But actually writing the book was the easy part. After writing it and finding an illustrator, Claudia threw herself into the murky and often frustrating world of self-publishing, and found that it ain’t as easy at it looks. In fact, since she embarked on her self-publishing quest in 2002, she has schooled herself in an at-times painful lesson in publishing one's own children’s book.

Since you can’t stumble out of any bar in the Mission without stepping on a wannabe-writer’s toes, we thought we’d ask her to share some of those hard-earned lessons with us--an assignment made easy given that she's SFist's cubicle neighbor and guardian of the floor heater.