Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Behind the Scenes of The Small and the Mighty, Episode 3

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

In our final behind-the-scenes look at the making of The Small and The Mighty, Sharon McMahon shares explains the last stages of the book writing process, from copyediting to marketing, and what fun things to expect when you go to her book tour events! Credits: Host and Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Supervising Producer: Melanie Buck Parks Audio Producer: Craig Thompson Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Here's where it gets interesting is now available ad-free. Head to SharonMcMahon.com slash ad-free to subscribe today. Hello and welcome. I am delighted that you're here today and I am so excited to have my audio producer Craig Thompson back in the studio. Thanks for being here, Craig. Hello. Our last episode, I showed you so many covers.

Some of them are just like, are you kidding me? We talked about the lady riding on the eagle and the number of log cabins and all of the canoes and the mountaintops and the people falling off a cliff. None of them were it. You would look at them and be like, immediately, no. Yeah. Immediately, no. Yeah.

It was a very different look than what we ended up with here on your cover. Craig and I were talking last episode where he was like, I would not look at that at the Barnes and Noble and be like, looks great. Looks interesting. Looks intriguing. No. No. I have a couple other covers I want to show you.

And then I want to finalize answering all of the reader questions or all the listener questions that were sent in. So let me humor you, if you don't mind, by sharing just a couple more book covers. And then we're going to get into the final questions that people have. Okay? Yes. All right. You can see here that they decided that what was intriguing about the previous cover is the lady on the eagle. Yes, for sure. They really stuck with that one. So we have several different versions of the lady on the eagle. Some of them are black and red. Some of them are black and blue. And I'm seeing photos in the background of Mighty.

Yes. The background of the word Mighty are black and white photos of my favorite historic time period back in the day. Back in the day. Old timey people, as my kids would say. Why are there old timey people in the background? Here's another version. They went hard on the woman on the eagle. They were thinking, this is the winning figure. And they were not wrong in the fact that it is the most intriguing. I am intrigued, but I think in the wrong way. I don't think it's that way. It's not what you're going for. I'm intrigued in kind of a train wreck type

situation. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Here's another version, Craig. Here you go. I don't even know what, I don't even know how to describe what I'm looking at. What is happening? Old timey photos that seem to have been developed, but they look like they're kind of burned, but it's Technicolor. I can't even describe it well. It looks like somebody put an old film filter of like Lomo film filter over an old picture where it's like some of it's turquoise, some of it's red, and it looks kind of degraded. Yeah.

Let's zoom in on some of the people here and it looks kind of degraded yeah let's zoom in on some of the people here okay let's zoom in okay first we have unhappy washer woman yes very sad then we have unhappy civil war soldier next to two dirty-faced children yeah everyone unhappy children. Yeah. Everyone unhappy. All 100% unhappy. Now, notice here in the lower right-hand corner a child picking their nose! Oh, I didn't even see that! The very bottom right corner. The child has a finger

in their nose and their mouth is hanging open. Oh my goodness. The perfect, perfect image for this cover. Who thought to themselves that's the one? This is it. The untold story of the this cover. Who thought to themselves, that's the one. This is it. The untold story of the nose picker. Unsung Americans right here.

Okay. Here are some more of the same images, just in a different format on the cover. You can see here, all of the people are unhappy. Very, very kind of photo book. Someone's cut these things out and just pasted them. Pasted them on. Glued them to the cover. Yes.

This one they came back with after I said, why is there a child picking their nose? Well, they cut off the child picking their nose. Just pushed it to the side. Yes. Amazing. But everybody on the cover is deeply unhappy. Deeply sad in the olden times, apparently. Uh-huh.

Back in the day. And then here's the last version where it just looks like an inverted negative. Which makes it almost impossible to see, I will say I can barely figure out what any of these things are. That is a way to go, I guess. And now if you saw this book in an airport bookstore, are you going to buy this at an airport bookstore? No, this could be wrong. I feel like they always do like serial killer novels in the negative. And that's what I'm seeing. It's like a negative shot of someone. And it looks kind of like that. It in the negative and that's what i'm seeing it like it's like a negative shot of someone and it looks kind of like that it looks very scary and creepy creepy the tragic stories of yes like these people were they were small yeah yes they were small but

they were mighty like that's the creepy creeper vibe as opposed to anything even remotely like hopeful or inspirational. What about the one you're looking on the screen says like hopeful? None of it. I feel very not hopeful. No, no. And then there's the version with the child picking their nose. Yes, which is a very unique position. How did this make it onto the cover?

He's got an unsung story. He wants to be. He really does. it onto the cover? He's got an unsung story. He wants to be. He really does. He changed the course of history. That nose picker. His small and mighty actions as a nose picker. Oh my gosh. Okay, that's it. I'm done subjecting you to all of the previous book covers. Thank you for humoring me that my instinct about the cover was correct. Yes. Not to pick any of those covers.

I'm so proud of you for holding out over and over and over again, waiting for the right one to come about. I'm very impressed. Thank you, Craig. It's very kind of you. Well, we're here to talk through, obviously, covers is kind of one of the final stages. You've got your agent, you've got a publisher, you've written your book, you've rewritten your book with your editor, and then you've finally found a cover that you like, that you're happy with. Tell me what comes next. What is the next stage of the process after you have chosen your cover? Yeah, well, then, you know, you turn in your manuscript.

You're like, here, I'm done. Here you go. Then it goes into copy editing, which is a totally different process than like story editing and concept editing, where your editor is like, you know what, I'm wondering if we should consider adding some blah, blah, blah, you know, like where they're giving you sort of more general steering, the copy editing, they are the people that go through line by line and ensure that the commas are in the right place, the quotation marks are in the right place. And then they send you back the copy edited manuscript for you to go through and approve all of the changes that they have made to the manuscript. And there were a couple where I

kind of went back and forth with the copy editor. The copy editor was super nice. But there was one thing that sticks out in my mind where there's a reference to a German shepherd dog, and they wanted to capitalize the G in German, but lowercase the S in shepherd. And I was like, no, no. German shepherd is a breed of dog like standard poodle. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Labrador retriever. But according to some style manual, the word shepherd was not supposed to be capitalized

and i was like but it really is yeah it is supposed to be capitalized so that was just one thing that stands out in my mind where we're like no we had a difference of opinion about if the word s is supposed to be capitalized ultimately they go with your final say oh good so it goes through a lengthy process of copy editing. And then the book gets laid out where a graphic designer actually takes all of the text and puts it on the pages so that it looks like a book. One thing about books is that they are left right justified. Yes. Meaning it goes to both edges with the exception of paragraph endings. So this is part of what makes it easier to skim is the left-right justification. So it has to be laid out to look like this with the page number and the

title and all that kind of stuff at the top. We also had to go through and create all of the end notes where you read it and you're like, there's a little number one next to a citation. Well, that all has to be put into the end notes. There are almost 500 end notes in this book. Citations of where I found things so that when you're reading it, you know that this book was like actually carefully researched. This is not just like my opinion of like, this is really close story I'm going to tell you. So it has to get laid out. Then when all of

that is done, they schedule a time for you to record your audio book. And they booked a studio and got an audio producer. And they also, because I don't live in a big town, they also hired an audio book director. Now, often when people go into a studio in, say, New York or Los Angeles, the audio book director just comes into the studio with you. Yeah. But my audiobook director was available via Zoom. Okay. And her name is Carlin, and I really, really liked her.

And they are listening to you read the entire thing remotely, and they interject and stop you as you are reading. And she'll be like, oh, Sharon, it's supposed to say, and then he said, quote, and you read, and he said, quote. Oh, okay. So they are making sure that you are reading the script verbatim. Yeah. With the exception of a couple little things where it's easy to tell on the written manuscript who is talking, but it's not always as easy to tell when you're listening. Because when it's written out, you can see that,

oh, that's a new paragraph. They're referring to such and such person. But when you're listening, you don't know. So occasionally in an audio book, you'll reference a quote slightly differently than the actual text is written. Anyway, she sat and listened to me read the audio book along with the audio producer who sat and listened to me read the entire audio book. When we were done, the audio producer was like, I would have never picked this book up off the shelf. And I got to say, I really loved it. Oh, great. So I thought that was really cute that, you know, here he is this 35 year old guy who just sat and had to listen to me read every single word of this audio book. And at the end, his impression

was like, I really, really enjoyed that. So that was so cool. Well, and I will say, I was not the audio producer for that because audio books are a whole different beast than podcasting. So despite the fact that you have a podcast, you're very familiar with speaking on microphones. It is a whole different lift to try to do this. And so I'm very impressed at your ability to not only write the book, but go back in and read it all is a heavy lift to do. And I'm very impressed. Thank you. That's amazing. So audiobook done.

After all of that, I'm assuming you have to step into kind of the marketing role now. You have to start kind of selling your book. Can you talk to us about that process of actually getting your book into the hands of your readers? Yeah. So next, the book actually has to be printed, right? Like the cover has to get printed, the book has to be printed. There have to be advanced copies made available for reviewers so that even before the books land in warehouses, they have galleys that are like advanced printed copies that get sent to people who might want to talk

to you on a podcast or who might want to review your book in a newspaper or for a magazine. They print these advanced galley copies and send those off to people. But then, yes, you have to let people know that your book is available. And books get marketed in a variety of different ways. Like I said, they go on podcasts, they do TV shows, you know, sometimes people take out ads, they talk about them on their social media, they have conversations with their friends, they post about it, like all of the things. Sometimes they make podcasts about their book in terms of, you know, if you think about marketing is letting people know that this book is available, clearly articulating who the book is for, who might enjoy it, what the book is about, so that people who are interested in buying it are making an informed decision. You obviously want people to enjoy your book. You don't want people to buy it thinking it's a book about UFOs.

Yeah. And it's not. That's disappointing, right? Yeah. So you need to be able to tell people what they're in for so that they actually can know what to anticipate and have a good experience. So for me, it has meant things like guesting on lots of other people's shows, but also writing op-eds for different publications, doing media appearances for radio stations and tv channels it's very very

multi-faceted you also by the way i didn't mention this have to ask people to write blurbs for your book oh yeah and that is where you send your book to people who you hope will offer you a review that you can include on the cover you can see see like on the back cover, I have a whole bunch of blurbs here of people who have read the book in advance and then have offered me a review. And these are usually people who are like well-known in their own sphere. They're, you know, best-selling authors, things like that. So there's a quote on the front cover as well. This is from David Grand who wrote Killers of the Flower Moon. The huge Martin Scorsese movie that just came out last year with Leonardo DiCaprio. Yeah.

And to get somebody like David Grand to write you a blurb is very coveted. Yeah. You know what I mean? To get on the back is like Isabel Wilkerson and Adam Grant and Brad Meltzer and people who are huge, huge, huge bestselling authors. You have to send it to them and hope, first of all, that they will even open your email. Grant and Brad Meltzer and people who are huge, huge, huge bestselling authors, you have to send it to them and hope, first of all, that they will even open your email. Yeah.

Number two, that they will take the time to read it. And most of the time they say no to these things. And then number three, that they like it. Because if they hate it, they're just going to say, thanks, I don't have time. You know, like that's what a nice reviewer would do. Yeah, that's nice. They're not going to offer you a bad blurb. I don't have time. Yeah. You know, like that's what a nice reviewer would do. Yeah, that's nice. They're not going to offer you a bad blurb. I really thought it was super mediocre.

Yeah. So there's just so many pieces. And when your work is in social media, like mine is, which is very fast moving, fast paced, instantaneous. Here's my reaction to this thing. The publishing world moves at a glacier pace. It takes years for these things to happen, to choose a title, to choose a cover, to record the audio book and print the books. It takes forever in comparison to the world of social

media. Well, and that's, I feel like you have the unique position of being on social media. So you can kind of do some of your own marketing. But I know a big thing for authors is getting on lists, is getting on New York Times bestselling list and things like that. What does that process look like? So, OK, the New York Times runs their list a little bit differently than some other publications do. Like the USA Today bestseller list is based on straight numbers. Like who sells the most books? You get to be on the list. And the books are sold in comparison to each other it's not like a grading scale where

it's like if you get above a 90 you get an a you get to be on the list it's not if you sell 5 000 copies that's an a grade book you get to be on the list it's relative to everybody else it's like running a race in the olympics you might be a super super fast runner but if somebody else is like running a race in the Olympics. You might be a super, super fast runner, but if somebody else is faster than you, you're going to come in second or third or fifth or whatever. So it's not just can you meet some kind of benchmark to get on the New York Times bestseller list? It's what do sales look like in comparison to everyone else? Interesting. So the competitive titles, meaning books in your same sort of category of hardcover nonfiction, which is my category, what other books are popular and how many do they sell relative to yours?

Well, for example, Hillary Clinton has a book coming out the week before me. Oh, okay. And Hillary Clinton is a worldwide known name, right? People all over the world know who she is. She's former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate. And so she's a huge leg up over somebody like me. So whereas if I were releasing a book in March, when her book is not coming out, I might have a better chance of making the list, if that makes sense.

I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! In the studio. Every Wednesday, we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests. And we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions and comments. So join us for brand new Office Ladies 6.0 episodes every Wednesday. Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink.

Plus, on Mondays, we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. So the other thing about the New York Times is that there is an editorial component to it. Okay. Meaning that even if you have great numbers, they are not going to put your book on the list if they don't want to. Oh, interesting. The New York Times is a private business.

They can do what they want. Yeah. This is not a constitutional right to be on a bestseller list of like, but my rights. So there is an element of editorial viewpoint. But there's also one other thing, which is the New York Times wants to see broad support across the market. port across the market. They don't like to see a person who's super well off just ordering 10,000 copies of their own book, which does happen sometimes. People who are very well off just want to add that to their list of like, I'm also a New York Times bestselling author. They just want to be able to say that. And they can afford to drop 50 grand on this endeavor and just buy a

ton of copies of their own book. But if they all come from like one retailer to the New York Times, that seems suspicious. Yeah. So they want to see how many copies are being sold in independent retailers. How many are being sold to libraries, being sold to airport bookstores, to Barnes and Noble, to Target, to Amazon. Of course, Amazon is by far the biggest seller of books. Of course. Of course, Amazon is by far the biggest seller of books.

Of course. But the broad support in the marketplace also is one consideration of the New York Times. That's a fascinating idea that people can't just buy. It's not just about numbers that you have to really show that you're diversified and that people really are interested in talking about it. In that discussion, getting your book out there, you're doing a book tour. And as of this moment, I believe there are some tickets left if people want to go and buy their ticket. There's a few tickets left. Yep. Just a few. Yeah. But can you tell me about that? Just you're planning a book tour. That's a whole new thing that you've never done before. That process. Can you talk a little bit about

that? Yes. Yes. Well, a lot of book tours work in conjunction with local bookstores. And you show up at a bookstore and you do a signing or a little talk. And I have attended those before. And those are amazing. And they're great. And I love supporting local bookshops. But I wanted to do something a little bit bigger than just some bookstores. So this is a 14 city tour. All of the venues are theaters. All of the venues are theaters and it is going to be a whole, it's a whole thing. We have a DJ, a DJ and a videographer and all kinds of fun merch and games and a whole presentation and a book reading. So the book tour itself is going to be like five weeks long.

Yeah. I'm going to be home right before election day. What I would have preferred to do is go out and do two dates in a week and be like, I'm doing a show on Tuesday and a show on Friday and then come home for a week and then go out and come home. I would have preferred to do that. But because of the holidays, because of Thanksgiving and Christmas, end of the year and election day, I had a very finite amount of time from publication date to election day to make the book tour happen. So there's a whole team that puts together the book tour for you because it's way easier to book a bookstore and be like, we're having an event on Thursday at the bookstore. There are only so many venues that have a thousand seats in a given city, right? I'm not Taylor Swift. I don't need to sell out 50,000 seat stadium. But neither do I need like a little library conference room, right? So there's only so many venues that are the right size in any given market. And then figuring out how all of these venues and dates of availability fit together in a puzzle. How will Sharon get from Salt Lake City to San Francisco?

How much time does she need to travel across the country? That is all done by a tour team. Yeah, that makes sense. Who puts all of that together for you. They deal with all of the ticketing interface with the ticketing agents who handle those theaters. So I don't have anything to do with that. But I do have a tour manager who is in charge of making sure none of the wheels

come off the bus, that the merch shows up where it's supposed to be, that the DJ's equipment shows up where it's supposed to be. Basically, all I need to do is get myself to the locations, show up and do the show. All of the other logistics from like who's bringing the fancy microphones to who is bringing the backdrop and the ring light for the photos because the people who want to do the VIP tickets and get a picture with you, often that's just like some random corner in a random cinder block wall. And we're not having that. We need the cute lighting. We need the ring light. We need the backdrop. We're not doing cinder block wall in a hallway. No. We're looking cute in these pictures. So my team is like, really? A ring light? I'm like, oh, yes. Oh, yeah. A ring light. It matters. Either pack it or get one delivered via Uber Eats. Somebody's going to Best Buy. Yeah. And getting a ring light

in each one of these cities. It matters. You want to have good photos. It matters. Yeah. That's right. Do you want to post a crappy picture of yourself in a cinder block wall, dark hallway? Are you excited to show that to people? No, no, no. So there's going to be a ring light and a backdrop. And so it's not my job to deal with that. It's the tour manager's job to deal with setting all of that up and dealing with all of that. Yes. Well, you have plenty of things to focus on just trying to host the show, being there, being on. What are you most excited about? This is your first live show, I believe. What are you most excited about doing a live show like this or like these? Oh, my gosh. I am just absolutely giddy to think about seeing all of the governors in one spot. You know, like y'all get to

see me all the time. I'm very visible to you. You can read what I write. You can look at my face. You can listen to my podcast. You can watch my videos. You can find me on other people's podcasts. Like I am very visible to you. And that's fine.

That's great. But I don't get to see anyone else. Very rarely do I get to see anyone else. Even when I'm on a live or whatever, I can see people's names and read their comments, but I don I get to see anyone else. Even when I'm on a live or whatever, I can see people's names and read their comments, but I don't get to see their faces. Just the idea of being in a room with 1,000 other governors is very exciting to me. I am just thrilled at the idea of all of us being able to just be together. I've been doing this for four years, and I've done some speaking engagements here and there, but those are mostly where like an employer is subjecting their

employees to me. Like you have to go to this thing. It's not people who are like, oh my gosh, I got a ticket. It's so exciting. I really want to go. That's a different vibe than like it's 1030 a.m. in ballroom seat. Very different vibe. So that's what I'm most excited about is like just being in the room with everybody and like just sort of enjoying the moment of, y'all, we are here together for the first time ever. I don't know if you can hear it in my voice, but I'm very excited about that aspect of it. I just want to see people.

And it's been so many years of you being able to see me and me not being able to see you. I think that's going to be so exciting. I've heard a lot of people are very excited to go and see you. And I know tickets are going fast in there. Yeah, there's still some available, but I know people are really excited to see that. And I know you put a lot of work into making those really special. So I know, I know. It's very exciting. I have to get all my outfits planned, Craig. I got to figure out what I'm wearing in each of these locations because the videographer is going to be taping the whole thing. Yeah. Right. Like this is forever. This is going to be in a lot of

places. So it matters. I got to look cute. You're going to have that ring light on you and you're going to be doing a lot of photos. That's right. That's right. So I got to get my outfits planned because I have to travel with all of these outfits. I don't have room in my luggage to just bring a bunch of random stuff that I'm not going to wear. Yeah. I got to get the outfits planned out. And then like, what accessories am I wearing with each outfit? Like, there's a lot of moving pieces. There's a lot of logistics to doing this. for each night. It was an evening event in a theater. I can't just show up in my like t-shirt. I also have media appearances on the different days that I'm in town. So I have to have a separate outfit if I'm going on a local TV station or if I'm doing somebody else's podcast,

like when I'm in Los Angeles, I'm doing other podcasts. I have to wear a different outfit for those. So in addition to that, I have travel clothes, a daytime appearance clothes, plus my show clothes. So it's a lot of outfits to figure out, Craig. Yeah, that's going to require some expert packing. That is a lot. I'm very impressed. Well, we've walked through kind of the whole process. And I was trying to think about as far as people that are thinking about writing their first book, do you have any kind of advice or anything you've learned as you've just walked through this whole process? What would be your words of wisdom? What would be your advice to someone who's considering that? It's so easy to think about, well, I'll never be Hillary Clinton.

I'll never be David Grand, Killers of the Flower Moon. I'll never be whoever, whichever writer you idolize. It's so easy to get bogged down in who you will never be. I'll never measure up to them. And what I would encourage people to do is understand that people aren't reading your book because they want you to be David Grand. They don't want you to be Kristen Hanna. That's not why they're reading the book. There is a perspective that only you can bring to the table. And that's why people are reading it, not because they want you to be somebody else. So that's the first thing is to let go of this idea that you need to be somebody else in order to be a success. And then the other thing is just a practical aspect of this, which is to actually sit down and write things. I can't tell you how many writers have this dream of someday I'll write a book, but they never actually begin typing. Yeah. myself of. It is much easier to revise something bad than it is to stare at a blank screen.

You can't edit a blank screen. So you are better off writing something down and then coming back two days later and being like, barf. That's disturbing. Why would I write such a barfy, gross paragraph? That actually is super useful to be like, no, I hate the way I said that. That's boring. That's actually far more useful to be like, no, I hate the way I said that. That's boring. That's actually far more useful to be like, what can I do to make it less boring than to just stare at a blank screen and be like, maybe someday I'll write an interesting paragraph. Like I can work with revising something. It's much harder to revise a blank page. So actually just start writing and you can revise it as many times as you need.

Yeah. When we talked about what your original idea was actually changed over the course of time to be something completely different. So I feel like once you even start writing, you might realize the thing that you thought was going to be the thing you wanted to write about will change and it could be something completely different. And you don't know that until you're revising that. That's right. The best way to find out if something is working is to try it.

You can't think yourself into writing a book. Yeah. You actually have to do it. It's the doers who get remembered, not the people who just think about doing things. So if you want to actually do something, you actually have to do it. And I know that's not like a very profound thing, but it's really integral to the process. You actually have to do it. Yeah.

And use whatever tricks you have to use for your own brain to get yourself to actually do it. Just say, I'm going to write for 15 minutes. I'm going to write one page. I'm going to write 100 words. Whatever it is, setting a finite goal on that day's writing, I find is very helpful. I'm going to finish three pages today is much more doable than, oh my gosh, I have to work on my book. I have to write a book. That's too many things. I know Eric Larson, for example, every writer has their own little tricks, but Eric Larson always leaves off for

the day in the middle of something he really wants to be writing about. He leaves off in the middle of a sentence even so that when he comes back the next day, he knows exactly where to pick up. Yeah. He is not staring at a blinking cursor. He just got to finish that sentence. And then once you finish that sentence, you're sort of off to the races with writing more about what you want to write about. Yeah. So stopping while you're in the middle of something good is a trick some people use. Kind of break that inertia. You can kind of just stay in the momentum of all of it. Yes, exactly.

Exactly. Do we have time for one more question or? We have time for one more question, I think. Okay. Okay. The question we've got a lot. We're all so excited to get our own copies of The Small and the Mighty. And we are all asking just how we can get our own copies.

How can we buy this book? That's so nice that people want to read it. It just feels so exciting to think about somebody else reading it. Obviously, if you have an independent bookstore, go there and support it. Support your indie bookstores. I love seeing that. If you don't have an independent bookstore, it's not convenient for you to get there. You can always shop on bookshop.org. They support independent bookstores. Absent of that, just buy it from any retailer that makes you happy. If you love getting it on Amazon because it comes so quickly, that's great.

There's nothing wrong with that. But if you want to be able to physically go buy a copy, they're carrying it at Target and Barnes and Noble and of course, airport bookstores, independent bookstores nationwide. It came out six days ago. And it should be everywhere you buy books. And I'm truly so excited for everybody to read it. I'm so grateful for everyone who has supported me through this very long journey. The wait is finally over. The Small and Mighty is out in stores now. And I just can't wait to hear what you think. Well, thank you so much, Sharon. I know I speak for a lot of people when I say we cannot wait to get our hands on this book and to read the amazing stories within. So we're just thankful for all that you've done.

Thank you. Thanks for being here, Craig. Thanks for looking at all of my terrible book covers. They're amazing in a bad way. Amazing in a really bad way. Thank you all so much for listening it is always a delight to spend time with you i am going to be out on tour for the month of october you can find tickets on sharonmcvann.com book tour all of the cities and tickets are linked there and of course you can pick up the Small and the Mighty wherever you get your books. I'll see you again soon. Thank you so much for listening to

Here's Where It Gets Interesting. If you enjoyed today's episode, would you consider sharing or subscribing to this show? That helps podcasters out so much. I'm your host and executive producer, Sharon McMahon. Our supervising producer is Melanie Buck-Parks and our audio producer is Craig Thompson. We'll see you soon.