Childhood dream to become an author comes true with monarch butterfly book

Even as a kid, I loved to write. And I dreamed that some day, I’d call myself a published author.

Growing up, I documented our family’s adventures in multiple scrapbooks, complete with photos, captions and multi-page narratives.  I wrote poems (I called them rhymes) to myself in elementary school. I loved writing reports and essays because it helped me process what I was learning.

In sixth grade, my teacher at Dover Elementary in Richardson, Texas, a Dallas suburb, handed out workbooks called “Imagine and Write.”

This 48-page booklet challenged 12-year-olds with writing prompts like “imagine and write a mystery,” accompanied by a suggestive photo of a set of keys dropped in the sand on the beach.

For that one, I filled the two pages in the notebook with my effusive cursive, as well as an extra five sheets of notebook paper–front and back. The story I wrote had a band of thieves unleashing a wild dog on a man who happened to be the owner of six banks–and he’d dropped his keys (to all the vaults in the banks, of course!) in the sand. Needless to say, I could have used an editor.

In high school, I worked on the staff of the student newspaper, the Richardson Eagle, and later, at the Daily Texan at the University of Texas at Austin. My first job out of college was as a special features writer at the Dallas Times Herald. And who did I marry? A handsome dude I met in the newsroom who is an excellent writer, storyteller, award winning journalist, and author, Robert Rivard.

Our first four years of marriage had us writing stories from Central America where Bob covered the wars for the Times Herald and later Newsweek, while I hustled freelance feature stories for the London Guardian, San Jose Mercury News, Christian Science Monitor, and anyone else who would give me an assignment.

Then family priorities took over. We had the first of two amazing sons, Nicolas, and moved to New York City, where Bob was promoted to senior editor at Newsweek while I found a job in marketing and sales at a wire service. Alexander arrived a couple of years later, and as he and Nick approached school age, we decided it was time to come home to Texas.

Long story short, after decades in media and marketing, my lifelong goal of publishing a book was postponed. Until now.

Thank you to Andrew Berzanskis of University of Oklahoma Press –Courtesy photo

That’s why I am absolutely pleased and proud to call myself the author of The Monarch Butterfly Migration Its Rise and Fall, published and peer reviewed by University of Oklahoma Press. It ships in August, and is available for preorder now.

The book is the product of two decades of following, learning about, and being enchanted by the Americas’ most beloved insect, Denaus plexippus. This curiosity tour has been very much enabled by our family’s ranch on the Llano River in the Texas Hill Country where monarch butterflies roost each fall.

Seven years in the making, getting this book published was a slog. Having worked in the private sector my entire life, I was not accustomed to the slow pace of university publishing.

That said, after multiple editors, two publishers, one agent, COVID, and the ongoing chaos of the publishing industry these days, it’s probably a good thing that it took so long for this book to hatch. It is a much better volume than the one I first pitched at the Writers League of Texas Conference (WLT) in 2018.

I am ferociously indebted to the foresight, wisdom and belief in me shown by University of Oklahoma Press editorial director, Andrew Berzanskis.

Andrew reached out to me one November day in 2022 because he was “heading down the bunny trail” on the internet and chanced upon my entry in the WLT annual writing contest. I had submitted the first few chapters of my monarch book as a nonfiction entry that summer and earned a Finalist designation.

WLT organizers told me that this designation would help me get an agent or book deal, thus I wore my sky blue ribbon flashing “Finalist” proudly at the mixers and sessions of the 2022 conference–to no avail.

Thankfully, Andrew chanced upon the entry one day, which the WLT posts online. He reached out to me, and expressed how impressed he was with my writing and research. “Would you like to talk about your book?” he asked.

“Heck, yeah!” I answered.

Within a month, I had a book contract with the University of Oklahoma Press. Since, the entire team there has been outrageously supportive and helpful, and Andrew and his editing team in particular have made the book better.

The book presents a natural history of the monarch butterfly migration from 1976 to the present, laced with details of my experiences with monarch butterflies. It includes info and insights from the many scientists and citizen scientists I have interviewed over the last 20 years, guests at our annual Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Festival, field observations from our annual roosts at the Texas Butterfly Ranch, multiple visits to the roosting sites in Mexico and California, and informed views on the prevailing narratives.

Monarch scientist and author Anurag Agrawal called it “a wonderful and important story,” and marine biologist and author Juli Berwald said “I picked up this book and couldn’t put it down.”

Are monarchs endangered or not? Well…you’ll have to read the book to get my take on that.

I invite anyone reading this to preorder the book, which will be shipped in August. And I extend heartfelt thanks to readers of this website and my 3,000 email subscribers for their interest and support over the years. Having an audience has been motivating in helping me achieve my lifelong dream of publishing a book. Thank you!

And hey…I’m not done yet. My second book, Plants with Purpose: Twenty Five Ecosystem Multi-taskers, will be out in March of 2025.

Related posts:

• Poetry and nature writing merge in Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s World of Wonders
• Scientist and naturalist David Hillis provides holistic and enlightening tour of the Texas Hill Country 
• Bird is the Word: FREE San Antonio Book Festival panel to explore migration, the wonders of wings
• In Defense of Plants: explorations of the remarkable nature of plants
• Agrawal: Milkweeds don’t need Monarch butterflies, but Monarchs need milkweed