Monica Voikut Deniston.

Maggie the military rat.

Monica, for joining us on the Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Office, real pleasure to have you on the show.

Thank you for having me.

Before we jump in and talk about Maggie the military Rat, first I got to tell you something about myself here a little bit because we're both military rats.

Or as you talk about at the back of the book, the military brat, in my case, my dad, was actually in the Canadian armed forces.

We were called army brats.

Okay.

And that was the only difference.

And it's interesting because everything that you said you wrote in the little blurb at the back of the book was so true.

And even to this day.

And I don't know about yourself, but I went to a Department of National Defense school.

Okay.

I don't know if they have that in the American military forces.

They do.

They have the Department of Defense Education, DoDEA agency, and they run like the overseas schools.

My children personally have not gone to DODEA schools.

Okay.

We've had one overseas assignment and they actually went to an international school there.

But yes, that is a thing that US Military brats also experience.

My first three schools were all Department of National Defense schools.

Of course, they were all teachers from civilian walk of life.

I don't think there was too many.

I never even thought about that until you and I are talking.

I never even thought about was any of the teachers or their spouses in the military.

I know exactly what it's all about when you talk about the military rat and even your story about your child coming up and saying, I'm not a rat.

That was quite cute.

I'd love to discuss the inspiration and the origin story and REM and remind the audience that you are a military spouse.

Jump right in.

And this whole children's book journey started for you.

Yeah.

So I've always loved children's books and reading.

I, as a young child, I grew up in Romania and I would listen to records of fairy tales and I would draw the pictures.

So I've loved stories for as long as I can remember.

And when my family moved to California when I was eight years old, I didn't speak any English.

And so my mom would take me to the library and we would get the maximum number of books, which was 25 back then.

So I would get Richard Scarry books and all kinds of classic children's books.

And that's how I learned English.

And so I think in the back of my mind, I've always wanted to write a children's book.

And when my oldest child, my daughter, when she was 3, we were about to move to the east coast from California.

It was our first military move with children.

And around that time she heard the phrase military brat and she said, mommy, I'm not a rat.

So you, you alluded to that.

But yeah, that's basically how the idea came to me.

I just thought, how adorable.

A military rat.

And I, I had people throughout my book journey try to convince me to do a military mouse because it would be cuter.

But I said, that's not the same.

It's.

To me, it's part of the pun is why it's funny.

And I think that Maggie is such a lovable character that by the time you read the book, you get over the fact that she's a rat and she's just like her own little creature.

Absolutely.

And very cute.

Great illustration.

Oh, the illustrator.

She has been just so wonderful to work with.

And she really got my vision.

Absolutely.

No question about it.

How long ago Monica was.

When did you, how long ago did you start your journey into?

It was a long journey.

So it was around 2017.

So we're in 2025 now.

It was in 2017 when I got the idea and then, then we moved to rhode island in 2017.

And so I got the idea, wrote it down, took like a children's book class when I lived in Rhode island, tried to write, do the pictures myself, realized very quickly that I'm not a professional illustrator.

And so the book kept getting put on hold because of the military lifestyle.

We moved a few times, including an international move.

We moved to Spain in 2018.

And so the book, I say it took me six years to publish it, but I, I wasn't working on it continuously for six years.

I would pick it up and I would do some work and then get put back on the back burner.

But really, from the time when I got really serious, I really finalized my manuscript.

It was like about a two month period of really working on the manuscript to get it to where it is now.

And then I had to find an illustrator later on.

And the illustration process took about six months, but I had to finance the illustrations and the printing of the book.

So then I ran a Kickstarter and that took time.

It's a long game.

It's something that you have to be passionate about your book and you have to keep with it.

It's interesting because I saw the Kickstarter thing.

I definitely got that later in questions for you about the Kickstarter.

It's Interesting about your journey because.

Very similar for us as I actually co wrote our children's book with my oldest granddaughter.

And so again, it all started out on us just having these adventures together and there were so many that ultimately it turned into her saying, papa, we got to take these pictures off of your iPhone, which were.

There was thousands, and turn it into a children's book.

And that's how that all started for us.

And so it's neat because you've got this main character with Maggie and we've got.

Our main character is adorable bear named Caboose.

And Yeah.

So thank you.

It's great because I, I'm just curious too it when you started putting this all together.

I'd love to talk to you a bit about your publishing approach because it's.

Your publishing approach sounds similar to ours, but I always say to people there's really three types of publishing.

There's traditional, there's self publishing, then there's.

What I'm finding a lot of people do is it's called hybrid publishing, which is a combination of traditional and self publishing.

So tell us your publishing approach.

Yeah, so I am fully self published.

I did reach out to traditional publishers in the beginning and got met with either complete silence or rejections.

And I got pretty, what I felt was pretty far with a military specific publisher right before the pandemic hit.

And then that was really exciting.

But then it turns out they had just forgotten to email me my rejection.

So for months I was waiting during the pandemic thinking that like, today's gonna be the day.

And then it was like.

And finally reached back out to them again after months and they said, oh, we sent you the rejection.

Did you not get it right?

But it was thanks to that publisher really that the story is what it is.

Because they wanted to see a second, like a second draft.

They liked the idea, they wanted me to develop it more.

And it was that when I talked about the two months period where I got it to where it is now.

Yes.

That push of them wanting to see a better version that really got me to like make it what it is today.

So I'm grateful that they ultimately rejected me because I got to choose my own illustrator.

And I think it's better than it would have been had it gone with it.

So you really got some education for free.

I did.

I.

I did.

Fantastic.

I have my own publishing imprint, it's called Penny Wishes Press.

And I just, I wanted it something that wasn't my name.

And I, I printed with a company in the United States printed about either 2,000 or 2,500 books, I'm trying to remember.

And that's.

That's the hardcover.

That's the hardcover.

Correct.

And then the.

The paperback is through KDP on Amazon and I recently just put it on Ingram Spark as well.

Okay.

Yes.

And so just so you know, for everyone listening is that.

And it's great because everybody has a different approach.

So it's fun to talk to you because your approach is a little bit different from other people that I've talked to.

And so I'd like to jump into that a bit more.

In our case, we.

We did the same as you.

We set up our own publishing company called Caboose, the Rocky Mountain Bear Publishing Den.

Like in a bear den.

Yeah.

So we had some fun doing that.

And we just do a paperback.

So we do it through kdp, as you said.

And we also do it through Ingham Sparks.

We just haven't got into the hardcover portion of it yet.

And there's always pros and cons about all of that.

So I noticed for you, like you mentioned, you did the paperback through KDP Amazon and now you've also going with ingramsparks, which also allows you to do a hardcover through them also.

Correct, correct.

But I will not be doing a.

Hardcover through them because I'm sure that the cost.

Right.

The cost and then the quality is not as good.

I really wanted.

One thing that was important to me was printed endpapers.

I love when you open a book and I can show you on my hardcover, the printed endpapers look like this and you can't get that on IngramSpark.

So I just, I think I sent my books, my hardcovers to Amazon through Amazon Advantage, which jury's still out whether that's been very benefitful for me.

I think I do better selling my hardcovers at in person events.

That's right.

That's.

And I'm.

I might shift towards just only having paperbacks on Amazon because it is.

You have to send them to them.

You have to pay the shipping for that.

I will say one thing which is pretty cool.

This is a beautiful book.

And when I open it up and you.

I'm going to open it up to what like you did.

Look how beautiful that is inside.

Thank you.

Yeah, you're showing.

I did include the end papers in the paperback.

For those listening, it's a gorgeous book.

Here's the cool thing about it.

I live in Alberta, Canada, near the Rocky Mountains.

And guess where this book was printed in Canada?

In Alberta, actually.

Not not very far from my house.

I can probably drive there in about 15 minutes.

That is the cool thing about KDP, and I think probably Ingram is similar.

Although I found the Ingram quality is not quite as good as kdp.

The colors aren't as vibrant for some reason.

Yeah, you know what, it's funny you should mention that because somebody said to me, oh, you've got to be on Ingram.

They do a much better job of printing.

So of course I started with Amazon and then I thought, okay, I've already set up the account.

So I ordered an author's copy.

When it arrived, I really didn't see any difference.

Actually, I was happier with Amazon's printing.

At the end of the day.

I'm just saying to most people, you'll probably see that there's not a heck of a lot of difference in quality between Ingram.

Like, we get so many compliments on our book.

Quality of the print.

People really enjoy it.

Yeah, I think the illustrations have a lot.

Like, if you look at this for vivid colors.

Yes.

When you think about that, Amazon does a pretty good.

They're using local printers within their marketplaces, so it could be different.

I'm curious and I know you talked about it a bit, but let's just dive a little deeper into your hardcover strategy and your saw and your paperback strategies.

Talk to us about the two different approaches and why that's important to you.

My.

My kind of primary objective with this book is to get a high quality children's book about the military life experience into the hands of military kids.

That is my number one goal.

And so I really wanted the highest quality book I could get and I wanted it to be printed in the US that felt, I felt like with the fact that it's about a US military family and we were a military family, it was just a good thing to have it printed in the US all that being said, it's more expensive to print hardcovers locally than it would be overseas by quite a lot.

I had to price my book accordingly.

My suggested retail price for My hardcover is 1999, which is about the going rate these days for a hardcover.

I don't feel like it's too expensive, but it does make it the.

The.

There's not a.

There's not a lot of money to be made in selling books, I'll tell you that much.

My strategy with the hardcovers is I sell them on Amazon through Amazon Advantage and I also sell them from my website and then I also sell them at like school readings at.

I've got.

I'VE been to like an air show and sold on base before, so things like that.

And that's honestly.

It's what I put into it, which is hard because if I'm.

I teach part time at a law school and if I'm during my semester and I'm not putting all the time in marketing and pushing my book, I see it, I see it in my sales.

It's really.

I'm a one person operation.

It hurts.

My paperbacks are more passive income.

It's just set up on KDP and Ingram.

But I'm not running ads right now.

So unless you're seeing my book on Instagram, which I do have a presence there, or hearing about it, word of mouth, you're.

You might not see it.

It gets lost.

So again, it's, it is a tough thing and you have to work at it constantly.

Like, I don't.

I had someone the other day say, oh, congrats on all your success with your book.

And I was thinking, yeah, it's been successful, it's gotten awards and it's a good book.

And I, I'm proud of it.

So proud of it.

It's like my fourth child.

But I, I'm not making a ton of money from it.

Right.

I hope people understand that.

It's not like I'm.

If I give off that impression, I don't want people to think that because it's a tough.

You and I have met through Darcy Guyon.

Yes.

And so it's interesting because he.

That's one of the things he said to me.

He said when he does these school readings, everybody, all the kids thinks that he's a multimillionaire because he's a.

He's the children's book author.

And, and for most of us who are children's book authors, we know that's the furthest thing from the truth.

So.

So the one thing I noticed and, and I want to get it.

I want to talk to your.

I've got your website up on my iPad, but I want to talk to you a little bit.

I noticed and maybe I didn't look thorough enough, but maybe you can tell me.

I noticed you don't have a link to your paperback through your website.

Yeah, I guess that's something I could add and I should add eventually.

Uh, I think my thought with that, I don't know.

I.

I think I see my website as an outlet for buying more of the hardcover.

That's not a bad observation.

I mean, I should.

Should probably have a whole page that has my stockist on where you can buy the book.

Something I've been thinking about.

I, I, I was only curious because I, I was trying to figure out is this actually if, if it's your strategy.

I just want aspiring authors to know or anybody else who's published a children's book is everybody has a different strategy.

So that's what I'm curious about is was that a specific strategy you had in mind and how was it working for you?

Yeah, the last thing I would want is somebody to go to my website, click on Amazon and order my hardcover from Amazon because then I'm making less money than if they order it directly from me.

Okay.

I shouldn't say it's the last thing.

If someone was ordering my book, I'm happy with however they order it.

Honestly.

I'm just saying that.

My thought, I think was that the, my website is the place to get signed hardcovers.

That is the only place other than I also sell on spousely, which is like an Etsy but for military first responder families.

And I also sell my books through them.

Maybe just talk a little bit about spousely.

I'm actually interviewing another author, but not till April and she's published through Spousely.

And they're not actually, they don't published, they're not like a publisher.

They are, it's like an online marketplace where military connected or first responder connected people can sell their wares.

So it could be their books, their products, their shirts, whatever they make.

So in that sense it's similar to Etsy.

And so you have your own storefront on their website.

They receive a small commission from purchases.

But it's really, it's a good deal for the people who are selling.

Like they don't have to, you don't have to pay a ton to, to sell.

Yes, falsely.

But then you're tapping into that network.

Theoretically.

That's nice.

That's real.

That's, that's fantastic.

And I did have a look at it.

I, I love your website.

It's really cool.

And so it's almost like, how do I put it?

I know you, your website is your name and you've got of course, Maggie the Military Rat.

And, and the neat thing about it is there's lots of artwork that was inspired through the book.

Correct.

That has gone into your website.

What do you mean?

Like you're using some of the graphics from your book in the.

Oh, yes, yes, that's right.

Okay.

And I just tell people that because I'm curious, did you launch your website first or publish Your book first?

Yeah.

So I actually had my website made for me by a friend who I paid to make it.

She is a professional website website designer and I love her style and wanted to support her by hiring her.

She did a fantastic job, I think.

So I definitely had the book first and then the website to answer your question.

But I.

I really was torn on whether I should name it after my book and make it more like a Maggie the Military Rat site or if it should be my name because I do have kind of an unusual name.

It's just long.

I have.

My middle name is Voiku and a lot of people don't know how to pronounce that.

But I also wanted a professional author website.

I think that's important.

So I decided in the end to focus on making it more of an author website where I also sell my books instead of just making it a book website.

I figured if I ever write more books down the road, I can just add them to the website.

But if I just about my book, then I would have to make another website if I wrote a different book or not.

Exactly.

And you know what, I always talk to people about that because I seen most children's book authors definitely do it with their name or a variation and I understand exactly why they're doing that.

In my case, I actually have myself and five other co authors.

Oh.

And they're my grandchildren.

Okay, got it.

Okay.

I remember that.

That would be far too many.

Understood.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the pot.

The positive thing for us is that when we wrote our book, we called it the Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear.

And even the way the first book ends, it talks about all these adventures that Caboose is going to go through over the months and years that follow.

That was our approach.

So I'm.

When I talk to the audience, I'm just trying to let them know you could.

You have to think about what's your going to do with your website, what you as a children's book author are going to do and then figure out your strategy from there.

So in your case, you have other stories in you.

I'm actually writing book two in the Maggie series right now.

And in some sense maybe I should have gone with the name Maggie the Military Rat because I think there will be three books in the series and I'll probably write those before I write anything else.

But what I've actually done is I've bought the URL maggie the militaryrat.com and it just redirects you to my website.

So if somebody does type that in, it'll still take you to my website.

And it's interesting you should say that because that's what I did with.

Even though our primary site is Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear, you'll find the Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors.

We actually have our podcast Home is on there.

But if you typed in Adventures in the heart of children's bookauthors.com it's just there.

Yeah.

It just redirects you so.

Exactly.

Thank God for technology nowadays.

Right?

Right.

Yeah.

At least there's that functionality.

And what's interesting you should say that because you were talking about you have probably at least three Maggie the Military Rat books in you.

Yeah.

And maybe more that may spin off, but you never know.

Grace might have her own little book or who knows?

Right.

So you do have that flexibility.

Because I was talking to Darcy Gyant and he's about to launch his fourth book.

The first three books he wrote, children's books that he wrote are a series.

And now his fourth book is going to be.

It's totally separate from his original series.

So I can see why people might have that attraction to keep it in their children's book author's name.

Yeah, you figure your name doesn't change.

Usually with your book coming first.

How did.

How did you actually work the launch of your website?

Like, how far behind were you when your website came to life?

So my book, I ran a Kickstarter for my.

So the kind of.

The first thing that I did that was like public facing was my Instagram.

I started an Instagram Maggie the Military Rat.

And I started posting and I would literally post like picture of my desk and say I'm working on this book.

Or I would post a picture of me and my illustrator that we were like meeting about the book and just try to get excitement for.

For the book.

So I did that.

I'd say I got serious about posting on Instagram maybe in late 2020.

And then in mid, like in July 2023 is when I ran my Kickstarter.

And by that point I think I had about 500 followers or something.

And I was trying to raise 10, 000.

In the end, I raised $17,000.

But that was all via social media.

I had a Facebook page too.

So anytime I post on Instagram, it auto posts to Facebook.

So I have some followers on Facebook as well.

And that was my strategy for quite a while.

I think my website, my first website I made on Wix, it was a free site that I made myself.

And I think I had it launch around the time my book was coming out or maybe a month before.

I had already run a Kickstarter and I think that I was.

The books were being printed when I worked on the website.

Okay.

And the website said, like, coming soon.

And then it had the link to the Kickstarter so you can click on the link and read about my story.

So the.

The nice thing about Kickstarter is it's a website where you tell the story of whatever you're making.

And so that served almost like a website for a while until my WIX website was up and running.

Okay.

I don't know how many people discover me by my website.

It's probably not that many.

Honest.

It's.

It's hard with the way the algorithms work and search results, and I feel like I could probably spend a lifetime trying to figure out how to get to the top of the search page.

I with you.

After we launched our book, they said, oh, where's your home?

And I said, what do you mean, home?

And they said, where's your website?

And I just had never thought about that.

I was so excited with my granddaughter, with us just bringing the book to life and then finding out, oh, maybe you should have a website.

The why.

The reason I talked to you about Maggie the military rat, the graphics was that the positive thing for us is we had all these beautiful graphics, which when we went to website development, we were able to incorporate, and it just made for us a much nicer website.

Otherwise, I'm not sure.

I'm not sure what it would have looked like.

I just didn't have that kind of imagination without the graphics.

So it was cool to do it that way.

Don't you find that being a children's book publisher is if you give a mouse a cookie, it's like you do one thing and then you realize, oh, now I have to do this other thing, and that leads to something else.

And it's.

There's just always more that you need to do.

It's continuous on my iPhone and I just put in improvements for website.

And then I keep it like a shopping list, like you're going to the grocery store.

And so just in January, I had six items.

They weren't huge, but I just felt we needed to make the changes.

So that's what we did.

Do you do your website yourself then?

No, actually, I don't.

I'm very fortunate.

I have a.

The person who is actually our book formatter is also our graphic art.

He's a graphic artist and.

But he's not our illustrator and he does website design.

So I've been working with him for eight years.

But I'd written a couple of business books prior to self published business books.

That's how I ended up having some experience with publishing a children's book.

So, yeah, just a little bit different for sure.

Yeah.

Tell us a little bit about your website and your store and how you chose the items that you have on your website.

Store, how did you do that?

Yeah, so gosh, the store, that was also another big debate for me was what kind of store did I want?

Because there's different.

Like my website is made through Squarespace, which I liked for the ease of updating it myself.

But I was also considering Shopify, which is a lot more.

I've heard it's better for selling, but it's also much more expensive to maintain.

And I decided ultimately to go with Squarespace because they had the selling feature but the monthly price was a lot more reasonable.

And I figured if I don't sell a lot of books, which honestly I do not on my website, I'm not feeling the squeeze of having to pay so much money for a website.

Sometimes I wonder, will I be selling more if I had done Shopify?

Maybe, I don't know.

But it's always interesting because I actually one of the children's book authors I interviewed, she uses Printful and it's similar to Shopify, it's less expensive.

So I thought, oh, this is interesting because we don't have a, a store on our website and But I've been thinking about, oh, you know what, as a children's book author, you have to create some other forms of revenue.

I thought, I'll check into this.

So I looked at Printful, I looked at Shopify.

To your point, Monica, the Shopify was more expensive, but the one big difference was is they handled all of it.

So they even handled the processing of the payment.

And with Printful you had to get involved on that side of it.

And I thought if I'm going to go to a one stop shop, I want to be.

I want to use a service that's a one stop shop.

Interesting.

So Squarespace handles the payment as well.

They, I think they have.

I think what sets Shopify apart from what I can tell as a consumer is that Shopify often has the like one click where they've saved all your info and you can literally text your phone and then they've had your credit card info and it's very easy to Check out.

And so I think that Shopify has a leg up with that.

That's just my sense as a consumer.

But for my scale of business, I felt like I didn't want to be paying that much money.

As for what I'm selling in my shop.

So definitely the hardcovers of my book and then I have a few stickers that I sell and then also some postcards.

These were items that I made for my Kickstarter and they're just like leftovers from that.

The thing is that my illustrator.

I don't know how it is for you, but my illustrator kept her copyrights in her illustrations, which is very typical that illustrators, unless you're willing to pay a ton, they retain those rights.

So if I were to make more merchandise, I would have to get her permission or her sub license it from her.

Okay.

And I just haven't wanted to do that.

I'm sure she would be willing to work with me.

She's a wonderful person.

I just, I feel like there's nothing that I feel like is really missing.

Maybe a plushie.

I've had people ask me, do you sell stuffed animal Maggies?

And I see.

I see a market for that.

But I'm also.

Do I really want to get in the business of.

Of.

Of now shipping out toys to people?

Like, that's.

I want to pick up on what you're talking about.

Yes.

You probably see caboose in the background.

I do see Caboose in the background.

Here's the cool thing.

What happened was my granddaughter and I had to come up with our own character because she actually had plushies, but they were stuffies that this, her daycare lent her.

And that's how this whole idea got started.

So she was given.

There was two of them.

There was a rabbit named Georgia and a bear named George.

And they were brother and sister and they had their own suitcase and their own clothes.

When you left daycare and you're going on a trip, you got to take one of the plushies and their clothes with you.

We took Georgia with us, but.

And it was a lot of fun.

And we went all over the Rocky Mountains and we took Georgia to so many places it blow your mind.

Skiing and all these historic sites and stuff like that.

But anyways, when Kyra left the daycare and started school, we didn't have access to any of that stuff.

So we had to come up with our own plushie for our own stories.

And that ended up being a bear named Caboose.

But what happened was, again, we didn't know what Caboose looked like.

We just knew that Caboose would wear an engineering outfit because we named it at the.

After the what there used to be the end of the train.

So anyways, we.

I was.

My wife and I were in San Francisco, and we went into one of those build a bear kind of things, and we saw this engineering outfit with the engineering hat.

And guess what we created Caboose.

The reason I'm telling you this story is because what we did is we have an illustrator, too.

And we actually, because we supplied the main character, we had him sign a contract that he would not own the prop, the rights to the caboose.

Got it.

It gives us more flexibility because we don't have to worry about licensing rights because we own all of the characters that we've been developing with him, and the primary character being Caboose.

So that was just the difference for us.

I just checked into this again.

You have to order a minimum of a thousand units to have it done.

Now, what happened was when we first.

We have some book retailers that sell our book, and one.

One of them happens to be a friend who owns a store in the Rocky Mountains.

And he said to us, oh, Rick, where you should have a plushie with the book.

Because we do really well when you have a book and the main characters are stuffy.

And I said, oh, thanks, Mike.

But when I started checking into it, it's not that easy, because by the time you pay for all of that, you've probably got yourself a price on a stuffy that's just astronomical.

Doesn't make a lot of sense.

We're still trying to figure out how to do it, but I understand exactly what you're saying.

My husband said, for the Kickstarter, you should make a plastuffy for the Kickstarter.

And I said, I think something flat that mailed easily, like stickers, postcards, bookmarks.

That's how I'm gonna do it.

I.

I don't need to be dealing with shipping and packaging stuffies.

And.

And I've actually, I have.

There's this woman who.

She's in the Navy.

She has two kids, and she recently went on a deployment, and she sent me a picture of her children reading my book.

And they each had a little white rat that they were holding.

And I guess she just ordered them on Amazon.

And those are her kids, Maggie's.

And I just thought, that's brilliant.

You can just get, like a generic white rat stuffed animal.

It's funny you should mention that, because I Found a place that we can actually buy.

It's more the color than it is a stuff there.

But what we tried to do is find a small enough bear that the price was good.

And I just ordered some samples to have a look.

Because what we need to do is of course build the outfit.

Finding a local seamstress that maybe could do that.

So we're going to check that out, see where we end up in terms of pricing before we get too crazy.

But you hit it right on the button.

Being able to have your own rat or find a stuffy rat is.

Is important.

I'm going to show you something.

So I know that your audience can't hear this, but you already can't see this.

But you can see it.

It's a friend of mine made that.

It's a Maggie, the military rat made by my friend.

Yeah.

And it's.

It was really special that she actually made it for me.

I do have one stuffy made by a friend.

It's not for the audience.

It's a stuffy and a sitting with the American flag in a red wagon.

Yes.

Very cute.

Very cute.

Yeah.

So I.

Before we leave your website, I noticed another thing that you do that I haven't seen anybody else do.

They could be doing it as a children's book author, but I haven't seen it as predominant as.

As you've done it.

I noticed that you do a feature bio on your illustrator and your book designer.

Can you tell us why you gave them that much space on your website and tell us the why?

And is there any compensation for this?

So.

No, there's not any compensation.

I did it because without them my book would not be what it is.

And I'm really proud of my team, especially that it's an all female team.

That was intentional on my part.

I really, I just lucked out with the best team on my book.

So Elia Velazquez Murray, she's my illustrator.

I found her through SCBWI at Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

And she actually is local.

She lives about half an hour from me.

So we actually got to meet in person and throughout the process work on the book together.

And then my book designer, who I don't believe, I don't think she designed books anymore.

She took on a full time job, but she was a military spouse.

Actually she was former.

I think she was a veteran.

She's former military herself and a military spouse.

And they were both just so wonderful to work with that I felt like I wanted to recognize them.

And it started with the Kickstarter.

It's pretty common to do that on Kickstarters, that people highlight the team.

And then when I was making my website, I just thought, why not highlight who made the book?

First of all, very generous of you.

The only reason I bring it up is I, I want to trigger different things for people.

The other thing is it brings me back to what you talked about earlier, about it's not easy to make money as a children's book author.

Okay.

You're not doing this as a career in most cases.

And so you're always looking for how can you bring in at least some other revenue to help offset your costs.

And so it got me thinking, maybe what happens is that Monica, if they get a referral from your website, they give you no hundred bucks or.

Yeah, but at least it allows.

That's a good question to ask.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

For sure.

And that's what I want people to understand.

It might be a way.

Because I don't think if you brought your illustrator some business, she just say, oh, well, thank you very much.

She probably think, oh, what can I do for Monica?

And that may not be monetary.

It might be a free illustration or something like that.

I'm just throwing different ideas out at people to think about because it's the illustration, as Monica and I both know is the most expensive part of the book.

And so if you can find ways to offset those costs, that'd be fantastic.

Anyways, thank you for sharing that motivation.

Now, I know you talked about your.

Was it your son or your daughter?

That daughter.

Daughter that came up with the military rad.

Tell us, was she the main motivation or.

You said it was about a six year journey and there was all kinds of things that went on.

What kept you going?

What was the.

Now you had this great idea.

What kept you going through all this time?

I don't think I realized this at the time, but writing this book was very autobiographical for me.

I am Maggie.

I.

I'm married to someone in the military.

I did not grow up in a military family.

And I wanted to show my support for him somehow or do my part.

Right.

And so it was inspired both by my kind of wanting to find my place in the military life because when you move around and you're constantly having to create community wherever you go, it can be lonely and isolating.

And I think that I, I really empathize with military kids who are having a hard time and just seeing my own kids when they've, they've moved a few times and So I think for me it was like a very autobiographical thing of just wanting to find my place and my purpose.

And the book really gave me that.

So that's probably why I kept coming back to it.

Yeah, it's interesting because we all have our own connections.

I, I found this probably 95% of the time there's some personal reflection in the children's book, even for ourselves.

Like Caboose, if you notice, it starts with a K then.

And the reason being is my oldest granddaughter's name is Kira, which starts with a K.

That's how we ended up, because Caboose is really Kira.

And so that's why we made Caboose with a K.

And in the book, a lot of the adventures are with her papa, which happens to be me.

And so I'm in the book.

So I'm reflected in the book.

It's just the way it is.

But because you know what, every one of our stories, and we've written 38 stories, there's.

They're all based on some true event that happened to us.

And then we just turned it into a children's book.

That's so cool.

Talk to us about.

I know you mentioned this.

I want to talk about character development a bit because you said people at first said to you, oh, Monica, make it a mouse, not a rat.

Talk to us about Maggie's development and explain to us the significance also of Maggie.

Why Maggie?

Okay, so the character development.

It's funny that you ask because I was just looking at my notes from my critique partner back when I was really refining the book and she was asking me, like, how old is Maggie and does she have a family?

And she's asking me a lot of questions about who Maggie is.

And I like the idea of Maggie being kind of ageless.

She has qualities, but she, she has, she wants to be in the military.

So is she 18?

You're not really sure how old she is, but I think with her being small, children can relate to her.

And, and I did, like I said, I really like the idea that she's a rat.

That to me was a non negotiable and she's very earnest.

She's deeply patriotic and she wants to find a way to serve and nothing's gonna stop her.

So that's Maggie.

As for the name Maggie, it's actually the name of a street that we lived on.

And I just always have loved the name Maggie.

I like the Maggie, the military rat, like the alliteration.

Yes.

And I love the name Maggie too.

And then also One of my favorite children's books, which I think is out of print, but you can find it on Amazon used, is called the Maggie Bee, and it's about a little girl who sails away on a ship.

It's like a fantasy that she has that she's gonna go on this ship and her name is Margaret, and she names the ship the Maggie B.

And around the time when I was coming up with the Military Rat, we were reading that book a lot.

And so the combination of it being the idea of the forever home Maggie and then Maggie as the book I liked, it just.

Just flowed.

Maggie, the Military Rat.

Fantastic.

It's interesting because what I found, too, for myself being an army brac, was I could relate to Grace a lot because that was me.

I have pictures of my brother and I.

My brother's younger than me, but my dad in his uniform, and we were very young and.

Yeah.

And I was an army brat for 25 years and still am.

Like, I still go to reunions and stuff like that.

So it's quite interesting.

The thing I loved about Maggie, too, and I want to get into talking about a little bit about the theme of your book, but I.

If you said give me one word that describes Maggie, I would just say stick to it.

Iveness.

That's what.

Yeah, I was going to say persistent.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

And it's funny because that's the word I'd use to describe myself.

And so when we say it's autobiographical.

Fantastic.

Tell us a little bit about the theme of the book.

The book is really about not giving up on your dream, number one.

And then so not just because you're too small to do something in the way you thought you wanted to do it, or maybe you're too ratty or whatever.

You're.

It's.

You can still find another way to achieve your goal.

And then lastly, it's a friendship.

It's about.

I think it's really trying to get people to realize that even military kids serve in their own way.

And that just by being a friend to them and opening your heart to them, that's a way to serve as an RV brat.

The one thing that you had to learn to do was develop fast friends.

Yeah.

We were posted in Germany for four years, and it was a constant.

You probably saw this.

Any of your postings.

It was a constant rotation of people, and you develop these friendships, and then.

All of a sudden they're gone when you live there.

So they're.

Actually, I was lucky because I.

I was 13 to 17.

Okay.

So I was.

Why do you say that?

You were lucky because you.

Yes, Monica, it's incredible.

I can remember every, I can probably remember every single day.

It is, it's so vivid now.

As a, as a military brat, we were well taken care of and I'm sure it didn't matter if you're an American forces as a family or the Canadian forces a family.

We got to do so much.

Our school trips were to London, Paris, Vienna.

Like it was just a wild.

I played hockey all over Europe.

I was at a scouting jamboree in Belgium.

Wow.

So how can you not remember all of that?

So it's, I'm sure it's the same with when you folks were in Spain.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hard for you to move at that age.

I feel like that's when 13, that's when they say it starts getting tough to.

Ah, great question.

What happened was this.

I, so I went to elementary school from kindergarten to grade six and then I had to change schools.

So when we changed schools I started junior, we call it junior high.

And so I was in grade seven.

So it was part way, the early part of grade eight that we got transferred.

I would say it wasn't as difficult because I hadn't, I, a lot of the kids, they got their folks got transferred or whatever.

So I wasn't bringing a whole array of friends with me.

I was starting afresh again.

So I just thought that was normal.

That's how it worked out for us.

Central teaching in the book.

So what would you say is the central lesson or teaching from your book?

I think that no matter how small you are, you can always find your way to make a difference.

Fantastic.

And, and that's, that's what I said to you.

I, I, I wasn't worried for me when I read it.

I just thought, oh my goodness, Maggie is so stick to it.

Of she's going to find a way to, to be part of this whole situation that she's found herself in.

So now I know you just mentioned you started your or you're working on your second book.

I'd like to talk to you a bit about your writing process.

Can you please share some insights into your development and your writing process for your first book and perhaps what's going on with your second book.

It really happened in fits of starts.

I feel like it's, especially when you're raising young children and having to move around, it's hard to find that consistency.

But it definitely helped me when I reached out and through scbwi I got a like critique partner.

I literally call her my critique angel because she was so instrumental in helping me with this book.

In fact, she has.

She has a shout out on the copyright page at the very bottom.

I say with gratitude and I list a few people she's on there.

She was the one who told me about the book writing Picture Books by Anne Whitford Paul.

And she asked me a lot of questions about character development and like, what is at stake with main character and things like that.

So she helped me really focus the book.

And I.

Were it not for her, I don't think I would have made it this far, or maybe I would have stuck to it and it would have been a different story.

But she was incredible.

So I like to give credit where it's due.

But as for my writing process now, it's.

I'm going to a writers conference this weekend and that has me motivated to have a really good manuscript ready because I'm.

It's going to be looked at by different critique groups.

And so I find that scheduling, trying to sign up for critique events or things that make me have to work on it.

Otherwise if there's no deadline or no anything, it's hard to really be motivated.

At least that's how I work.

Right.

The first, with the first book, it was really the, the.

There was a publishing deadline for a specific publishing house that I was really trying to work with, and they're the ones that asked for round two.

And so I really worked hard to get them the round two.

And that was a huge motivator this time around.

It's.

It has to be more for me that I just want to put the second book into the world.

But I'm just.

I don't want to lose momentum because I have gotten to see the impact this book has made with military kids.

And I think that there's more Maggie stories to tell, and so I'm motivated to write them.

Absolutely.

And besides your own personal experience, what you said is reflect, Maggie is a reflection of you.

Talk to us a little bit about are you.

Are you doing any additional research?

Did you and.

Or are you with the second book?

A little bit.

So the second book is going to be more about the moving experience, like moving overseas.

And so I did reach out to my Instagram followers and I asked them, are, are there any themes that you want to see in a book about moving?

And so I got some feedback from them and I am drawing largely on the personal experience we had moving overseas.

But other than that, I think once I have a good beta version written.

I will see if I could get some readers to weigh in, some military families that I know and see if they have anything to add.

Fantastic.

I want to talk a little bit about success.

Tell us about what your orig.

What you had envisioned in your mind as success for your book when you actually launched.

So what was the difference?

What was like your.

This is what I have envisioned for my success as a children's book author.

And.

And what was different from what.

What ended up actually happening?

Yeah, I think.

And you can probably relate to this.

Just holding that physical book in my hand.

That's success to me.

Just having a book in the world.

Most people can't say that.

So it's.

I think the moments where it really hit me was seeing it in a public library.

To me that was felt more like success than seeing it on Amazon because anyone can put something on Amazon, but to have a library accept it and put it in circulation, that felt really big.

And I also received like a Kirkus starred review which is a professional trade review that is really hard to get.

And that felt like another really good success moment.

I'd say the part that hasn't been I expected is that I didn't realize how hard it would be to get the book into stores to like the book's not flying off the shelves despite me feeling or even the reviews.

Like I have a lot of great reviews on Amazon but it's still like an effort to sell the book.

And I think that's been just like not what I expected.

Right.

And you know what?

We went through the same thing as you are.

I just tried to figure out all kinds of different ways to go about it.

And when you're a one person shop like yourself trying to find that marketing mix.

Yeah.

I can tell you I still haven't found it.

But I am trying something different.

This spring we've had some success in especially in one store in the Rocky Mountains.

They've ordered their fourth order.

So like that for us has been phenomenal because it's not, it's.

We're doing much better through that store than I ever thought we would.

And to have it stick around is very exciting.

I'm curious because it leads me to.

And I've just started asking this question out actually Monica is what's your children's book author business plan?

What's it look like?

Give us a 30,000 foot view of what it looks like.

Oh, that's a tough question to answer.

I'm not sure I have one.

Which is the honest truth.

The plan I think the plan is to focus more on doing author visits and in person visits because I feel like that's where I am the most fulfilled because I'm interacting with kids, number one.

Number two, it's like more lucrative than selling books online.

So I shifting away, not that I'm not going to sell my books online anymore, I still will, but putting less focus on the online piece and trying to work on in person events and establishing relationships with, like you said, like bookstores.

Ideally I would love to get into, for example, like a base exchange, but those organizations are.

They have one, they have distributors and those distributors, it's hard to get through them when you're an independent publisher.

I've tried, yes.

So I have to think of other things I can do and I think like you said, like finding a shop that I just sent some of my books to, a shop called Hug a Hero.

They're opening in North Carolina.

They're going to have.

It's like a military based shop and I'm guessing it's going to do well there.

We'll see.

They ordered some books and then if they do well, they'll keep ordering them.

We'll see how that goes.

It's not easy because you know what I, my problem was I got fixated and I just want to.

So the listening audience hears this.

We ended up putting a price on the back of our book.

So we're at the.

I did that too.

ISBN is on the back of the book.

And anyways, since I started this podcast show, I've been get, I've bought everybody's book and guess what?

Yeah.

Oh, in your case, the price is on the back of the book.

But yes, I did put.

You're the only person in about.

I think I've purchased over 20 books now.

Yours is the only one that has a price.

So I said to myself, oh, maybe it's time to take the price off because nobody else is putting the price on.

And the reason I say that, Monica, is now what happens is most when I reached out to the book retailers and I was telling you about this, this book retailer that we have in the Rocky Mountains.

Only reason we got his support, he was willing to take less margin.

But he said to me, Rick, whatever your cost is to us, we double it.

And I thought, double it.

Whoa, that seems a little extravagant.

But that's what they do.

Luckily for us, he chose not to.

He's taken a lower margin.

But on the same token, I know that this year we're going to go after all the independent Bookstores in the province of Alberta, and they're not going to be generous like our friend.

The next round of books that come to us has no retail price and 9,000 that'll allow the bookstores.

And the other thing is, just so you know, Monica, I looked at the nice thing about doing this podcast show and I love sharing this with other children's book authors is the retail prices are such a range.

There's a big range in pricing, which means that allows me as a children's book authority, if the stores want to take their full markup, it's not going to price us out of the not being competitive.

And yeah, and I, I can see that even if you go to Amazon.com there's a, there's such a range of pricing in children's books.

If we can get the distribution might be just, it just might help us a lot.

We'll see what happens.

But no more pricing on the back of the book.

I get that.

I did put the price on both of mine, hardcover and paperback, because I thought it looked more like a traditional published book.

But yeah, now I have to stick to that.

So it definitely limits you.

I looked at the other thing I noticed with yourself and I loved it because I actually printed it off.

I thought, wow, so you have a comprehensive.

Just so the audience, listening audience knows Monica has a comprehensive school visit schedule.

Like, I was really impressed about how you did this.

So you have, not only do you have a one page you're showing about the school visits, then you have a single presentation, a half day and a full day.

So talk to us about that.

It's.

It's quite interesting.

So that's new and it was inspired by seeing it on other authors websites.

And I thought I wanted it to be upfront for square schools and organizations that were interested in booking me.

They could see exactly what they're getting.

And I wanted to put forth a really professional kind of menu of options because I do find that a lot of people expect you to do school visits for free.

They don't think about how it's somebody's time and it's somebody's gas money and it's somebody's babysitting money and it's all the costs that go along with it.

And so my goal is, you know, I did some free school visits last year and I'm no longer doing free school visits because I just can't afford to.

I.

If somebody, if a school doesn't have a budget to pay for the visit, I think of other ways we can you know, maybe there's like a minimum amount of books they can order or something like that we can work out.

But I'm trying to get away from offering free school visits because I feel like that does a disservice to authors generally because it is time and work for us and schools often do have budgets for these things, so.

And I couldn't agree with you more because that's been my most difficult thing is, you know, people have said, how many school visits have you done?

I haven't done any.

And the reason being is because it's all the efforts that you put into things come at a cost.

And to your point, as school visits, people don't realize there's a lot of costs involved to get to the school.

Because you know what, it's important for people to understand when you go to read to grade one or two or grade threes or kindergarten, whatever, when you get there, it's not like they've got 20 bucks in their pocket that they're going to buy your book.

It's not direct selling.

No.

And so you have to.

Yeah, I send like a pre order form that I asked the school to send it out.

Yeah.

So I've done.

How many school visits have I done?

3 or 4 at this point and I haven't been paid for any of them.

And I have two coming up that I will be paid for.

Right.

And I think my website has helped with that and I think it was a lesson learned for me because there was during month of the military month of the military child last year there were two schools on a base that I offered to come to and one of the schools couldn't afford to pay me and I said, okay, that's fine, as long as you send out pre order forms to your school, I, I, I can just come visit for free.

And the other school, same base, I didn't realize they could have paid me and I was just trying to be fair.

So I said, since I'm not making the other school pay, you don't have to pay either.

Just please send out my order forms.

The first school I got, I sold like 30 books or something, which is great.

And then the second school, I think only two people bought books and they could have paid me.

But I, because I was trying to be fair, they didn't.

And so that was a lesson learned for me of don't just offer to do it for free.

And because I don't know, I don't know what happened there, I think maybe somebody didn't send the pre Order forms and with enough notice or something, it was bizarre to me because it's the same exact group of kids.

Basically.

It's like the same base.

So it's not.

There shouldn't be a reason why One school bought 30 books and the other school bought two.

It just seemed weird to me.

And so that I think was a really good lesson for me that obviously if there's a case where a school really wants me to come out and they can't afford it and they're asking what can we do?

I'm going to work with them.

But I shouldn't just offer to come for free.

And you know what I loved about how comprehend when I said it was comprehensive.

I think this is a lesson for all of the people, aspiring authors or children's book authors.

You set out a single presentation price, a half day price and a full day price.

The nice thing about it, it's a la carte.

You've given the school's options.

I just love that because I noticed most authors just put a 1 flat rate and they really aren't.

They don't go into the detail like you did.

So hats off to you.

Great job.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

So tell us a little bit the role of writing in your life.

Yeah, so I've just always loved to write.

I think I went to college and studied history and I enjoyed English when I was in high school.

Love to read all the time, even now.

And I think history, I liked it because it felt like story time in a way.

Yes.

And I got to write a lot of essays in college and then I went to law school and.

And that's a whole different kind of writing.

But I still legal writing.

I found that I enjoyed writing.

And after law school I kept a blog for many years where I would just kind of blog about life.

But again, it was always.

There's always been that thread of writing in my life.

Um, and it's looked different at different points.

Um, I keep a journal.

I don't write in it every day, but I do like when I find myself struggling with something, I find that when I write it down, it really helps me get the thoughts out.

So it's definitely something that's always been with me.

Okay.

Because I.

Again, another compliment to you on this.

I thought, wow, very generous.

But after talking to you, that's your personality.

And I noticed on your blog and I.

No, really, I noticed on your blog you gave a comprehensive.

I think it's.

Was it four blog posts that you did on how to do A Kickstarter?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Had a little series on there.

Yeah, absolutely.

And so any.

Anyone listening, if, if you just go to Monica's website and.

And we'll be putting all the links into the show notes for this, but please go there because Monica's given you a template of how to do a Kickstarter program.

Wow.

Thank you for doing that and I hope people take advantage of your generosity.

That's fantastic.

Advice for aspiring.

I know you've given a lot of advice and a lot of great insights, but do you have advice for aspiring authors, how to get started?

I definitely would recommend joining SCBWI Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

It's something like maybe 90, 80 or 90 US dollars a year.

But it's a organization that helps connect you to other authors, both published and self published and aspiring.

And it's a great way to find like writing groups.

They have, they put on all sorts of programs, like different podcasts.

They have a podcast actually, but they also do like, they do all sorts of things and I feel like they have a member search where you can search for like an illustrator that's also a member.

That's how I found mine.

So I found that to be my number one piece of advice is to join a cbwi.

I am a member also.

Awesome.

Okay.

And it's neat because they actually allow you to put their logo on your website.

So I thought that was a.

I know they've changed their logo recently.

They did change their look and I was wondering that what was wrong with the owl?

Did you get why?

You know what?

I have no idea.

I thought that was so cute.

I thought so too.

Yeah.

So I don't know.

I.

They referenced the owl being problematic and I thought.

Huh, I didn't know that.

Okay.

I have no idea.

I certainly wouldn't want to write.

I just actually added a new character in our next children's children's book and it's an owl.

I'm thinking.

No, I think it's fine.

It's a woodland animal.

It's fine.

Sorry.

So, yes, SCBWI number one.

Number two, definitely get an editor.

Even if you think you're a good writer, you need an editor.

Everyone does.

It just helps to have a fresh set of eyes.

Number three, unless you're a professional illustrator, don't try to illustrate it yourself.

It's just like you can tell when people do that.

Number four is just the.

Don't give up.

Like I think the people who end up succeeding or publishing.

The only difference between Them and everyone else is that they didn't give up.

Right.

Like you're gonna have bad days.

And sometimes I find if I'm having a day where I'm totally uninspired, it's okay to just set it aside and come back to it later because the creativity will come again.

Don't force it.

I'm very lucky.

I have five grandchildren, four of them really to read.

And actually four of them have been narrators.

So we're actually doing the audiobooks to our stories.

But ever bringing it to print because the cost of bringing it to print.

You know what?

I'll probably be a great grandfather by the time that happens.

But anyways, them being narrators has also helped their end up being editors.

Because when they read it aloud, guess what happens?

They go, papa, I don't think this is working right?

Or this is.

This word is not for someone 4 to 10.

So we changed it.

I had my 11 year old last night reading my draft of the second book and she.

There was one part where I said grace shrieked and she said shrieked.

No, she squealed.

And I'm like, oh, much better.

I was like, she's 11.

I know.

Isn't that awesome?

I love it.

Yeah.

Our first book, we actually have a bookmark and there's a QR code and it's my middle granddaughter that's the voice of Caboose.

Oh, that's awesome.

I'll have to pick your brain some other time about how you do the audiobooks, but that's awesome.

Yeah, no problem at all.

And I don't want to forget about readers because readers are so important for all of us.

So why should children's book readers purchase your book?

I think this book is not just for military kids.

I think this book is great for anyone who wants to understand the military lifestyle and what military kids go through.

And I think it's the thing with books is they promote empathy because you get to learn about people who are in different situations from your own.

I think no matter if you're a military family or you don't know any military families, it can help you understand how other people lived.

Absolutely.

And that's why I say to you, I could see myself in grace.

So for me with Maggie, it was like you said, persistence or stick to it.

Miss.

I mean, that was that stuck.

It's sticking with me.

So that's fantastic.

Final thoughts.

Is there anything you'd like to share that maybe say, oh, Rick, I wish you would ask me that question.

Is there anything else you'd like to Share.

No, I think we've covered everything.

I, I really appreciate you having me on here and I love to hear about your journey with your grandchildren.

That just sounds like such a wonderful thing for them.

I'm excited that we were connected.

Thank you.

Yeah.

It's interesting because my grandson, I had him in a basketball.

My youngest grandson, I had him in a basketball camp yesterday.

And so the night before, Darcy Gyant actually sent us the advanced readers copy of his next book.

And my, my youngest grandson, that'll be two, two nights ago, he actually did a book review of Darcy's new book coming out and I just edited it yesterday.

But he did a great job.

So, yeah, I just get to have so much fun and meeting people like yourself.

That's what I was, I was just going to say, I think my final words are that I just, I, I love this community.

I think children's book authors are some of the best people I've met.

And they're just like you said, we don't do it for the fame or fortune.

We do it because it speaks to us, because we have things we want to share with kids.

And I think I'm grateful to be part of it.

Absolutely.

I couldn't said it better myself.

So thank you, Monica, for being a guest on the adventures in the heart of children's book authors.

Like your generosity of time and your insights.

Wow.

And again, I've got to encourage people, go and read Monica's blog on the Kickstarter.

It's just fantastic.

Great education.

And we promise to provide our audience with links to all of Monica's, all of her social media links and her website.

If you've enjoyed this episode, please hit the subscribe button.

And the other thing I'd encourage you to do is if you've enjoyed this episode, please send it out to other people who might be an inspiring author or someone who loves children's books because Monica's book, Maggie the Military Rat is fantastic.

So thank you, Monica.

Thank you so much, Rick.