As an undergraduate at the University of Waterloo, I showed a story I had written to writer-in-residence Gregory Cook. It was called “The Happy Punker Does His Laundry.” Can you guess what happened? A happy punker did his laundry. Also helped a woman in the laundromat give birth and made up a song in his head (“Everybody’s gotta do laundry (laundry!)/ Everyone’s got to get clean./ And everybody’s fat in their own kinda way,/ I think that you know what I mean.”) Greg’s feedback? “Have you ever considered writing for children?”
Happy to say my first children’s book comes out with Groundwood in Spring 2017. Summary in Publishers Weekly Spring Preview: “[Groundwood releases] The Goat by Anne Fleming, in which two children are determined to prove that a goat lives on the rooftop of their New York City apartment building.”