About
About Morgan Coleman
I'm Morgan Coleman, author and illustrator of This Cat is Fat and I'm Fine with That! I live in Covington, Kentucky, just across the river from Cincinnati, with my husband, our daughter, and two fat, fluffy cats
I completed an MFA in Playwriting in 2015, but I fell in love with picture books after I lucked into a job doing library Storytimes, where I got to read hundreds of them! It wasn't until having my daughter in 2021 that I was finally compelled to combine by writing background with this newfound genre obsession to publish picture books of my own.
About This Cat is Fat
Oddly enough, this book was initially inspired by a Facebook page. THIS CAT IS C H O N K Y, whose nearly one million members share and delight in each others' fat cats, has been a consistent source of positivity and joy for me, particularly during the pandemic.
My next inspiration came from Purrfect Day Café, where I adopted one of my own fat cats, and which just so happens to be owned by my brother. When I started formulating a body-positive book about adopting a fat cat, the opening line "It's a perfect day at the cat café" popped into my head, and the rest flowed from there.
About City Grove Press
After spending nearly a year sporadically submitting to agents and publishers, waiting weeks to months for responses, I started to realize that even if I did get lucky enough to be chosen in a very competitive market, it would still take two to three years for my book to ever reach the shelves. I didn't want to sacrifice quality, but my motivation was my daughter, and I wanted to publish a book while she was still the right age to enjoy it.
After a bit of research, I discovered it was possible for me to produce my own books at the same high quality of the ones I love by offset printing. To make it financially viable, I decided it would be best for me to illustrate it myself, which was particularly intimidating since I had barely drawn in nearly 20 years. In the Summer of 2023, I finally got the courage to pick up a tablet and try, and it took nearly a year to complete but I was pleasantly surprised with the results.
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The next step to make the book as professional as possible was to set up my own imprint, or publishing company. I had already established City Grove as an LLC in January of 2020 with a different business model in mind, but like many things that year, it did not go as planned. I kept it active in the event that I would be able to use it some day, then in early 2024, I filed to change the business name to City Grove Press--my own publishing company. After this book is launched, I plan to use everything I've learned creating it to help other prospective authors through the challenging publishing process.