Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And I have a new friend. I love making new friends. Carrie Kempakis is here with us today. She has a new book coming out about daughters. Is your daughter ready? Ten ways to empower your girl for an age of new challenges. Welcome, Carrie. Thanks for having me. And huge congrats. This is book number seven. Yes. Yes, book number six. Book number six. Okay, I messed up. It's book number six. So tell us, okay, tell us about the other ones. Okay, so the first two were for teenage girls. First one was 10 ultimate truth girls should know. The second one was light.

Whose approval are you living for? Had a little break in there. I was kind of tired after those two books. And then I wrote two books for moms. The first one was about parenting your teenage daughter while loving your teenage daughter. And it's called Love Her Well. And then after that, I released more than a mom. Another little gap there. And then this past January, I released

a Devo for Girls called Yours, Not Hers, 40 devotions to stop comparisons and love your life.

And then this is the sixth one. Okay. This is the six one. Yes. Wow. Oh, you had said something

about how you had a post go viral or something like that. And that's sort of how you got into your writing

career. What happened? Well, it was back in, I guess it was 2013. It was when blogs were really starting to take off. And at the time, I'd been writing for seven years, you know, just trying to query New York agents. And I always tell people, like, I just love to write. That was my passion. but, you know, back before, when I started, the internet wasn't a thing. I mean, social media wasn't a thing. So it was interesting that what finally opened the door was I had a blog post go viral. And then that led Thomas Nelson to reach out to me about a month later, wanting to turn that blog post into a book. And so that's what I tell people. I'm like, you know, just follow your passion because you never know what's going to open the door. It didn't even exist when I started writing. And I had no idea that that's how the story would unfold. But, you know, I find out later that it had been 10 years since they'd had a book for teenage girls. So they were in the market and they were looking for something to begin with. So a lot of it was the

timing too. So anyway, it was worth the wait, but it was a painful seven years trying to do that

work, trying to get published. And it came about in a totally different way than I expected.

Wow. That's so interesting. It took that long. And now this book is also with Thomas Nelson. So,

or am I wrong? Nope. This book is with W. Oh, that is an imprint of Thomas Nelson. Yeah. So it has just become a thing, like book after book after book. That's wonderful. What was the blog post? The blog post, I believe it was called 10 Things Teenage Girls Should Know. And it was like I said, it was my first blog post to go viral. And back then,

it was so exciting. You know, the internet was so different. And so, but I knew that I was going to turn it into a book. It was the first thing that I wrote that just resonated with a lot of people. And I was not only hearing from moms, I was hearing from a lot of dads, too, that they were like, Thank you for this.

I'm going to save this for my daughter.

I wish you would turn it into a book.

And so,

you know how they're just,

it's just interesting. You create content and you just never really know what's going to strike a court or what won't. And, you know, sometimes what we think is going to resonate isn't what resonates. And then, so this was kind of a surprise. I'd actually, it was the middle of summer and I needed something for my blog. And I'd done a talk earlier that year at a middle school. And so I just like, I was like, well, I'll just take that middle school talk and turn it into a blog post. So all of it was like kind of an accident the way it happened. But it, but it's great because I'm such a planner and I tend to

try to want to control things. So it was really fun for me to just, you know, be like, you know what,

this is better that I don't have to control my life. Just do what you're called to do, do what you

feel passionate about and the right doors will open. And what amazing insight that there are so

many families that are looking for information for their daughters.

Like you said, it had been 10 years.

So this book comes out and you're, you know, at this point you're in the information age, their cell phones, you know, all of these things are starting to explode, social media.

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