Publishing Opportunity for Boomer Grandparents

Jet Lag

When I first returned from Greece, I fell into the abyss that is jet lag. It lasted for nearly a week. Then it morphed into an extended period of lethargy that I couldn’t explain or shake.

While we were in Greece, writer Laura Davis led three-hour writing classes almost every day. In those workshops I happily wrote freely and deeply. Early on I had broken my leg on a gravel pathway in Crete, but I thought it was merely a sprain. I wrapped it in an elastic bandage and continued on my way. It didn’t get in the way of my writing at all.

But now I was back home with a purple cast on my leg and all I wanted to do was lie on the couch and watch British murder mysteries all day. Funny, that. When the body needs to heal, it just takes over and goes about it.

So what happened next? Eventually I tired of nonstop BBC, and writing ideas start arriving in my head. Laura wrote on her blog that she went to a weekend writing retreat specifically to sort through a box of source material for her memoir. Reading that, I considered getting back to my own memoir, which several years ago became mired in the mud of failing memory. If I sorted through my own boxes I might find letters, journals, photographs, calendars — all sorts of things that would help refresh my memory of the decade when we lived without electricity or running water.

The Writer Awakens

Then I remembered another unfinished writing project, proofreading a digitized version of Organic Cooking for not-so-organic Mothers so that I can sell it on Amazon as an e-book. The binder with the printed manuscript has been sitting on a bookshelf for nearly two years; it’s time I got back to it.

Last week a colleague at the National Afterschool Association contacted me and asked me to write an article for a fall issue. This week I’m responding to a request for help writing course curriculum for Transitional Kindergarten Teachers.

And just now I read that Grandparents.com and its related organization The American Grandparents Association (AGA), has launched a publishing project to “produce a series of books transforming the way grandparents are portrayed in children’s literature.”

And I still have a half-finished book proposal revision to get back to an agent.

I think it’s time to get off the couch.

A Publishing Opportunity

But meanwhile, let me share what I learned about the American Grandparent Association publishing project.

AGA Chairman and CEO Steve Leber wrote “Typically grandparents are shown in children’s picture books as old, grey-haired women sporting a bun and glasses; or balding, stooped men with moth-eaten cardigans. That simply is not what grandparents look like in 2016. There are 72 million grandparents in the U.S., and the average age of a first-time grandparent is 48. It is time we reflect the modern, boomer grandparent.”

The vehicle for introducing this new line of books will be a book club marketed on the grandparenting.com web site. It will launch next Grandparents’ Day, September 11, 2016. In his press release, Leber promises to seek older authors to write many of these books. He commented that as the publishing industry has contracted, some boomer authors have found it difficult to find publishers for their stories. I’m not sure how true that perception is, but if he’s looking for boomer grandparents to write stories that reflect the reality of grandparents today, I’m all in.

How about you? The Peek-a-Boo Publishing Group will be publishing the new line of books which will be sold primarily in big box stores. It’s not yet clear to me how the royalty situation works, but if you are interested in pursuing this opportunity, you can contact the publishers at https://twitter.com/PeekABooPub