At a school I recently visited on my Cheesie Mack book tour, I arrived as breakfast was being served. It was a sugary, carbo feast, consisting of a paper carton of chocolate milk, a plastic container of sweetened applesauce and a hard boiled egg in a twist-tied plastic bag, and a cinnamon bun in cellophane. […]
Category Archives: Cheesie Mack
Celebrating the Holidays and Rewriting
My web design firm, Waxcreative Design, knows how to get authors noticed. In addition to great aesthetics, they are expert at branding, marketing, and promotion. They are also good people. I am honored this Holiday Season to be featured on their New Year’s card. About 100 school sessions ago,
Cheesie Mack and Mac ‘n’ Cheese
Every author visit I make to schools around the country is different. Schools have distinct personalities, and my presentation is redirected by local influences. One school might put up posters and have a Cheesie Mack Day. Another might get me interviewed by the local newspaper. But for every school, in this time of tight budgets […]
Mac Crash
My 3.5-year-old Macbook Pro went on the disabled list Wednesday. Symptoms: Normal start up, but then, as the blue screen and desktop icons appeared, so did the spinning beach ball of death…and a queasy stomach. Interior sirens wailing, I rushed to my not-too-far-away Apple Store where, amid dozens of milling i-enthusiasts, the patient was taken […]
Steve Cotler in Harvard Business School Alumni Bulletin
For fairly obvious reasons, Harvard Business School keeps very good track of and contact with its alumni. One of the best things they do is their magazine, HBS Alumni Bulletin. Some of the articles are interesting, okay, uh-huh, but the real reason alumni turn this mag’s pages is the Class Notes. Every class that still […]
Cheesie Mack: Back Home in Massachusetts
Cheesie returns to his home state in a couple of days for a two-week whirlwind of book events. The lad “lives” in Gloucester, so of course I’ll be speaking at two elementary schools there, as well as schools, both public and private, in Cambridge, Arlington, Newton, Sutton, Millbury, and Auburn. Plus libraries in Easton, and […]
Cheesie Mack and the Reading Detectives
How do you get kids excited about reading? My answer is to show them how reading a good book is an adventure in itself. I get them to ask themselves questions. Questions like: Who are these characters? Why did the plot take that turn? How did the author create this mood? I call it being […]
Cheesie Mack Is Cool in a Duel
It’s official. The title of the second book in the series will be Cheesie Mack Is Cool in a Duel. It gets released June 2012.
Grandparent Nicknames
A couple of days ago there was an article in the New York Times about the many new and different nicknames for grandparents. Looking to stay and act younger, my generation is no longer just Grandma, Grandpa, Nana, and Papa. In my first Cheesie Mack book, almost-11-year-old Cheesie talks about the unusual nicknames for his […]
Cheesie Mack on Sale Today
Several years ago I had an idea for a book about an active, inquisitive ten-year-old boy. His name was Ronald Mack, but his friends all called him Cheesie. I envisioned him as full of life, talkative, smart, and funny…exactly the kind of youngster who’d get into complicated kid situations that would require clever kid thinking […]