The Magic Forest Series

<3 It's his favorite book!

[kad_youtube url=”https://youtu.be/MrOLfNnraC8″ ] It really never dawned on me to test out my book on my household members, whom happen to be exactly my target audience. My older daughter (7.5-yrs old) likes it, thought it was cute, but my 5-year old son *loves* it. It’s his favorite book now. When I got my proof copy a couple weeks ago, he had me read it to him 4 times straight. Then that night…

The Magic Forest Alphabet: Introducing Consonant Blends

Continue your journey from Amazon’s bestseller The Magic Forest Alphabet: Introducing Letter Sounds and jump into Introducing Consonant Blends. Evan the elf has lost his favorite red truck. As Evan searches everywhere, Introducing Consonant Blends merges high frequency blends with a wonderful adventure that will delight your child. Can Wesley the wizard help? Does Gus the sneaky goblin have it?…

Behind the Scenes: Getting Particular (Pre-Print)!

Only steps away!!!! I went through all my illustrations, and it was time to put this baby together! I’ve put together my book in PagePlus and printed it out a bunch of times. This let me see it in my hands and is terribly important because I can see how light will affect the colors, how text looks, where things should be placed. It’s putting the pieces of the puzzle together. I look at…

Behind the Scenes: Almost there!

I’ve completed my first phase of redrawing (there’s more than one phase), and begun the process of putting the book together. Even though doing it this way creates more work for me ultimately as I’ll have to update the file as changes are made in Krita, but it’s important to see a product put together to get the overall feel, check on continuity, color schemes, etc. There will still be editing to…

I’ve one more page spread to draw, and it’s like pulling teeth. I love drawing, but this last set feels like a huge wall. Mind you, then I am done with phase 1. That means, I get to go back over every single page and touch up all the bits I’ve missed. Anything I’m not happy with, and there’s lots. Then we’re just getting started. I’ll go over in detail the next steps as I am doing them, once the…

What is it about our society that it’s inherent that people will assume the worst out of any situation? Particularly when it comes to children. They’re such easy targets.

I was grocery shopping today in thebest store ever, Aldi, with my 4-year old escaped mental patient whom was having a good day. He was in a good mood, chatting away, discussing the merits of outer space and why didn’t the packet…

MTHFR!!! (No, I’m not cursing)

Several weeks ago, I noticed my 7-year old acting a little out of character. Forgetting things easily, strange sentences coming out of her mouth, exhausted. Most of it, I put down to school – at this point, she’s trudged through almost all of 1st grade and is tackling schedules and workloads that rival a 12-yr old just a decade ago. When I asked her how a test was one day, she told me it was…

Behind the Scenes: I’ve unleashed a beast.

Still almost half way through the illustrations for book two. I’ve been completely preoccupied, however, by a discovery that I can import Photoshop brushes into Krita (man, told you it was the best software ever, and it’s FREE!!). It’s taken some finesse, some fine tuning, some trial and error but I love, love, love some of the new brushes! It’s a very manual process to import these into Krita…

With the framework set for your book, you should be busy writing away. For me, the easy part is writing. The illustrations are what take an enormous amount of time. Digital illustrations, in particular. While helping my daughter with her homework last week, I was able to doodle away and as you can tell, it was math homework by the boxes drawn on there. This I can do in half an hour. To create my…

Leaving the Mental Hospital.

It feels like there’s a shift in the tide. My 7-year old paroled mental patient as officially been discharged. It’s fascinating watching her as she’s changing so much, both physically and mentally. She lost her first three teeth within the last month. She tells me while she’s flossing that it’s harder to get in between some teeth now, and I know it’s because her teeth are shifting now that her…

You’re all set up to write. You’ve installed the software, you know your idea, it’s time to put pen to paper (literally or figuratively, depending if you prefer pen or keyboard). This issue of Behind the Scenes is more subjective, because that’s what writing is. It’s a lonesome journey of expression, of storytelling, where you should be just as transported to another world as your reader expects…

Behind the Scenes: What do you need to write a book?

Many people think they need a huge investment to write a book. Heck, even a copy of Microsoft Office is a ridiculous amount  of money so what are you to do? More importantly, what do you need?? For me, since I’m writing children’s picture books, I chose to invest in a graphics drawing tablet (my love, my life!) because I could’t fathom how anyone could draw on a little pad and look at the screen…

So many of us want to write a book, or perhaps have one just bursting to get out, but don’t know where to start. The hard, honest truth is that the first thing you need is ambition. Not a mild “oh, it’s something I’d like to do one day,” way of thinking. It’s a rock solid internal knowledge that not only do you want to do it, you’ll absolutely make it happen. And nothing will stand in your way.…