"I Love You More Than Anything" Books

What was the inspiration for I Love You More Than Cheese?

Hi, I’m Debbie Cowden, author of I Love You More Than Cheese and creator of the “I Love You More Than Anything” series which, admittedly, only has one published book so far. There will be more soon, promise!

Anyway, I did not set out to write a children’s book when I was sitting on the couch with my then-8-year-old daughter one summer evening. We were exchanging sweet banter back and forth, goofily talking about how much we love each other: “I love you more than this, I love you more than that…”

“I love YOU more than CHEESE!” I exclaimed.

And then we looked at each other.

“That would be a great title for a book!” I don’t even remember who said that.

I Love You More Than Cheese.

Immediately she and I began to spout off all the different kinds of cheese we could think of: cheddar, mozzarella, Swiss, gouda, havarti, feta, and so on.

I opened my laptop and started recording it all on a Google Doc. The story came so easily! Within a couple days I had the story laid out. But I had no clue what to do about an illustrator.

So I sat and waited for several months. During that time, I perused third-party broker sites for artists-for-hire. I didn’t have much luck, as everything seemed to be not-quite-right or obviously generated with AI. I wanted another human to help me bring this book to life.

Finally, I found Ayesha. In fact, I found TWO Ayeshas! I hired both to do sample images based on a page from the book, and my family (my husband and 3 of our 4 kids) agreed that Ayesha Naseem was PERFECT for the job.

“The rest is history,” they say. I’ll share more details in the future, especially because, in the past few weeks, I’ve had no less than SEVEN fellow parents tell me they’re working on children’s books and need a bit of help. I’m no gatekeeper, and I’ll be happy to share what I’ve learned in the process of self-publishing through Amazon KDP.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for sticking with me. I hope you get a copy of the book and offer some feedback! Every purchase you make funds our future books that may include some of your favorite foods!

From the bottom of my cheesy heart, thank you, thank you!

I Love You More Than Cheese,
Debbie