the books I wrote

wrote

Some of you know that I have written and Illustrated children’s books over the years.
Some of you don’t know that.

I haven’t sold very many books at all, so it’s most likely that most of you reading this don’t know about my books.

I started writing and drawing the stories when my first two were little.  I don’t remember exactly how but I got in touch with a publisher who charged me a lot of money to publish my first 3 books. Well, actually my wonderful father in law paid for the publishing. The publisher though wasn’t an honest one and she really didn’t know what she was doing. The first copies she sent us looked terrible. The images were all out of shape and it was severely disappointing.

So, my wonderful husband used the really old version of Photoshop to fix my books, we then paid to print them as well, and went to the publisher’s office and physically printed them out and put the books together ourselves….we never got the money back because she insisted that it was just to cover the ISBN#....wich is actually very cheap or even free. But, I was young and didn’t know any better.

I was over the moon having my own children’s books in print.

Eventually after learning the publisher was actually stealing from me (I was drawing for other writers as well but she was stealing my payments as well as selling my books without paying royalties) I pulled my books from her “store” and went in search of another publisher. Those first three are no longer in print.

I had done art work for several other writers, one I still keep in contact with and she has become a good friend and mentor for me. Her character Marcie Mouse is such a dear thing to my heart. I’ve done several Marcie related things over the past 11 years, but most of them have been recently.

Several years later I found Publish America (now called America Star Books) and published at no cost! I was thrilled. But, once again I was taken advantage of. Yes, they printed a copy of my book for free, but I lost my rights to my work for 7 years and couldn’t print copies of it to sell. None of my family could buy the book either because the list price was SO high. 

Fuzzy Bacon was about 3 boy kittens who learned how to be good Samaritans.  This one was written by both me and my husband together. We had high hopes about it, but we literally only sold ONE copy—to his mom.

After the 7 years passed I was excited to get my book rights back….because I had finally found a good solution to my publishing problem.

Amazon CreateSpace.

I first found it when my (then) 4 year old told me a story of a dream he had that was so detailed he insisted it was real. So, I wrote it down and drew it out for him. I searched for publishing and came across Amazon. At the time it was a brand new concept and it didn’t work very well, but for less than $20 I was able to publish and print his book.

It’s still available on Amazon both in the original version and the “updated” one I did last year when I found that the CreateSpace program had vastly improved.

Last year I found some of my old stories and decided it was time to give it a try again. I republished some  of my work that had been done previously

God’s Kids 1 has all the original stories that I published years ago in it. The next two have stories I wrote and drew but never published back in the early days of my kids when the first 3 were babies. There are also some stories I wrote for other families in there.

God’s Kids 4 and 5 have stories I wrote back then but then updated to include my other 4 children and a few brand new ones that I wrote just for them. I updated my drawing style too instead of coloring it with pencil and crayon (that gave it a very child like look that I liked a lot years ago) I used Photoshop for coloring to give it a more updated cleaner look.

Each book has between 9 and 11 stories in them making them pretty thick books.

Then, I asked my kids to come up with stories or ideas for stories. I then wrote them (or helped them write them) and drew them out and published them on Amazon.

My oldest “Mr Responsibility” LOVES cats. His stories centered around him and a magical cat that turned him into a little orange kitten in the first book Catland Adventure. His second story Nuggles and the Flying Kitten was about the same magical kitten and his “wife” the flying kitten Kes.

Ninja loves spiders. Both his stories take place in the same magical kingdom of Manitory that he invented in his first story My Princess Warrior.

Spider Kings and Bobert the Metal Spider were both about a kingdom of spiders with superpowers.

Hedgehog of course wanted to write about hedgehogs.

In his first story Dancing Hedgehog a tiny Hedgehog named Ronan loves to dance and finds a human who shares his passion. In Hedgehog Falls in Love Ronan the dancing hedgehog meets and marries a girl hedgehog.

Kabuki Warrior couldn’t come up with a story on his own beings he can’t talk so the story books I made for him were based on his life. Zork Visits Earth is my take on how he perceives the world. Basically the alien in the story is much like a child with special needs who can’t understand the world. Everything he sees seems upside-down and backwards to him like a whole new culture. 

Different Means Blessed was written before we had a diagnosis. It was about his life, thru his own “voice” telling other kids that even though he’s different there’s nothing to be afraid of. It has an overview of much of what he had been thru up till that point and how God can use special needs for something amazing.

Taters wanted to write a story about the game we played together called Dripping Soup. His second story was Super Dog from Outer Space. The dog has to fight and defeat the evil cat overlord to save his planet and his humans.

When I asked Princess what she would like her story to be about she just said “Pink. I want a pink story.” So, Pinkalena Princess Pie , the story of a princess who loves pink came to be.  Then her second story was about a game we play and the pink princess. Pinkalena and the Roars is about the pink princess who falls in love with the purple fuzz balls that everyone else is afraid of.

Squishy was just an infant when I started these so he didn’t really have any input in these stories at all. The Giant’s Taco Shell was really the combined ideas of several of the children and Shepherds Blankie  was about a little shepherd who gave his blankie to baby Jesus.

The Smallest Hero was a book I wrote for a dear friend of mine’s son Leo Lagana. He’s the smallest human being in Australia and he was about to go into brain surgery. The poor kid LOVES super heroes so I made him his very own book where he battled Branyrism and won, saving not just his family but the whole world. I was so happy to send him a copy and know that it lifted his spirits. His brain surgery was successful, but recovery was rough. Pray for him dear readers, his health continues to be in flux.

Letter from Heaven is dear to my heart. This one was published twice as well. It was written for a young mom I knew who lost her baby far too young. The story follows the little boy in heaven as he plays with Jesus and other children who died young. He’s writing a letter back to his mom and dad on earth to tell them that he’s happy, loved and safe. He tells his parents not to worry, that he’s watching over them every day.

Grandpa’s Hands was inspired by my husband’s grandfather. He was nearly 90 when I wrote it. He was towards the end of his life and the children would climb on his lap and trace the lines on his hands. I wrote this story and poem (in the back of the book) before he passed away, but it was so emotional that couldn’t publish it until several years later.

Little Pie Angel is a story about my niece. When she was young she always wanted to make pies with me, then when she found herself in some dark times I wrote this as a way to reach out to her.

This one is just a book of my artwork. I’ve done many drawings over the years of my children and scanned them into my computer. Sadly the printing doesn’t look nearly as nice as the actual drawing in real life but I wanted a place to have all my work (to that point) in one place for the kids to look at without destroying the actual drawings.

Another one of my nieces asked me to draw for her. She wrote a story about a horse named Gypsy and I helped her publish it. the artwork is mine, but the story is all hers. She was 9 years old when she wrote this.

All of my books are available on Amazon.com they retail for about $10 each except the art book and God’s Kids series.

I did try to sell some locally. We printed a bunch of each book and sold them at Bay Days our local celebration in July. We sold most of the books, but didn’t make any money off of it. I haven’t sold very many online either but now that doesn’t matter to me anymore. I made these for my kids and because it was a dream of mine.

I’m so grateful that God allowed me to do this with and for my kids.