Where to Find Us: A New Events Page (and a Calendar You Can Subscribe To)

The best part of writing these books has never been the writing. It's the moment a child holds up Book 1 at a festival table, points at the painted goblet on the cover, and asks whether the animal on it really moves.

That only happens in person. So it has always bothered me that the events where it happens were the hardest thing to find on this site.

Until now, an appearance existed as a blog post the week it was announced — and then scrolled away. If you missed that week, you missed the event. That's fixed.

One Page, Every Appearance

There's now a single page listing every book signing, festival, and live reading: tinytimetraveler.com/events.

Upcoming appearances are at the top, with dates, times, addresses, and what the event actually is. Past ones are listed underneath, so you can see where the books have been.

Here's what's on it right now:

• Orange County Children's Book Festival — Sunday, September 20, Orange Coast College, Costa Mesa
• Walnut Creek Oktoberfest — Friday, September 25 and Saturday, September 26, downtown Walnut Creek. I'll be signing books both days
• Mehregan Festival — Sunday, September 27, San Ramon Central Park

All three are free, and all three are built for families.

Or Let Your Calendar Do the Remembering

A page you have to remember to check is only a small improvement on a blog post you have to remember to read. So there's a second option.

At the bottom of the events page there are two buttons:

• Add to Google Calendar — one click, and the calendar is added to your Google account. Every future appearance appears automatically, and any change to a date updates itself.
• Apple Calendar & Outlook — the same calendar as a subscription link for everyone else.

Once you've subscribed, you don't have to visit this site again to know where we'll be. New dates simply arrive.

A few things I made sure of, because they're the details that make a subscribed calendar either useful or annoying:

• Events are marked free, not busy — subscribing won't make you look booked to your colleagues
• Each entry is titled as a book signing, so it makes sense sitting on your Saturday weeks from now
• Each one carries the venue address and a link to the full details

Why This Matters More Than It Sounds

A children's book lives or dies on being handed to a child by a person who cares about it. Online, these books are a cover image and a description. At a festival table, they're a conversation about a five-thousand-year-old goblet from the Burnt City, an eight-thousand-year-old flute, and a Bronze Age city in the middle of a desert.

I would rather have that conversation than sell a hundred copies online. The events page exists so that the families who'd enjoy it can find their way to the table.

Coming Up

If you're anywhere near the Bay Area or Southern California this autumn, come and say hello. Bring the children — the questions they ask are consistently better than the ones adults ask.

See all of it at tinytimetraveler.com/events.

New to the series? Start with The First Animation of the Ancient World, Book 1, or browse the full collection. Book 1 is also available in Persian.