Outta’ this world blog

December 19, 2023 — First and foremost, this is a reminder about our contest and you can read all about how people of all ages can enter on a recent blog post: Children’s activity — with “surPRIZES.” Full disclosure, I don’t have any entries yet so your chances are quite good! And the prizes are pretty darn cute. There’s no purchase necessary and it’s fairly easy, yet creative and fun.

In other news, I’m OVER THE MOON to announce that “How Happy Is a Lark?” placed in all four categories entered in the Royal Dragonfly Book Awards by Story Monsters Ink. I received a second place (tie) for Best New Author - Fiction! And we received Honorable

December 5, 2023 — Looking for a creative art and language activity for your children over winter break? Look no further than the pages of the picture book “How Happy Is a Lark?” I thought I’d turn this into a fun little contest. 

The book takes expressions like “Clever as a fox,” “Wise as an owl,” or “Curious as a cat,” turns them upside-down and asks and answers the questions, “How clever is a fox?” And “How wise is an owl?” And “Just how curious is a cat?” 

Here’s how to enter:

1. Take a question from the book — or better yet, come up with an expression of your own that

November 28, 2023 — There’s a good amount to cover about marketing your self-published picture book so I’ll break this topic into more than one post. I’ll begin with some of the more obvious ideas and move on to some of the tactics that you might not think of right away. There are things I wish I’d known sooner. But, we’ll get to that. 

Fortunately, I have a dear friend, Nancy Rosen, a former client who I used to do freelance public relations writing for, who’s a marketing whiz. She tipped me off about the importance of presales for upcoming books and so I created a number of social media posts starting several months before publication, encouraging people to preorder my book. I didn’t get enough presales to

November 14, 2023 — I’m not sure I ever imagined myself blogging. But now that I have an author’s website and maybe some stuff to say, here goes nothing. Or rather, I hope, a little something. Mostly, I’d like my posts to help some others who are embarking on a publishing venture. Also, did you know that regular posts help with a website’s visibility? Search engines prefer (and therefore place them higher in searches) a dynamic, changing website to one that stays the same for long periods of time. 

Naturally, my blog’s theme will be my first picture book experience, writing and many related things. I thought I’d share something very dear to my heart these days — not surprisingly — I LOVE hearing

(part 2, Serendipity doo da)

Toward a real live picture book

November 7, 2023 — With illustrator, Jenny Kalejs, on my team, we were ready to turn my manuscript into a real live picture book. This was really getting exciting! There were at least 28 illustrations needed and so, with Jenny already working a full-time job, we planned on her completing about one illustration a week. This was January 2022 and I was targeting a late fall 2022 release. 

I shared my manuscript and some of my ideas for the illustrations with Jenny. Generally, she’d draw a rough sketch, share it with me, and then she’d complete it with her own ideas, creativity and watercolor magic. As it turned out, Jenny worked better in clusters. So, all of a sudden,

Oct. 31, 2023 — Since How Happy Is a Lark was my first attempt at self-publishing a children’s picture book, there was lots to learn at every stage of the process. I won’t try to outline all of the steps here, not only because I won’t remember everything, but also it would be really tedious. 

So, to summarize core steps (interspersed with some related tangents):

First, you get an idea for your book.
Next, you develop your idea.
At some point, you start to write, and you write, write, write.
And then, you edit, edit, edit.

Serendipity touched my process a few times when, some 15 years ago, my phone rang at work. Even then, a ringing phone was a fairly rare occurrence,