Hi, I'm author Andrea Coyne, and my book is Hope is a Blanket.

Andrea, thank you for joining us on the Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors podcast.

I really appreciate you being a guest on our show.

Thanks for having me.

I appreciate it.

My pleasure.

I want to jump right in and talk to you about two things about your book, the inspiration and the origin story.

So can you tell us a bit about the.

What's the inspiration behind the book and how did it all start?

Sure.

So there's a lot of inspiration behind my first children's book, Hope is a Blanket.

I love the COVID My dear friend of mine, Courtney, that I've been friends with for years, we worked together in corporate America many moons ago, was my illustrator.

It warms my heart every time I look at it.

It makes me smile.

I cried when I first saw it, but.

So here we have their geese.

So coin my last name, actually, I think it's in Gaelic, means wild goose.

This is my married name.

So I didn't really know the origins of it till after I got married and started exploring it, but so I knew for a long time I wanted to write a children's book.

And one thing that was really important to me as an author was to write a book that was inclusive.

And it's hard to have characters where a child could look at them and not feel like, oh, they don't look like me, or is, could that be me?

And so I really wanted to use animals.

So anyway, geese is.

That's why we chose geese.

But we have a mom and a son goose here.

So I am a mom.

My son is now 9 years old, almost 10.

My book actually was inspired and came out of a grief and loss situation in our family.

I have a son, but my husband and I were pregnant with our second child and unfortunately had a miscarriage at the end of 2021.

So I know that's something that's common.

A lot of families go through that.

It's also really heartbreaking.

And especially when you have other children in the home, it's hard to have conversations about that because everybody's process is great.

Griefs and loss, different.

We, my wife and I, had the same thing happen to us because we have two.

We have a girl and a boy, and we were expecting a third, but that never happened.

So I'm just curious.

Rick, My, my, my sympathy is.

It is.

It's a hard thing to go through as a family.

And once I entered that miscarriage community, I realized there were a lot of families dealing with grief and loss in hard ways.

And so that was really the inspiration for Hope.

It's a blanket, because coming out of that loss, it was at the end of the year, and I went into 2022 with hope as my word of the year.

And so I just.

As I was on that journey to understand what hope was, I felt I'm a person of faith, and I really felt like God was calling me to that word Hope.

I'm an avid dog walker, and so every day on my walk, I would just.

I would pray a lot, and I would process some ideas, and I decided, actually inappropriately, as we're recording this during the Lent season, and I felt called to write a book during Lent, and so I gave myself that challenge of writing a book in 40 days.

So hope is a Blanket started right at the beginning of Ash Wednesday, and I actually finished the last line of the book on Easter Sunday.

Wow.

Amazing.

Yeah.

So that's how the book came about.

But Hope is a Blanket is a story about again, we go back to our geese.

We have mother and son goose, and essentially it's bedtime.

And little goose lost his blanket before bedtime, and he's looking for it.

And any parent understand and resonate with that conversation because it happens to all of us as they're looking for the blanket.

The mom says, I hope we find your blanket before bed, and says, let's hope, mom, because kids have questions.

So as they go around the house looking for the blanket, they talk about how they play with the blanket in different spaces, and it becomes a symbol for hope.

And I don't want to give away a total spoiler alert.

There is a happy ending in the book, but there's a lot of learning along the way as well.

And so my hope was that in creating this book that both parents and kids or adults and kids could actually talk about lost.

The blanket is lost.

And so I wanted it to be a space where they could talk about whether it's maybe a pet passed away or maybe a friend moved.

It could be lost in a lot of different ways, but that it would just create that space where they could talk about that, but ultimately learn how to remain hopeful and find that on the other side of a hard situation.

It'S more than just one event that inspired you to write the story.

Yeah, absolutely.

Another thing.

So as a family, in the wake of our loss, we are actually prospective foster adoptive parents as well.

So we're actually going through the process with an agency.

We're located in Pennsylvania, where we're hoping to welcome another child into our home.

But part of our training has been learning a lot about trauma and how a lot of children in foster care have been impacted really by trauma and ultimately not being able to be part of a biological family unit.

And that was another inspiration for this book.

As we are started to going through some of those trainings and learning more about that, is that, yeah, I know that a lot of people, that's another part of grief and loss is the grief and loss of a biological family unit.

So that has also been an inspiration or an audience that I hope this book will get into their hands so that it can also be a tool for them.

Fantastic.

It's always nice through, especially through children's literature, to influence people at a young age.

And I've been so fortunate right now.

I've interviewed so many children's book authors and where each story comes from is such an inspiration.

So thank you for sharing that with us.

Absolutely.

So tell us a little bit about your publishing approach, because I talk to everybody, especially children's book authors, about there's the traditional way of publishing, getting a traditional editor and a publisher and away you go, or self published or.

I find a lot of children's book authors now use like a hybrid kind of method where they purchase some of the services and they do some of the work themselves.

Tell us a bit about what's your approach.

I was fortunate and that I wanted.

I've been wanting to write a children's book for a long time.

And so actually when my son was very little, I found through my business network that we had a publishing company right here where I live in the Lehigh Valley.

So it's a really great area.

We're about halfway between New York and Philadelphia.

Yeah.

Pennsylvania.

And so I met with her years ago when my son was very little.

So again, this is going back seven years ago.

I just told her I really have interest in writing a children's book.

And that wasn't a big genre for her publishing company yet.

Her publishing company is called Bright Communications.

So again, Jennifer and I had coffee and she just talked me a little bit about her publishing company and her processes and just said, I'm here whenever you're ready.

And so I just put a pin in that and thought, I will write this book one day.

I just don't know what it's going to be.

And a lot of ideas popped in my head.

So when we went through everything that we did, I reached back out to Jennifer and had a conversation with her again.

And what I love about write Communications.

And Jennifer is that she calls herself a book doula, that she's really helping people birth ideas.

Right.

And because I also, I am a communications consultant and have my own llc, Jennifer and I actually.

So I'm did the hybrid publishing model, but I actually did trade for services with Jennifer.

So my situation is very unique to me.

So in turn, Jennifer is also a published author.

She did this really neat Mommy and Me coloring book where she published a coloring book where on one side of the coloring book, there's a kid version of a picture, and then on the other side is one for a parent that's a little more detailed.

And then there's little prompts at the bottom of the coloring pages, ask questions to engage conversation.

And so I actually did a whole kind of like a business plan or a marketing plan for Jennifer's book in return for publishing services for my book.

So it was a really neat opportunity for me to learn a lot about books and how to come up with creative ideas to market them, because that was new to me.

But then in turn, Jennifer shared her publishing wisdom and services with me, and so we did a one for one trade.

So she published my book, and I helped her market her book.

Incredible.

Yeah.

You're the first children's book author where I.

They've actually told me they traded services for.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

And again, I.

As we speak to aspiring authors, sometimes people think, you know what, I just don't have the funds to bring something to life.

But possibly you have skill set that you could trade on.

Absolutely.

So you never know.

So.

So thank you, Andrea, for sharing that.

That's fantastic.

I feel very blessed that I was able to do that.

So you did a hybrid method and you're on Amazon, so you went through KDP, is that correct?

Yeah.

So they work through.

So IngramSpark is the company that Jennifer partners with for publishing.

So all my book files live there.

So as I have access to that backend.

But yes, they made sure I was on Amazon.

My book is on Barnes and Noble.

It's actually in store in a local Barnes and Noble here in the Lehigh Valley.

Okay.

And yeah, so pretty much any local.

Most local publishers can order it as well.

So.

So you never used Amazon's KDP services?

No, I did not.

Okay.

And the only reason I ask is, do you have the rights to the book files?

Yes.

Okay.

And again, I.

I'm always curious because I find as I've been talking to different children's book authors, it's that print on demand and like a Little deeper reach in terms of your book, like getting the distribution.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

And you'll find that also if you go directly through kdp, you could probably drop your retail price a bit.

Okay.

Because.

Something to look into.

Yeah.

So I would definitely encourage that because I'll give you the reason I say that is I like to buy every.

Every guest children's book.

I've got five grandchildren, so the books definitely get ready.

And so when I went to look at yours, I know we ended up setting up this interview pretty quick.

So I thought, oh, you know what?

I'll just go and buy the ebook.

That's the very least I can do.

And I.

On Amazon, there is no ebook.

Okay.

And anyways, I'm just throwing that out to you that I think you could probably get a lower price, a lower cost to you through.

If you take the files and put them through kdp.

Okay.

And then also it'd probably be worth.

I'm not.

You're not going to get a ton of sales on an ebook, but at least you have it available in the marketplace.

No, I really appreciate that tip.

But I would be happy.

I have a stash of these books in my home.

And Rick, I would be happy to autograph them and mail them so we can connect with your address after this.

I'd love to send them to your grandkids as a token of my gratitude for inviting me on your.

No, no, that.

That's fantastic.

I'm going to make sure that I purchase one.

Okay.

Okay.

Just so you know, let me send.

The other four to you.

It would be my honor.

And I just.

I love when they can just get into the hands of joyful kids.

Okay, thanks.

That's a really appreciated.

When you.

So you did a print on demand or did you do a fairly large run?

So most of mine is print.

So print on demand is mostly how I'm operating.

I've ordered a couple small runs.

I did.

I launched my book at a local coffee shop here in the Lehigh Valley because they have a regular children's reading time.

And it's a coffee shop.

I love the owner of that coffee shop.

It's called Jay's Local in Allentown.

Lyle is just a great community man.

He invites other businesses.

His business model is fantastic.

So he won by other aspiring, especially like food businesses into his kitchen and allow them to do takeovers where they can have a few days a week over a period to really build their business and brand.

Yeah, he's a tremendous individual and I just really loved what he was doing.

I popped in there to get coffee on the way to my coworking space, because otherwise I'm here in my home office, which is in the basement of my house.

But anyway, I spoke with him about coming to read there, and so he allowed me to launch my book that way.

So I read a couple other books that had similar themes to mine and then use that as a launch opportunity to meet some moms in our community and to do.

To do a signing of illustrator.

Courtney was there with me, so it was really great event.

So I ordered a small run of books for that event, and then I have about like a hundred on hand just in case I have opportunities to go sell or go to.

There's a lot of local craft fairs and things like that in the Lehigh Valley, so I always want to have some on hand.

I've also just found that I have, again, being in the community of miscarriage, there's a lot of people that go through that.

And so anytime I see, especially in my social networks, that somebody goes that I like to reach out and send a copy of the book to them as well.

So just having a couple in hand to be able to send out is a really good thing to have.

Cause I noticed on your Instagram you had a big 100.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I thought that was very cool.

Did you sell those books directly yourself?

So that was even when I reached 100 on through Ingramspark.

So again, my.

That's where my files live.

So that's who write communications partners with for book printing is a publisher.

So that's where I was getting my data.

So, yeah, I get monthly sales reports from them on how many are being ordered through Amazon or Barnes and Noble or anywhere online.

All my digital sales go through there.

And then I get compensation periodically through that.

So that was primarily just through online book sales.

Good for.

Then again, I have.

Thank you.

I was really excited.

So I think we're closer to 200 now, which is exciting.

And I have a couple really neat opportunities coming up, including a book signing at a local Barnes and Noble in our area as well.

So I'm hoping through more of those we'll see those sales online go up and I'll be able to get rid of some of my stash and then place a reorder.

Fantastic.

So I'm curious, and I know I sent you an email before we got on line here to discuss this, but I'm curious about.

Everybody does it differently.

And so I'm curious about a website.

Is that something that you're thinking about doing to support your book or are.

Do you have other books that are in your head and you're thinking, oh, maybe I should set up an author's website.

Tell us, tell us what's going on there.

Yeah.

So I think that writing books becomes once you do it, it's.

And again, I wrote a children's book.

Obviously it's very different than writing a one or two hundred page book in another genre.

But for writing this, it's almost like addictive.

You just, you have so much fun doing it.

It's such a passion project.

So my book actually ends with a tiny cliffhanger at the end.

So there is going to be another book featuring the same characters, Mama and son Goose having conversations about real life.

Because that's how I can write.

Because I spend lots of time talking to my son about big topics.

Another book is already partially written.

And so yes, I have thought about doing a website for just this particular book, but knowing that I already want to have another one, I do have an idea in mind for an author website.

And then I feel like once I have that second one done and can have two books on there, that's when I will start running an author webpage.

I do think that's a really great tool and a great way so that you can.

For me, from a compensation standpoint, obviously if I'm selling the book, I could have an order link on there to go directly order through IngramSpark or I could have it ordered from my stash where I pre order and then I can make a larger amount of money when I order in bulk and then resell them.

So that is a hope of mine in the long run.

So I'm.

The reason I ask is that in the interviews I've done, generally what happens is people do it.

Authors come at it in two ways when it comes to their website development.

They either have their name as their website or they'll take their main character and the main character will be the name of their website.

Now, for example, my five grandchildren are co authors in our book and we have a book series.

It's called Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain bear.

We've written 38 stories.

Now we haven't produced 38 books yet, but we are working on our second one which is behind me, the book we named our website after our main character.

So there's a different couple of different ways of doing it for sure.

So if you're going to definitely go like I was talking to, I actually we just helped a book author who launched his fourth book and he wrote three books in the series and then he decided, oh, I've got a different idea for an another book which wasn't in the series.

So he definitely named his website after himself as an author's website.

Cause he knew that he was going to eventually branch out.

So gives you.

It just gives you some food for thought.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I appreciate that because that is.

That was some of the hang up.

And I laugh because again, I am very grateful for all the clients I get to work with from a communications perspective as a consultant.

But then I laugh because sometimes I feel like I'm the worst client to have because I can be very indecisive and never wanna pull the trigger on anything.

And I'd rather work on anybody else' project but my own.

A lot of times I have these ideas that just take a long time to bring them full away from start to finish.

So that is definitely in the works.

And I appreciate your guidance on that because that was again, I was very close to just pushing through a one page website just for hope.

It's a blanket.

And I thought I'm gonna pause here because then I wanna have to manage more than one website or sunset this one and do another one.

And so I would rather take pause and push something out a little later, maybe a little late to the party versus having to do the extra double work.

Absolutely.

I know what you're saying in terms of motivation.

I know we talked about your motivation, like how the book came to be.

Is there any other motivation that you can think of that inspires you to.

You said you went out for your walks and stuff like that.

So what was going on in your head and what finally motivated you to bring your book to market?

Sure.

It was so interesting because going through that hard season in our lives, I just remember we again live in the beautiful area, the Lehigh Valley.

And we have this fish hatchery there that has just fish everywhere, trees, heron, eagles, all these beautiful birds flying around.

It's just, it's very.

It's breathtaking.

So if you are a spiritual person at all, I feel like going and sitting or walking in those spaces is just a little piece of heaven on earth, if you ask me.

I remember just sitting on a bench crying one day my dog's looking at me like what?

Why are we not walking and just saying God?

I said, I believe in a prayer.

I said, God, I know that you are the author of my life and I really wish you would just give me a sneak peek of the next chapter or cliff Notes and this was before writing a book during Lent season came on my heart.

And I just feel like it was some of those early prayers where God just kept.

He was so faithful and with me during that really hard season that I really feel like it was the understanding or the belief that God is author of our lives.

And feeling like he's this wonderful Creator gave us this big beautiful world to live in and that he all of us have this desire for creativity and that this was a way for me to process my grief in a creative, very fruitful way that would also honor, honor God.

So that was really what pushed me through.

But even years before that, becoming a mom was really hard for me.

I am very passionate about my work and I was that mom who was on a 12 week maternity leave from a really great company with a fabulous maternity leave and started freelancing because I just, I knew that my son was this incredible gift that was given to me.

But my identity couldn't just be being a mom now.

So I was able to actually take a tiny step back from work and work part time for the first two years of his life, which I was really grateful for.

It gave me a lot of balance.

But in that first year of his life, we took our first big family vacation and we went to the beach.

And I remember waking up early one morning to take my son.

We were strolling and going on the boardwalk and I just felt this great sense of overwhelm, of I'm on vacation, I should be having a great time and I'm feeling overwhelmed and stressed and I just felt this little like whisper in my head of just focus on the eternal.

And I'm like, what did that mean?

But what it's really how it's really played out in my life.

And again I felt like that was God and his trying to get through to me is that there is a whole world out there that's crazy.

And we can all get caught up in the day to day and what's going on.

But ultimately there's this bigger picture.

And if you can take a step back and really see what that bigger picture is, I realized that there was this opportunity to impact something outside of my little stress ball of a life that day.

And so for me, I've really seen that manifest and that I feel like children and really pouring into the lives of children is where I'm called to live my life.

And so I've made some really intentional choices.

Like I had lots of opportunities in front of me to do things, but my priorities teach Sunday School, I coach kids, basketball.

You know, we're being called, I think, as foster parents, foster adoptive parents.

And so I really tried to build my life around ways where I can at least impact and have a legacy that's going to live beyond me, and that's in the next generation of kids.

And so I think that through everything, through those early conversations and prayers of in the few weeks after my miscarriage, I feel like all of that has just pushed me towards writing children's books.

So I'm glad I was able to get my first one out.

But I really feel like I got more in the tank because it's just very worthy mission.

And I just love what I feel like I'm called to do in my life.

Tell us about your character development, because I know you talked about that when we first started this conversation, but go a little deeper into the character development.

Yeah.

So I laugh because I think that's an area where again, in picture books, sometimes you can get really deep a character development and sometimes it's a little bit more surfacey.

So I really have Mama Goose and Son Goose.

They don't really even have official names in the book when they're talking to each other, but it's.

It's a mother and a son.

And the mom has all these nicknames for her son, which are nicknames I have for my son.

So he's just going to eye roll probably as he gets into his teenage years.

Then I call him Sweet Boy or Handsome and things like that.

But it's just really a tender relationship where they have just a ton of conversations.

And so I really wanted it to just.

There is a scene in the book, it's the mom sitting at the table, like drink coffee because I feel like that's always me just on set in my coffee the night before so I can wake up and face the day.

Because I have this very.

I have an early rise or energetic son.

And so this Goose is my son 100%, where he just.

He has a lot of questions.

He's a little bit of a hot mess, but he had just a very patient mom who's happy to help explain things and help him relate what's going on.

Right.

And your son, when you develop the characters.

Yes.

That's how you visualized it?

Yeah, it very much us because we have big conversations.

My.

When I had my son, my husband was on night shift.

And so I had a lot of alone time with him, especially overnight during those meetings.

And honestly, what I would do when he would wake up is I would Just sit and read children's books to him.

And so we just have always had a relationship that revolved around reading and conversation.

And so that's very much reflected in the character development.

So maybe I didn't develop the characters more because they are us.

And so they're really just an extension of us now in book form.

So tell us a little bit about the theme of the book and a few words.

Sure.

Yeah.

So I'd say the theme.

One thing that was very important to me is that my books would rhyme.

And so this book and at least my next one are going to rhyme.

I love poetry and I love when books can be sing songy, especially at bedtime, because it's a very wonderful way to lull children into sleep.

So these hope is a blanket.

And my next book for sure are written that way.

So really, again, quick summary of the story is just that it's bedtime, our blankets lost, and we are on a mission to find it.

So again, it's a travel throughout the house.

I think they go to their den, they go to the laundry room, they go outside to look for the blanket.

And they're just talking about how the blanket is used as a picnic blanket.

It gets really clean in the wash and it's all warm and fuzzy and you feel like it's fit for a queen.

It's a hiding place for hide and seek and does a great job with that.

And so it's really just all these fun ways because kids, my son doesn't know.

The other night he built a blanket for it.

And again, he's old, so he's still very much into blankets and the comfort that they bring and the play pattern.

So really that's just.

It's talking about all the ways that blankets are special and that we play with them and use them.

But again, it just the.

It's mostly the mother's words that become sing song you were just talking about as she's doing that.

It's something that's such an easy surface thing, but goes a little bit deeper in talking about how that blanket really is painful.

The central.

What would be the central lesson or teaching from that?

Yeah, I think the central lesson would be is that in the wake of loss, there's hope on the other side of a hard situation.

Okay, now I'm curious.

I know you said you've got a second book in the series.

Your first book ends with a little bit of a teaser or a hook to the next one.

Tell us a little bit about your writing process.

So let us Know, how does your brain work?

How do you think about all this when you're thinking?

Okay.

I'm now working on my second book.

Take us through the process.

I don't know that I really want anyone to see inside my brain because it's crazy.

So I'll let you behind the curtain.

Otherwise this might turn into a horror podcast.

Yeah.

So with this story, it's funny because I had gone through a couple different things and I knew I wanted to write about Hope, but the story really came together like that.

There at the end where I was, we have a cabin, a little property in the Poconos of Pennsylvania, which is this really cozy, beautiful place with mountains and lakes.

And I was really.

My son called me into his room in the middle of the night and asked me to snuggle with him, and I did.

I woke up there the next day, and it was that, like, calm, soothing place of being, like, under a blanket that.

Ah.

And so I really just woke up that day and had all these ideas flowing and little notes written.

But that's really like.

The story came together super fast from just like an aha moment that I had inspired by just everyday life as a mom.

Because we've all been there where we got in the middle of the night.

Mom.

And but for this next one, because I know these characters a little bit now and I know my topic and kind of the topic I want to teach about.

Again, where my first book was about Hope, I'm going same thing where I'm using a metaphor.

So it's a different concept, but using another physical, tangible item that all kids will be very familiar with.

And again, just.

And showing those correlations.

So the second one, I think is a lot will be a lot easier.

I think the biggest thing was coming up with kind of the storyline, and I haven't quite perfected it yet, but I'm about 70% of the way there for what I want to happen.

And now and for coming up with kind of the little poems that describe, again, building the metaphor and explaining the symbolism again.

When I was going through my first hope with my word of the year that year.

And so I was actually doing a lot of biblical research.

I laugh because I have my laptop popped up on a book, but it's a Strong's Concordance, which is a dictionary for the Bible.

And so basically it's.

Whenever there's a word in the Bible, it goes through the Greek and the Hebrew translations of it.

And so really, a lot of my research for my first book just came through this Digging into my word of the year and what it was and what the Bible said about hope.

And so a lot of those symbols are actually inspired by the Bible, so they're not overtly biblical for those who are not religious.

So it can still just be a fun, surface bedtime story.

But for people of faith, I think the book has a lot deeper meaning and the second one will as well.

Okay, so that's part of your writing process.

Yep.

I'm also curious about when you started on your journey and you finally received the first copy of your finished book.

And you might have to take a couple of steps back, but I'm curious about your.

How you measure the success of this book.

How are you measuring it?

So what was your idea for success and what.

That's a reality now that you've had the book in the market?

Yeah, that's a fantastic question, Rick.

I don't know that I really had a picture of success.

It's interesting because with social media, we can follow authors and influencers and watch what they do all day, and there's obviously or can easily be the sense of comparison or fear of missing out of, oh, what are they doing?

What do I need to do over here?

And so it's really easy to get caught up in a life like that.

And I've tried to see what success looks like for some people, but also let it be open for what it looks like for me.

For me, success is when I hear from a friend, hey, I just had somebody who's going through something hard.

I need to order a copy of your book to help them.

And, wow, that's.

For me, success is knowing that something I did, something I wrote, is helping another person.

And so every time I hear a story like that or I know a friend reaches out to me, hey, do you have a copy?

I'll buy one directly from you, and you can just send me a pay link to me.

That's one measure of success.

Knowing that book is getting into the hands of somebody who really needed it and is going through a hard thing.

There's obviously measures of success, like you talked about, sold your first 100 books.

That's a milestone, right?

I'm getting into a bookstore.

I found that getting placement in a bookstore is a bigger challenge than I thought it would be.

And I think that independent bookstore owners have a lot that they're facing today.

Obviously, they're competing with giants like Amazons and things like that.

And so I don't envy the situation that they're in as small business owners, but I trying to get into a bookstore has been harder than I thought.

So being your own.

But do you think of yourself as a small business owner with having a single title?

Not for my book.

I have my own professional business so I definitely see myself as a business owner there.

But in terms of building my.

I don't know if I'll have a book empire one day or what success looks like.

I don't know.

I know I'd love to write multiple and really I have this dream of early retirement because my husband gets to have early retirement because he got a really great job with a pension when we were really young and we've been together since we were like 0 years old.

Not really 0, but 21.

And so we got married young and just we've been fortunate to build this really big beautiful life together.

So I really have this dream of being able to operate in my own space as a communications consultant.

But also I love that like my hope would be.

I don't know if it's a five or a ten year goal, but I love this.

Half of my annual income were from book writing and from proceeds from my book.

And I'd love if there were future paid opportunities to come speak and read and do things like that.

I think that's a future measure of success.

But the success right now, sometimes it's just really small things.

Hey, I got a couple copies of my book in the store or this week I sent out a couple copies of my book or I'm going to go do a book signing in a few weeks and I'll sell a few more copies that day.

And yeah, I think success for every individual author really needs to be unique to you.

And you can't just look around at what other people are doing.

Let it inspire you and help give you ideas.

But don't feel you gotta make sure that comparison is the thief of joy.

And so you have to just get be very mindful of that when you're working on your books for coming up with what success looks like.

And for me it just looks different from week to week.

And like you said, it seems to me you're the role of writing.

You envision it five or ten years down the road as being a bigger part of your life.

Yes.

Yep.

I feel like this is just the start.

So again I just going through life and seeing life as a parent and just having this really great community of friends and seeing all the things they're going through.

There's so many book ideas that come out of those relationships.

So I just Continue.

Yeah.

That life that I'm living, I'm sure.

Just like Rick riding with your grandkids.

I'm sure the book idea, you said you have 38 stories.

That's fantastic that you have all these storylines because you're just capturing life and what's going on around you.

Yeah, it's fun.

Because you know what?

I just had one of the.

One of my guests on the show just launched his fourth book, and he had originally said to me, you know what, Rick?

One and done.

That was his going in position.

One and done.

Here he is four books later.

The one and done.

I have yet to talk to any children's book authority.

If I dig down deep enough, there is no one.

And done.

And so, yeah, so it's definitely interesting.

And so my grandson, the author, asked if we would be.

If I would be part of his book launch team.

And I said, absolutely.

And then we ended up, I said to him, would you mind if my youngest grandson read your book and did a book review and we made it into a podcast show?

And he said, yeah, that'd be fantastic.

So that's what we did.

So we were part of.

Awesome.

Yeah.

So we had fun.

And you know what?

That was something that I don't think too many people do with their grandchildren.

So, you know, to do something a little different outside the box.

That's excellent.

No, I love that.

And I told my son, I'm like, if you want to write a couple lines for the next book, I'll give you author credit.

So he's got to want to show up and do the work.

So you know what you could do, too.

I have to show you this.

So we did up our own bookmark, and there's a QR code.

I've talked about this before, but we actually did an audiobook of our first book.

And my middle granddaughter, she's the narrator of the book.

So what we do is if you buy our book, we give you a bookmark and you get the audiobook also with it.

That is fantastic.

And you know what's interesting is my son had a phenomenal kindergarten teacher.

And I said to her, if I ever write a book, one day I'm going to narrate it.

Because she just had this perfect, very sweet, lovely kindergarten teacher voice.

So I still do see her.

So her son and my son play.

They're a level apart.

They play flag football in the same league.

And so I still run into her.

So there you go.

At our school, that's what you do.

I love it.

So I'M curious.

Andrea, advice for aspiring authors.

Now that you've brought your book and you went on that journey, what would you say to people who said, I just love to get my book out of me?

How do I do this?

I think everybody is.

How is unique.

I was so blessed to have a very patient publisher who again, she owns that book doula title that she moniker she's given herself because she really does help you birth something.

But I think my advice would just be that it's worth it.

I know that sometimes the process seems daunting and long and it's.

And I'm the first person that when I sometimes start a project and that can be a myriad of ways, like renovating our basement to this office space.

Like, I have such a hard time envisioning the end picture that I get so caught up in the details and all the steps it's going to take together that I don't just take the first step.

So I think maybe that's really my advice is just take the first step.

So maybe it's writing a few lines, maybe it is calling a publisher and having the good fortune of meeting your own book Doula.

Or please call Jennifer Bright of Bright Communications of Hellertown, Pennsylvania.

She's fantastic.

But whatever your first step is, just get started.

And once you take that first step, there's always another one that comes after it and it just starts to flow.

And so to not go in with this mindset of this is how to write a book.

And it's very formulaic.

I'm sure there's publishers out there that have a formula.

But I think because it's a creative process, right.

It's really hard to make it so prescriptive like that.

And so just do the first thing, figure out your first thing is, and then just continue going on the next thing.

And it really does eventually come.

And like I said, mine just flooded.

Like, I was literally writing the last line on Easter Sunday, driving home from our cabin, like, in a little notebook.

And then it was like the next day I started transcribing it.

And then I'm like sending copies to my illustrator and saying, hey, I need some picture ideas for this.

And, yeah, it just, it really started to flow so well.

The second one come exactly the same way.

It already isn't the same way.

So for me, I wish I had something prescriptive, but.

So just do the first, do the next, do the first thing and then do the next thing and it's worth it.

So keep going.

I couldn't agree with you more and it's nice because that's one of the reasons I started this podcast show is I did it and I did it different than you did it.

Everybody does it different.

But at the end of the day, guess what we did.

We did it.

Yeah, we did it.

Exactly.

So it's possible for everyone, that's for sure.

Thank you for sharing that encouragement for readers.

Why should they buy your book?

Yeah, sure.

So really, again, I wanted to write a book that was beneficial for parents and kids.

A lot of times after I share a copy of this book, I'll get a note back from a mother especially and say, your book made me cry.

It was beautiful and I loved the symbolism.

So for me, it's why buy my book.

It's that especially if you're going through a hard thing and you're having a hard time helping your child process a grief or loss situation, this book is a fantastic way to do it.

And another thing I learned through some of my book process is that sometimes you best laid plans.

My book actually has a couple blank white pages in the back of it and so I've actually encouraged people to use that to write about where they're seeing hope and to write a date of here's what I'm struggling with today.

Maybe you're fresh off a locks and you're writing today's March 11th.

Cried all day, read this book and cried through bedtime.

And then maybe you read, maybe you pick it up again in a couple weeks or a couple months and life looks a little different.

We'll do a little journal and talk about that.

And then maybe you start to be able to process your journey in a really, I think productive and helpful way where you are starting to anticipate hope and goodness even though maybe what you've just faced was something really hard and or terrible.

But so pick up this book if you want to start to see good things on the other side of something hard.

And so again, it's an interesting genre to be in like a grief and loss category.

That was not something on my bingo card.

Right.

Was not looking to be in that genre.

But now that I'm in it and in that space, I know when somebody picks up this book it has the opportunity to help change their life and help them process something really hard.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

I always ask this question and you've been open and sharing, but I'm curious, is there something that your final thoughts Is there something you said?

Oh, I wish I would have said that.

Or I wish Rick would have asked me that question, Andrea, what would that have you got some final thoughts that you'd like to share?

I am an open book as you've said, so it is interesting being an author.

I think, Rick, I would almost turn the table on you is just you.

I want to just say thank you that you are using your influence and your experience to really help elevate other people around you.

And I think thank you.

That's such a noble cause and something so it's worth.

I just want to express thank you and gratitude for having me on and giving me this space to share my story.

That is such a gift and a lovely thing that you've given to me.

So I just want to say thank you.

Thank you, Andrea.

I want to thank you so much for being a guest on Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors.

Your generosity of time, time and wisdom, it's just been fantastic.

I know that's gonna benefit a lot of people and that's comes down.

I love your word of hope because there's always lots of hope in the world if you look around and I really appreciate that.

The other thing that we'll do for the listeners is we'll make sure that all the social media links and you and any other resources you mentioned, we'll make sure they get in the show notes and thank you.

The other thing that I want to say to people, feel free to share this episode with anyone who you think will be inspired or enjoys hearing about Andrea and her children's book Hope is a Blanket.

So thank you, Andrea.

Thanks, Rick.