From a child's perspective

Today, I received a box. It was quite a cool box (also quite a heavy box that I'm now contemplating how to get 300 miles back up north with me on Thursday). This book contained my copies of my upcoming novel Speakeasy which comes out this Thursday, February 18th. Knowing that I was to be with my brother's family all of this week, I'd had them delivered to his house rather than mine.

The first thing I did with the box was put it on the couch so I could phone my mother. The second thing I did was actually open the box. The third thing I did was take a photo of my gloriously shiny and beautiful books—the cover art is, frankly, breathtaking, and that my name sits on that cover is still freaking amazing.

My 2 year old niece was very excited to see in the box when she returned home from nursery—the last book she knows I wrote was entitled "Rachel and the Dinosaur" and is a handmade seven page epic about my niece herself that's bound with red string and she keeps on her bookshelf.

She lifted this book out of the box and looked at it.
"It's a love story," her mother, my sister-in-law, told her.
"Is it a love story between these two men?" My niece asked, pointing between the two men.
"Yeah, it is." I told her. I wondered if she'd ask a follow up question.

Instead, she nodded and asked if I could draw a restaurant inside the front cover for her. (I still haven't figured out why that was her request. I think she was just excited to be going out for dinner.)

I often get asked questions when I tell someone I've written a love story between two men and often it is why? Why not? I love that, for a child, there seems nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that need be questioned. Maybe we could all do with thinking from a child's perspective a little more often.

It's a love story between two men, alright. Now about that restaurant, Auntie Suzey...