Interview with Sharon Giltrow
Happy Thanksgiving Eve, Everyone! Today, I’m thankful to be chatting with 2020 Debut Crew-member Sharon Giltrow. Her very first book, Bedtime Daddy, (illustrated by Katrin Dreiling) debuts with EK Books on May 12th, 2020.
Welcome, Sharon!
And congratulations on your first picture book! Tell us a little about Bedtime Daddy.
Putting a daddy to bed can be hard work, but it can be loads of fun too. This hilarious book shows how a child…
wrestles their daddy into his pyjamas
reads just one more bedtime story
battles endless excuses….
frightens away monsters with monster spray
to finally get their daddy to bed.
Ha! Sounds like the perfect Father’s Day gift, since Bedtime Daddy will release in plenty of time for that holiday.
Now, let’s back up a bit. The road to publication is so often “long and winding.” Was that the case for you?
Well I was practicing my writing and honing my skills for eleven years before writing BEDTIME DADDY in June 2017. Then I revised it with help from my fantastic critique group. Started submitting it in November 2017, which was too soon. I revised it again with more help from my critique group and a publisher’s critique and submitted it to EK Books in June 2018. I Received the email two weeks later and signed the contract two months later. Twenty-one months after signing the contract BEDTME DADDY will be released.
Do you remember the exact moment when you found out you were going to be published for the first time?
The email from EK Books the publisher of my debut PB BEDTIME DADDY came through July 2018 when I was on a road trip with my family to the picturesque Denmark in Western Australia. I checked my emails while my husband was driving and I saw the email from EK books saying that they were interested and was the manuscript still available. “YES, YES!” I screamed. I re-read the email three times and then read it aloud to my family. Then I tried to act calm, replied to the email and continued on my holiday. I checked that email over and over until I was convinced it was real. At that point I knew my dream of becoming a published author was about to come true.
Wonderful. And have you always been a “writer”? What other fields have you worked in, and what made you want to write professionally?
From the time I learnt how to write as a child, I was either copying text from my favourite books or making books myself. I lived on a farm and loved having little projects to do. I even turned my bedroom into a library and made library cards for my books, which I borrowed out. Then I grew up and because I wanted to surround myself with playing, books and children, so I became an early childhood teacher. It wasn’t until my first child was born in 2006 that I thought, “Hey, I should write my own children’s book.” My first manuscript was called Noises at Night based on all the household noises I heard when I was awake in the middle of the night feeding my daughter. That manuscript hasn’t been published (yet) but it set me on my path as a professional author. Now I get to be a teacher and a writer at the same time 
