, and they tell…oops. Sorry. Naughty Monkey! Sometimes he gets out and causes some trouble. I try to keep him under control, but you know how monkeys can be.

Anyway, thanks for providing me with this Once in a Lifetime opportunity. Please leave comments, suggestions, thoughts, or ramblings of your own in the comment section below. I’d like this to be more of a discourse than a lecture. With that said, before I return you to your regularly schedule programming, here’s a link to a