Torrey Maldonado

It starts out with him and his mom at a shopping mall and he's looking for the right gift.

And he asks his mom, what should I get?

And she says, trust your instinct, trust your gut, trust your heart.

It feels right.

It's just right.

And that's really important for all of us, you know, smaller and taller to remember that we have this internal GPS.

And if we follow it,

And it doesn't hurt us and it doesn't hurt anybody else.

It could make us feel just right and it could make the world feel just right.

There was some pivoting and there was some steady streams that run through novel writing that also really nourish picture book writing.

There's this TLC song, Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls.

Please stick to the rivers and the streams that you're used to.

And I kind of stuck to those rivers and those streams and those lakes that I was used to because I'm known for my novels being short and having a lot of punch.

And you had mentioned that there's 16 pages, but some of those pages are powerful pages.

And in that way, I was hoping to get that reaction that you just shared.

I wanted someone to say, wow.

This is short, it's fast, and it has pow.

In terms of the pivot,

When you have a novel, that's way more page count.

You have lots more things that you can say.