This is a lot of work!

About six months ago, after another friend asked me to suggest a couple books for the young reader in their life, an idea for a book recommendation service started percolating in my brain. After listening to some entertaining and informative podcasts, like Kidlit Drink Night and Books Between, I decided to shift directions a smidge and produce my own podcast about (mostly) middle grade fiction. But what kind of structure could I use to set myself apart from the herd? One day I noticed that I had unintentionally read several books in a row that were all about one thing - diseases. "Huh," I thought, "that's kind of weird." Then I realized this had happened before with stories about orphans and kids in foster care. Suddenly I knew exactly how I would structure my podcast! Of course, a lot more work goes into starting a podcast than I realized; my entire winter break was tracking down books, writing a script, designing a logo, creating theme music, and building this website. Luckily, I have a very supportive husband who refrained from rolling his eyes at me when I asked him all sorts of technical questions and showed him my logo for the umpteenth time while he tried to play some silly game on his phone. I am so close to recording the first episode that I can practically taste it, which makes me anxious and excited. What if no one listens to it? What if the people who do listen to it think it's garbage? What if my friends and family get really sick of hearing me talk about it? I guess I'll get the answer to all of those questions soon enough.