I almost said "No" to this

Or, Here's how it all happened

1. The email lands in my inbox in February of 2023. Any interest in publishing a children’s book? I think about it for a few minutes, unsure if I do. I respond that I would love to talk more, and we schedule a meeting, mostly because I’d like to keep the door open until I decide if I have any idea worth pitching.

2. The meeting takes place in March, and the kind editor wonders if I have any interest in writing about disability in a format for a young audience. I do not. Gluing the Cracks has just come out and feels like the best offering I can make at this juncture, I’m trying actively not to brand myself as a “disability writer”, and I have other friends doing great work in this space already. Plus, I do not have any ideas for a story and children’s books need to have a story, not an exposition. I tell her I’ll think on some other topics and get back to her in a few months, then put the children’s book idea on a shelf in my brain for what I am guessing will be a few years.

3. But then I have lunch with Emily and Aubree. We have known each other since college, where we met at the Fellowship of Christian Athletes as basketball players (them) and a soccer player (me). And for an hour, over soup and salad and dipping carrots in hummus, I cannot shut up about Cannon’s baseball team, the Challengers. It’s the first time Cannon has been able to participate in anything remotely resembling an organized sport, something that meant so much to me when I was growing up. And this sport, it is the sweetest hour you can imagine, and no one cares if the kids are putting dirt in their hat or running the wrong way or rolling in the grass or anything. For what is truly a sacred sliver of a spring Saturday, kids with disabilities and typical kids play together, smiling and having fun and forgetting that everything else about their lives keeps them, mostly, separate. I’m practically crying about how much we love this baseball team and Aubree and Emily look at me with wide eyes, like I am missing the most obvious thing in the entire world.

4. “Why don’t you write about the baseball team in your children’s book, Katie?”

5. Yes, I am missing the most obvious thing in the world.

6. That same afternoon, I email the editor back with an idea, and a seed of a full story.

7. She loves it.

8. I finish the first draft in an hour, sentences pouring out of me with such ease, as if telling everyone who will listen how beautiful it is to embrace the disability community—how much it will change you forever, for the better, to know the gifts that kiddos with differences bring to the world—is the most natural thing I’ve ever done.

9. Almost like God gave me the voice my son doesn’t have.

10. I send the draft to Ashlee, Sarah, Sonya, my writing ride-or-dies, and they make a few small tweaks but mostly, they tell me this story made them tear up, and that is something.

11. And then I show it to Laura, who is a legit best-selling children’s book author and dear friend of mine, and who is also raising a child with a disability. I’m most nervous for her feedback, to be honest, because she’s the one who knows what these books are supposed to look and feel like, and she knows what it’s like to have a differently-abled child, and she knows how important it is to advocate for the disability community with humble integrity. She just knows. And I hit “send” wondering if she’ll hate it, and what I will do if she does.

12. She loves it, too.

13. Everyone loves this baseball team.

14. And I think that’s when I really knew this was a story worth telling.

15. Three months later, my marriage ends, which is a major pivot in the sequence of events here, but a hugely important one. Because my ex-husband was always the cheerleader for this project. He got tears in his eyes reading the first draft, too, and I’ll never forget that. I never doubted that I could do this without him, but I doubted how much it would still mean to me. Because baseball was what we did with Cannon.

16. But stories can heal, you know that? And one day at a time, we keep living, and this little story about a baseball team takes on more and more life when cover mock ups arrive in my inbox and I squeal with delight. And then character sketches come to life with color and vibrancy and smiles. And somewhere along the way I realize I can be sad about another story I am living but the one I am getting ready to tell the world could never, not possibly, mean anything less to me.

17. The first Christmas I am divorced and alone with my six kids, at the end of 2023, my editor sends me biscuits and jelly and coffee from Nashville, just to remind me that our family is on the minds of a lot of people this time of the year. Publishers usually have a pretty healthy distance from their writers more than a year away from book release. The fact that she thought of me means the world. I know I won’t ever forget it.

18. I make the edits my editor suggests, which make the story even stronger, easier to read. I love editing.

19. Then with a small team we make marketing plans, which I do not love and am not good at. I commit to learn how to make a reel. I fail.

20. I ask a few friends—trusted voices in the space of discipling children—if they will endorse the book, and they do, and they tell me their kids love it, and that means everything because after all, it is a children’s book and, yes, I care if you like it but I really want your kids to like it 😀

21. And today, The Very Best Baseball Game will start showing up on doorsteps all over the country and I will try desperately not to think about things like reviews and numbers and all the things authors should care about, because if they do, they tend to care too much about them. I will, once again, do my best to surrender outcomes to a good, good God. And mostly, I’ll pray with all my heart that when you read this book to your kids, you have real and meaningful discussions about what it means to use your gifts for the good of others.

22. I lost a big partner in this project just a few months in, and I think I will always feel that—especially on days like today, when it would have felt different to celebrate this book’s birthday with the person who knew more than anyone what it felt like to watch our son be part of something. So I’m naming that, choosing not to bury it like I normally would because my girl Sonya reminds me to feel my feelings.

23. But that’s not where I’ll stay, either.

24. Because this story is about a team, not one hero. And not for one moment have I been working alone—on this story, or in my life—because I’m no hero, either. From start to finish, this book has been a team sport.

25. My whole life is, really.

//

Friends, this is where I humbly ask you for help sharing this baseball team, and other amazing kids like my son, with the world. Here’s what we can do:

1. Purchase the book on Amazon, Lifeway, Barnes & Noble, or ChristianBook.com

2. Ask your local libraries to carry the book.

3. Tell your schools and your kids’ teachers about it, or have them reach out to me for a virtual reading, which I would love to do and is especially valuable this month, during Developmental Disabilities Awareness Month 💛

4. Talk to your kids about disabilities. Do it before you run into children and adults with disabilities in public. You can use some of the questions on this parent guide to help you.

5. Leave a review of the book on Amazon and Goodreads. These reviews help others find the book—something to do with SEO, but I’m about as familiar with SEO as I am with reels and need a 20 year old to explain things to me apparently.

6. Know how grateful I am for every single bit of support. It brings me to tears to think about how, even while I often feel how different my life is from this time two years ago, when I examine the evidence, I know that I am so, completely, not alone. 🫶