Adventures in the Heart of Children's book authors Episode 1 Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors welcome to Episode one of the Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors Podcast.

The idea for this podcast show resulted from our journey to become published children book authors when we started our journey to publishing our first children's book.

We soon learned from the saying there is no right or wrong way to create, write, publish or market a children's book.

Over the years, I've read many different children's books.

However, I never thought about how children's book authors created, assembled and published their children's books.

Only when I became a grandpa did I think creating a children's book would be fun.

Our first grandchild, Kira, took a few years to develop into a little person.

She became my imagination guide.

I share our story to demonstrate that our way is only one of many paths to getting started as a children's book author or a proud sponsor of children's book authors.

This podcast will help give you, as a listener, a glimpse into the story behind becoming a children's book author.

Our story behind the story is an interesting one.

Our children's book adventure started because of Kira's first daycare.

What happened next kickstarted a living legacy for myself, my wife and our grandchildren.

Living legacy versus Legacy.

You might be asking what is a living legacy versus a legacy?

When I think of the word legacy, I always think of what you as a human leave behind after you die, such as a transfer of wealth, a prized possession, or even a message.

A living legacy is where you are engaged while you are alive and participate in developing your legacy.

Let our living legacy story begin.

The birth of Kira was a special event for our entire family.

As a first time grandparent, a special bond of adventure was about to start and my transformation to begin.

I didn't even know this.

My wife constantly mentions that Kira was born with an old soul and over the years Kira has taught me many life lessons including how to be a grandparent.

How many of you have purchased a stuffed animal for your children or grandchildren?

Or how many of you have tried to win a stuffed animal for your child or grandchild at a community fair, no matter what it costs you, even if you can make your next month's car payment.

When Kira started daycare, she had something magical happen and I got touched by the same magic wand.

This magic wand was not the same as Harry Potter's.

One common thing between Harry Potter's wand and ours is that the wand chooses you.

Our magic wand was a Stuffed animal.

Kira's daycare had a stuffed animal that they would loan to children going on a short vacation or trip.

The idea was to take the stuffy on the child's trip.

The child and the stuffy were traveling companions and creating different adventures.

Upon returning to the daycare, they were asked to share their experiences.

When Kira was four, we planned our first granddaughter and papa's trip to the Rocky Mountains.

On this trip, we would pull out something magical from a hat.

Kira has a kind heart and is always looking to share.

So she asked me, papa, could a friend come on our trip?

I told Kira I'm not sure if her parents would be okay with this.

I thought being responsible for another four year old when I was learning to be a grandpa or papa as Kira called me, would be a challenge.

Kira said, oh yes, Papa.

The daycare said it was okay.

I laughed and as I said, I don't think the daycare can speak for your friend's parents.

Kara responded, yeah, they can because they are the proud parents of Georgia.

You probably guessed by now that Georgia is a stuffed animal, a bunny who would accompany us on our first trips to the magnificence of the Rocky Mountains.

The daycare couldn't have been happier sending Georgia the bunny on this trip.

They knew Kira would come back and share her and Georgia's adventures.

On the day of our travels, Kira made sure Georgia had her seat belt on and joined Kira in the back seat of our jeep.

Kira was singing and said, papa, can you join Georgia and me in singing songs?

I said, sure, but I can't hear Georgia singing.

Kira said, don't worry, Papa, someday you will.

Kira could hear Georgia loud and clear.

I was learning that as a child, you use your senses differently when you're young.

No, it wasn't because my granddaughter was younger than me and had better hearing, even though my hearing sometimes is a little suspect.

Her creative mind was one sense my granddaughter had that worked far better than mine.

On her road trips to the mountains, a new world opened up to Grandpa's imagination.

The Rocky Mountains were a canvas of many adventures, allowing all our senses to run wild.

On some of our trips, we went from Georgia the stuffed bunny to George, a stuffy bear.

As our adventure guides.

The daycare had to get a second stuffed animal for the children to take on trips because the idea was so popular.

When I was first introduced to George, I asked Kira, who is George?

Kira said, george is George is brother.

How is this possible for a bunny and a bear to be siblings in a child's mind, Anything is possible.

This was my granddaughter's belief.

So I've tried to adopt the anything possible as part of my mindset because of my love for my granddaughter.

As Kira reached her school age, the need for daycare lessened and the chances of Georgia and George staying in our lives soon disappeared.

However, Kira had other thoughts and encouraged us to develop our own stuffed animal friend who would be in our lives forever.

A friendship with a new family member we could enjoy together and who would accompany us on our trips.

Ow.

Well, trains are a big part of the history of the Rocky Mountains, which included the love of Banff national park, where we had many of our adventures with George and Georgia.

In our Rocky Mountain home, we had a framed shadow box of my dad's childhood train set and a caboose was at the end of the steam engine train.

Kira was fascinated by the caboose that was part of my father's train set.

She loved saying caboose, caboose, caboose.

Kira and I created a character named Caboose.

Caboose spelled with a K.

The first letter in caboose is a K representing Kira.

Kira has never seen a caboose on a rail train.

Cabooses were a cool thing from the past long ago and were retired from service.

She said, papa, what is a caboose and why do trains travel through the Rocky Mountains today and they don't have one?

I said, kira, a caboose was a special part of the train and was always at the very end of the train.

The caboose was the home and kitchen of the people who worked on the train.

The train's employees would sleep, eat, play, play games and share stories in the caboose.

Like many things in our world, technology has replaced many of these items.

Kira nodded her head like she understood, but she had not lived through the disappearance of eight track tapes, cameras that use film, VCRs, and so many other items from the past that our technological world has replaced with a little bit of fortune.

On a trip to San Francisco, my wife and I found a stuffy store and created a stuffy of caboose, a stuffed bear wearing a train engineering outfit.

What a cute bear, if I do say so myself.

We brought caboose, the newest member of our family home, and gave it to Kira.

Kira's joy of having this new family member, as she had envisioned, was incredible.

And the friendship has continued to this day.

Over the years, Kira has shared the adventures of Caboose with her cousins and sister.

It was over a beverage at our favorite coffee shop Kira inspired a new level of connection.

We would share this connection with our other grandchildren, her cousins and sister on how to create quality engagement.

Kira said, papa, we've taken many pictures on your iPhone and rarely do we look at all of our adventures together.

I said, kira, you are so right.

We're always busy running from one adventure to another.

We never take time to look at all the neat things we've done together.

What did you have in mind?

Kira asked.

Can we buy a journal like the ones we saw at the farmers market so we can write down our adventures?

What a great idea.

I replied.

We couldn't wait for the next farmer's market to purchase a journal and over the next couple of weeks we would slip away and look at all of our adventures in our digital treasure trove.

We found a picture of Kira in her mummy's tummy along the Bow river and I remarked how she was a mountain baby even before she was born.

From this picture, Kira and I developed our first story based on our adventurous weekends with Georgia hiking across Canmore, Banff and the Bow Valley.

Our character Caboose replaced Georgia.

Our stories we had our process of creative engagement, which is to download the photos of some of our adventures, then develop a story and write our stories from those pictures.

Thus, the Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear Our first children's book began with our first story written and with some rough drawings.

We celebrate our with our favorite drinks and hugs and cheers.

Tears rolled down our cheeks.

We knew we had created something unique and lasting.

We couldn't wait to start our next adventure and within a couple of days we were back to our local coffee shop and wrote the title and ideas for multiple stories in the Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear book series.

Believing in Cura's possible has made me happier and created much more fun and laughter in my life.

Over the next couple of months, we will publish our first book in our series of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear and we hope you will click on the link in our podcast show notes and purchase our first book, the Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear.

At the core of this podcast is our story on how we became children's book authors.

However, following in the tradition of my granddaughter Kira's kind heart, we want to share more than our stories.

We have many children's book authors in our wonderful world of words and pictures.

Each children's book author is different in their approach to their creative process.

The central idea behind their story, the writing process, illustrating assembling of the book, digital, print or audio formatting, publishing, the publishing method, the business and marketing plan and even though we can't interview all the children's book authors, we aim to interview and share as many authors behind the scenes inspiration for developing, writing and producing children's books, designs and content and how the author uses their imaginative and creative hearts to write children's books.

We hope you will support as many of our guests children's books as possible and build a children's book library.

Your children's book library, whether print or digital that you and your family can be proud of and share forever.

Should you desire to be a children's book author, our deepest wish is that our podcast show Adventures in the Heart of Children Book Authors in some small way gets you to take action and start your own journey to become a children's book author.

Please head over to caboosetherockymountainbear.com and download our activity pages and start recording your first adventure in your heart.

Much success in becoming a children's book author.