New Book Title, Cover, & Decade

The editors at Godwin Books have chosen one of my alternate titles for my new book – THE GIRL WHO BUILT A SPIDER. I like it!

Flavia Sorrentino, a lovely artist from Roma, has created this beautiful and dynamic cover for it. I like it!

This book about young inventors and climate change and robots and pineapples arrives at all bookstores, both online and on-the-block, March 21, 2023.

Here’s the link: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250165800/thegirlwhobuiltaspider

I turn 50 tomorrow. I will have published 2 books and helped make 2 children by the end of my 50th year. Then a new decade for me begins. I hope it will include more stories (both read and written).

I am listening to Django Reinhardt right now and really wishing I could play trumpet in a gypsy jazz band. Django’s guitar makes me feel like I am in a foreign city in a foreign decade, sitting at a candlelit table in a café where the night never ends. I could imagine myself on the stage much more easily if I could play the trumpet.

A trumpet sits in a case beside me right now, unoiled and unplayed.

When I was 9 years old, I was told to play the trombone by my fourth grade music teacher. I was so happy to be given this instruction that I took my shiny rented horn out of its case and walked down to the end of the street blurting out what might or might not have been notes.

Playing a horn has never come as naturally to me as writing, but I sure like to dream about it.

Christopher Walken said that 9 years old is the best of all ages and that we should always try to be 9. I’m going to try and make 50 my new 9.

Tomorrow is my birthday. I hope to start writing a new book, to oil and play this trumpet beside me, and to eat cake with my 2 children and 1 beautiful wife. That would be a nice birthday.

~ George 7/28/22