The short story behind the story…

It’s a fact –
kids do not like it
when parents
are on the phone.
So, I wrote a book about it!

The LOOOOOOONG story behind the story…

The idea for While Mama Had a Quick Little Chat came to me one day while I was taking a walk. From out of thin air – POOF! – several lines just popped into my head, like magic!

My mom’s on the phone again, Yackity, Yack!
I beg and I plead with her, please call them back.
But her friend and my dad and a client or two,
all need just a word with her, what should I do?
What in the world should I do ‘til she’s through?

Since the first rule of writing is – WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW – I knew right away that I had an idea for a picture book that I could definitely write.

That’s because I was an EXPERT on the subject of MOMS who TALKED A LOT on the PHONE!!
My mom had been one, and I was one too. Another thing I knew –
KIDS DON’T LIKE IT WHEN PARENTS ARE ON THE PHONE!!
My kids hated it, and I had too!

I remembered one really rainy night when I was a little girl waiting in bed for my mom to come tuck me in. She was down the hall in her room, on the phone, and I kept yelling for her…

and she kept calling back,

I kept waiting, and it kept raining, and I started wondering, What if all that rain streamed down the hill in front of my house and started rising? What if it rose all the way up to the second floor, poured into my bedroom window, floated me and my bed right back out the window, down the next hill, and into the nearby San Francisco Bay?
I remember thinking,

WHAT AN ADVENTURE THAT WOULD BE!!
and
My mom would sure be sorry for not getting off the phone!

All these years later, as I thought about the lines that had popped into my head, I realized that my mom and I weren’t the only phone-yacking moms I knew, but that most of the people I was yacking to, were also moms with little kids.

The world was full of us, and I knew right then and there that I had to write a book for all the kids who kept waiting, and waiting – patiently, and not so patiently – for their moms to get off the phone!

By the way, while those first few lines never made it into the book, they certainly inspired this story!