Today I chat with a Chicago writer I know who possesses an uncanny productivity and rare and true creativity. Right now she's got a children's book, Little Pea, on the market and two more coming out this spring: One of Those Days and Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons. Her memoir Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, voted one of Amazon's Top 10 Books of the year last year, is now available in paperback.

You did some unique marketing for Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. How much of the ideas were yours and how much came from your publisher or other venues?
Interestingly, both my editor (Annik LaFarge) and I have marketing backgrounds, so we enjoyed thinking up and executing the various ideas. Like, the Lost and Found project, where we "hid" hundreds of books around the city, that came out of a brainstorming chat we had on the phone and was a total collaboration. Making the Lost and Found video with--what's his name again?--was a highlight and total blast. Other stuff, like the Golden Ticket promotion that's going on right now with the paperback, that was something I thought of in the shower basically. And I think you're probably also referring to the creation/existence of the book's theme song. I just knew from the day I started working on the manuscript for this book that I wanted it to have a theme song. Music's a pretty big part of my life, along with cheese. I'd collaborated on several projects with [composer] Tony Rogers over the past few years and just knew that the book needed a rockin' theme song, and that Tony needed to be the one to write and perform it.

You've got a husband and three kids: how do you find the time to write?
I set aside several hours every afternoon and just go to it. It is both my job and my passion, so honestly, it would be odd and unfortunate if I didn't make it happen. I don't pretend to be a superhuman freak of nature; I have a sitter who helps me in the afternoons which allows me that time to write. I think it would be extraordinarily difficult if I had to write from 4:00-6:00 in the morning (I am the most un-morning person in the universe), or late at night after the kids went to bed. I know many writers do this, and that to me is an amazing feat of discipline and endurance.

What's the biggest misconception most people seem to have about writing children's books?
That it takes four seconds.

In addition to books, you also have created cool creative novelties, like the Belly Book and Post Partum cards...I don't know many writers who think as out of the box as you do. How does those get concepted and how do you get them in stores?I really enjoy thinking of stuff like that, "stuff" being gift products. The Belly Book, Post Partum cards and Brain Lint cards that are coming out next month--under a line they're calling "Amy K"-- are being published through Potter Style, a division of Random House [the publishers of Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life]. Timing has so much to do with it. I started doing these Brain Lint cartoon things a good 10 years ago, and people would say, oh, you should do this or that with them, they'd be great postcards, etc. And I did try sending them out to various gift product companies with precisely zero success. Finally I let it go. It wasn't the right time. There is this great term in Sanskrit that means the simultaneous act of striving, and letting go. I love that concept. Do everything in your power to achieve ______, while also chilling out and trusting that if and when the time is right, it will happen.

There is so much personal stuff in Encyclopedia: after the James Frey situation, have any people confronted you to ask if these things really have happened to you?
Everything I feel about that is summarized in a short essay I just wrote for Newsweek (March 6 issue). [Excerpt: "I tracked down a polygraph examiner, and one December afternoon, with wires on my chest and cranium, I was put through the rigmarole: "Did you write the truth as you know it?" Pause. Needle scribbling. "Do you intend to lie to me today?" More scribbling. And just because I was curious, I had her throw in, "Did you write the book to the best of your ability?" A couple of weeks later I received the results in the mail. I passed. That was a great day."]