Hi, I'm Dina Plaskin, and I'm the author of Bella and the Emotion Explorers series.

Thanks, Dena, for appearing on the Adventures of the Heart of Children's Book Authors.

Dina has written a children's book series, Bella and Bird Explore, and we'll be discussing her first book in this series, Bella and Bird Explore Anger.

And I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Before we get into Dina, before we get into the details of your book and your children's book authorship, can you tell us what it means to you being a children's book author?

Gosh, that's such a good question.

We were talking before we started recording, and you said, if you could just help one author.

And I think that's where I'm coming from in my book series.

My book series focuses on the topic of emotional intelligence and the framework.

That's the framework for my series.

And I've always gone in and said, if I can help one child, then it's all worth it.

And as a children's book author now, recently just my first book got published in August.

So it's so new.

So now I could say I'm actually a children's book if I could just help one child.

That was always my motivating factor.

Just one child.

Because if I plant that one seed, who knows where the next seed is going to be planted?

Absolutely.

I couldn't agree with you more.

So tell us a little bit about the inspiration behind this first book.

Okay.

Yes.

So the first book in the series is called Bella and Bird Explore Anger.

And it's about a little boy named Henry, and he comes storming into the pastor, very angry.

But how did I come up with my book series and my first book?

That's a story in and of itself.

And I think when you begin the journey of writing and writing for children as a children's author, it does begin as a journey.

There's something that has brought you along in your life and in your experiences, and it starts to just manifold and come together, and that's exactly what happened.

So I would have never imagined in a million years, first that I would be a children's book author.

And it took a hurricane and a horse to hurl in my children's book series, literally.

So in 2022, I adopted my horse, Bella.

That's where Bella comes from.

So I adopted her for my equine psychotherapy practice in Florida, and I wanted to do equine psychotherapy therapy.

So I trained and I got certified.

I'm a licensed mental health counselor and I wanted to focus on the equine therapy with kids and adults.

Can you explain equine to the listening audience?

Absolutely.

So equine is just another name for horse.

So equine is horse.

So horse therapy, equine.

Some people say equine, depending on where you live.

So equine is just simply another term for a horse.

So equine psychotherapy involves groundwork.

So you have a client, instead of being in the office and doing talk therapy across from a desk, you bring clients into nature and you have them narrate their stories.

And you partner with horses because you typically bring them into the pastor and clients.

It's all groundwork.

There's no riding involved.

So you don't have to have any experience with horses at all.

You go into the pastor, there's the licensed therapist, and then there's also what we call an equine, a horse specialist who's there.

And they're there for safety reasons because horses are giant animals, and they can be very.

They can be very scary for some people.

And so you have an equine specialist there just for safety reasons, but you typically utilize horses or partner with horses who, you know, are very calm and docile.

So they're in their pasture, and you have clients narrate whatever it is that they're struggling with in the pasture, almost through the horses.

The horses bring out something very magical in all of us when we're around horses, and we come very in tune within ourselves.

So when we're able to do that, clients can begin to tell their story.

And when they start to tell their story in the pastor or even in the barn with they're grooming the horses, that's just another avenue to get clients to open up and to share the struggles that they're having and also further down the road to begin to heal.

So I adopted Bella for that purpose, to partner with me and in my equine practice.

She came from Southern California, and she traveled all.

All through the country.

That's a long way to come.

That's a long way.

It took her a week.

Hopefully nobody.

It wasn't Pony Express.

So I wish it was, but no.

She was trailered with a fantastic guy who brought her all from Southern California all the way to southwest Florida to where we lived, and we live on an island in southwest Florida.

So she arrived, as fate would have it, she arrived early.

So she arrived a week early.

And because of arriving early, when she arrived, she got settled for a few days.

Hurricane Ian in 2022 hit directly on our island.

And it devastated the island.

It was catastrophic.

We only had a very short window where the people in our area in southwest Florida were notified because Hurricane Ian was supposed to go up the coast and hit Tampa.

Okay?

And the news was very big on that, because hitting a hurricane hitting Tampa would be devastating.

A hurricane hitting anywhere is devastating.

Now we get notifications 16 hours before that the hurricane turned and that it was going to hit us directly.

Now, I just literally adopted her.

She just arrived.

So we kept the horses in the barn.

There was other horses there, and she survived.

It's now a Category 5 hurricane.

It was so catastrophic, it was just unbelievable.

Anyone who has experienced any kind of hurricane, storm of earthquakes, any kind of catastrophe certainly can understand.

And the only access to the island, there was one lane.

Bridge was damaged, so you couldn't get on the island.

The only way to get on the island was by boat.

The big struggle is now that everything was damaged is how do you feed and water the horses and the livestock?

There's a lot more.

A lot of livestock on the island.

So we had to boat everything in.

Horses require 15 gallons of water each a day, at least.

So fresh water.

So it.

So that was her.

That's how I started.

The series is after the Hurricane.

Directly after the hurricane, I started thinking about the children and the adults who were experiencing this because I was having a really rough time.

Our house was damaged by the hurricane.

My whole community was suffering.

The horses.

Bella, what she experienced just arriving.

And I started thinking, how are they managing their emotions and their feelings?

You're thinking of the children and the adults on the island?

Yeah, I was thinking of the children and the.

And the adults.

I thought, how are they doing?

What are they doing with this?

And I know I was struggling, and I had my husband and a few other people say, you need to sit down and write.

You need to write about this for the kids.

So I originally sat down immediately, this was just a week after the hurricane.

And wrote about Bella's travels from across the country.

And I wanted to make it this fun.

Bella came from California.

Here she is, and she experiences a hurricane, and she's so resilient.

And I was going on resiliency because that's really my background in the education that I have.

And so I started with Bella, and of course, I never wrote a children's book before.

So where do you begin?

How do you start?

Start, and then where do you go from there?

So I began with my real life course, Bella, and I began with her experience.

And I think a lot of Children's authors do connect their own experiences, something in their life that they connect.

That is so true.

That's very insightful because I've now interviewed over 50 children's book authors and that's what I'm finding is there's a connection somehow to either a person or an experience that definitely is the seed or the nugget behind what's the story behind this story.

And for sure, and it's interesting because you're talking about horses and using horses for therapy with children.

And when I was younger, my mother took my brother and I and there was a.

Like a traveling photographer with a pony and they traveled around and they took pictures of children sitting on a pony and getting their picture taken.

And I still have that picture to this day, but it was fascinating.

I don't think the photographer was thinking about therapy at the time, but because it was a Shetland pony, quite small, it just seemed to attract a lot of people.

And I even know my cousins to this day have their pictures with them on a pony and getting pictures taken at a different time.

So pretty amazing.

But it's interesting how horses, for whatever reason, have this attraction.

So we'll definitely dig into your use of Bella.

Yeah, it's so true.

Horses, there's something magical about them.

Right.

That we're all attracted to in some bam or fashion, whether we love watching them on TV and.

Or whether we connect with them in real life or just going to a farm and visiting a farm, there's just something magical about horses.

Absolutely.

And I know even when my first granddaughter was younger, she was probably six or seven, we actually went into the Rocky Mountains and I took her horseback riding and the horse was like 10 times bigger than her, but she seemed to just warm up to it and enjoy it.

So whatever it is about horses, there's a real fascination and good for you.

So that's what I want to dig into this a bit more.

I noticed you already have all of your books in your book series listed on your website.

And I have your website up on my iPad.

And a lot of times, I notice with children's book authors, rarely do I have anyone say to me, it's a one and done.

I had one person say, this is one and done.

And then they went on later in the interview and revealed maybe it isn't a one and done.

So it's quite interesting.

But I noticed you already are promoting the next three books in your series.

I'm interested in learning more about.

Obviously, you've been very strategic about this.

Talk to us about your business book plan, because looking at your website, looking at your next set of books coming out, explain how you developed all that.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So I have four books.

So the series is called Bella and the Emotion Explorers.

And just for Bird, Bird is a real life bird.

I came up with Bird, the character because of the barn swallows that make nests in Bella's stall.

And they use her hair.

She has long, beautiful hair because she's a gypsy banner.

And I needed a character, so I had Bella the character, right?

The wise therapy horse or therapist acts as the therapist in my books.

I needed another character who brought in some humor because I feel when you write children's books, you always need the humor.

You have to keep their attention.

You need humor, and we all need humor no matter what the topic.

And my topic is a very heavy topic, right.

And so I needed the humor.

And I thought, Bella and I used to.

I go into the stall, I still say, hey, Bird.

Hey, Bird.

So I thought, bird, it's Bella and Bird, that's Bella's sidekick, Bella, He's a wisecracker.

He makes his nest with her hair.

So that's how I created Bella from my horse and then Bird, her little wisecracking sidekick.

And so I came up with Bella and Bird.

And then I needed to parse down, okay, my first writing of what I created in my mind, and Bella's story, and her story was about her coming across the country.

Where do you go with that?

First of all, I happen to be on Facebook one day and I'm scrolling, and I actually see a children's book with a horse and a plushie.

And that's what I've had in my mind.

Like, I had.

This is what I want.

I want to do a children's book and then do a plushie with Bella and Bird.

And I thought, oh, my gosh, that's exactly what I want to do.

So I clicked on the sponsored.

It was a sponsored link.

And I looked at the website.

You mentioned the website, right?

And it was so cute.

The website was really cute.

I'm like, oh, I need a website, too.

And I said, I'm going to reach out.

I'm going to find out who this person is, and I'm going to call her.

And so I researched her.

She.

And I found her phone number, and I called her.

I took a chance.

Good for you.

And I said, let me take this chance.

And my gut was telling me, just do it.

Just call.

And if she doesn't, call me back.

Okay, I tried.

You still tried.

So I called Kathy.

Her name is Kathy.

And she actually called me back.

And we were on the phone for a few hours, and she was a plethora of information.

She also has a children's book series.

So I was so grateful.

It was like, that was like that little nugget.

You said that, okay, I'm on the right path.

I'm on the right path.

Because she shared a lot of info that I needed to hear, and she gave me that little inspiration I needed at the time.

Because you can feel very lost in this whole world of children's books.

Absolutely.

It's interesting you should say that, because that's how we started.

We actually our book series called the Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear.

Cuny's behind you.

Yeah.

And so what ended up happening is Caboose actually has a K in it, not a C. And that actually stands for Kira, which is my oldest granddaughter, and she's the co author of this book.

And it's interesting you should talk about a plushie, because you know what?

Who doesn't have a teddy bear?

Our retailer said, you know what, Rick?

You should have a plushie.

Because every time we bring in children's books and they have a plushie that goes along with the book we sell, we definitely sell more books and plushies.

They said, you should develop one.

We actually have a plushie in the background now.

That's our prototype.

And then what we did is we actually created our own plushie that now fantastic is.

Is being sold in the store that gave us the original idea.

So I can see your fascination about that.

And it.

If it wasn't for one of my guests from Oklahoma who put me on to where to develop the plushie, I would have had a hard time figuring out how to do that.

So it's interesting how if you take a chance, people like you said Dina will share.

And that's what I'm finding about the whole children's book author community.

They're so generous.

So thank you for sharing that.

And I hope that inspires people to realize that don't think you're stuck in your own little world.

If you reach out and talk to other children's book authors, you'll be pleasantly surprised at how generous they are to share their story.

And that's part of what I think is the attraction to our podcast show is getting children's book authors to share their story.

Yeah.

So I contacted her.

It's so true.

And I was like, let me just take this chance.

And one thing that she said That I needed to know and understand too is she said, you need an editor.

And I was like, okay, yes, I need an editor.

Where do I find an editor?

There's so many out there.

Yes.

And so she said, I have an editor.

You can contact her.

She does pick up people.

She was been in a children's editing business for 30 years.

And so she gave me her name and number and I contacted her.

She's with Picture Book People.

So Simone Kaplan.

She's with Picture Book People.

Anyone in the audience that needs an editor or wants to just explore that avenue.

And so that was fantastic because I called her and she that was now the next step down the road.

So I contacted her and through our conversation together she said, I love the story, but I think you need to separate out all these emotions and not do Bella's story, but do the core emotions.

There's six core emotions, but I started with four and do a single story each.

So parse down your storyline and do one emotion, whatever one you want to start with and develop a character.

And so that was great advice.

So I went back to my writing and I decided to do anger.

First I just felt like the world was very angry in 2022 coming out of COVID Exactly.

So I felt like it was a good one.

I didn't want to start with happiness, even though I written Happiness and it's such a fun book.

But I was like anger and also anger.

There's so many bad ideas behind anger.

And it's not a bad emotion, it's just how you react.

There's no bad emotion.

So it's just how you're the behaviors behind that.

So I started with anger and I created my 8 year old.

I decided now here's another thing.

When you decide you have to decide your the age group for your books.

And then I needed to determine what age did I want my characters to be.

And I decided like mine are for five to ten year olds.

My main target audience is second third graders.

So an eight year old.

And so I went with a little boy named Henry.

I just pictured that was the first thing that came to my mind was a little boy angry with his name Henry.

And so that's how I started the first book in the series, which is Bella and Bird Explore Anger.

Before we get too far into it is I noticed in your book offerings that you have a.

Is it hardcover only?

Yes, it is hardcover only.

I also just did an ebook and ebooks that'll be available through Amazon.

Okay.

And your hardcover you're using are you using Amazon as a distributor of your hardcover?

No.

What's the good news is just recently, and this is probably a whole nother topic, because this is so important to know as a children's book author, is I just was asked to do distributorship and you probably are familiar with distributorship and getting into a distributor.

Because I'm an indie author, so I could have gone with traditional and we're going to go down that road.

My editor and I were talking about traditional and we did contact somebody and then I decided, I think I want to do indie because this is a brand.

I was creating a brand.

Yes.

And I just want to explain to our audience the difference between self publishing and independent publishing.

Just so everybody knows.

And, and we're independent publishers because we set up our own publishing company.

And that sounds to me you know exactly what you've done.

You are not self publishing, which means you're not using a third party publisher to do all the work.

You're actually an indie publisher and you're doing all the work.

Is that correct?

That's right.

That's correct.

Yep.

Explain this distribution part of how you're going to build out your business.

Yes.

So if you start out as a children's author, you, your goal wants to be to have a distributor to pick you up.

A distributor.

And the word distributor is very difficult to understand because people use it in different ways.

The same word in different ways.

Yes.

So you can be an independent author and you can go through ingramsparks as one of the print on demand that you can get your book printed on demand.

Correct.

Okay.

My book is actually offset printed, so that's why I have a hard copy.

It has the spot UV on it.

I don't know if you could see it, but it's a hard copy and it's offset.

And I, I could have went print on demand, but I loved the quality of the offset printing.

So I got samples of both.

I bought books for samples of both and I tried to determine which.

And I just knew that the offset printing is just beautiful.

It's fantastic.

And because I just feel that because it's a children's book and my illustrator is fantastic and I don't know if you've seen the illustrations, but they're beautiful that when you hand, when you hold my book, the illustrations are so vibrant and beautiful.

And that's why I did what's called offset printing.

Okay.

And just so I understand, because most of the children's book authors that I talk to, they do it in various ways.

The primary way is most of them go through Amazon.

They do soft cover and an ebook automatically on Amazon because Amazon's about 70% of book sales.

Amazon doesn't do a hardcover for children's books because you need.

I think it's a minimum of 75 pages before Amazon does a hardcover.

And that's why a lot of people go to Ingram Sparks because they will do a hardcover children's book.

Now, it's more expensive, but they will definitely do that for you.

Both of those.

Amazon, Ingram Sparks are also online distributors.

Now, they can get you into brick and mortar, but primarily, I think most people use Amazon and ingramsparks for online distribution.

So tell us about this.

The distributorship that you're setting up, is it primarily bricks and mortar or is it online, or is it a combination of both?

Yes, good question.

And it is.

There's so many different definitions and so many layers.

And so many layers.

So I hope that I can explain it a little bit easier because I've really done a lot of the homework and.

Okay, the distributorship.

There's distributors out there who.

And this is what the goal should be of all children's books, I believe, is to get your.

There's distributors out there who can get your book listed, listed.

It's a listing on the Barnes and Nobles, the Walmarts.

Okay.

On the Walmart page, on the Target page.

And that's the listing.

That's a listing.

And that's great.

Ingramsparks does a big part of that.

Yes.

And you want that because that is visibility and just different channels for people to buy your book.

So if you didn't have a distributor to do that, like in ingramsparks, you would just be selling your books on your website or book fairs, and that would be really difficult to do you.

And of course, through an Amazon listing, anybody can have the Amazon listing right now.

There's another.

There's other distributors, like I would say, let's say a step up, where they actually have account reps who go into the box stores.

I'll say the box stores to get your book in the store.

So when you go to Barnes and Nobles and Target and you see the kids books, you say to yourself, how do I get my book in there?

Right.

I want my book to be in those stores.

Right.

Physically in them.

And that is a different distributorship where a distributor company will have account reps working on your behalf to act as like maybe a selling agent, I'll say.

But their account reps who just push their books that they have in that distributorship.

And say, hey, here's this new book series or here's this new book.

Have you developed a relationship with a couple of those or just one?

Tell us about that.

Yeah, there's a couple of them that I've recently did develop relationships with.

It's very difficult starting out to get the distributorship with, with the big box stores.

So it's extremely difficult because they want to see sales, they want to see what you've done.

They want, and they do want book series a lot of times because just one and done books that they're.

Unless they're like fantastic.

Yes, of course.

But It's a catch 22.

It's like graduating college or technical school.

Maybe not technical school, but and going to get a job.

And they want experience first.

It's how do I get experience unless someone takes a chance on me?

And so as a children's book author, you really have to do a lot of the work to get the sales out there and to show that what your long term plans are.

Because I have the four books and I have two already that are in print.

This is, I know your audience can't see, but this is the second book Sadness.

And so they know that I have the four books coming down the pike, the two already and plus the plushies.

So they look at, you know how viable the book can be.

So when you say plushies, I just want to pick up on that for a moment because if people visit your website and we're going to definitely link to your website in the show notes.

But I noticed you have pillows.

But I didn't see any plushies on your website yet.

When you say plushies, are you talking about actually taking Bella and Bird and making them into as we did with caboose into a plushie?

Yeah.

And they are.

There's mockups.

I have mock ups right now.

Bird has been done.

I've been doing, I've been working on plushies probably about nine or ten months.

Okay.

With a company and Ushies are so hard.

But horses are incredibly difficult.

And it Bert was done.

Birdie's great.

But it's Bella because Bella is so hard because she's got that long, beautiful mane and the feathering on her feet and getting the spots correct and all of that.

If she was just a brown horse boy, that would have been easy.

It's interesting you should say that because if you look at a caboose behind us and I know the audience can't see our prototype, but I actually took pictures of the prototype.

I had to flip the bear over, take her clothes off and all of that kind of good stuff and lay it all out and then send pictures.

But I think that the people that did the plushie did a pretty darn good job from the prototype.

Yeah, it's actually a lot of work.

It's a lot of work.

So.

So I'm waiting on Bella.

One of the things recently that I just changed last week is they had Bella standing.

Like, standing.

But I want her squished down, her legs, like floppy so the kids can hug.

So now they're going back.

Yeah, now they're going back to fix that.

Cause I didn't.

It didn't click with me before when they were sending me the files, and I'm like, oh, no, I want her floppy.

So they're not on the website.

Cause they're not available yet.

Although I do have the prototype pictures I could probably put on there and say, coming soon, Which I probably should do that.

The pillows are something.

They're so adorable, the pillows.

They are.

They're book pillows.

And you just tuck the book in the back.

That's very neat.

I love it.

And friend of mine makes those, actually.

And so when I go to book fairs or festivals, I bring the book pillows and I try to package with the book and the pillow or separately.

And you know what?

You're the first one that's actually talked about book pillows.

And I love that because, again, I'm always looking for something the audience, something new for the audience.

And a book pillow.

What a great idea.

I think that's awesome.

The kids love to come up and squeeze it.

And I have little tiny ones or, like, mini book pillows.

And I have the bigger book pillow.

The book gets tucked in the box.

I saw that on your website.

So if anybody's interested again, we'll put the link in there.

I just want to back up for a second because I know it's interesting.

Everybody does it differently, and that's part of what our show is all about.

Now, in terms of soft cover.

So a paperback, Are you looking to do that, and are you looking to do that through Amazon?

Yeah, good question.

That's a great question.

Because I am doing offset printing.

Okay.

My books.

Okay.

And with the offset printing, it's.

I can do soft cover or hardcover.

I did hardcover again, because I like the hardcover.

My books are in a warehouse.

It's called 3PL.

I don't know if you ever heard of it.

3PL.

Where my books are print.

Printed in China.

Where every single book is printed in China.

And.

And then Shipped over and then warehoused for me.

So I didn't want a garage full of books.

And because I'm not doing print on demand.

Print on demand is you.

Someone buys your book and they print it right then and there, or when and then ship it out.

Absolutely.

So I have my books warehoused.

The.

The soft covers.

Yes.

I was going to do soft covers.

My main goal has always been, based on the topic of my books, a little different.

I want to get them into schools and libraries and therapy offices and of course, parents and grandparents.

That's of course.

But because it's a series, I also have curriculum.

My background's also in education, so I also have curriculum that I develop for each of the books to compute them.

So it could be a package for classrooms.

Okay.

And that's where I'm starting to maneuver toward, is the soft covers for the kids in the classroom.

And I'm trying to determine if it's worth doing soft cover or sticking with the hardcover.

So I'm in that phase right now.

Are you concerned?

I'm trying to think about it from like a Amazon print on demand because it's really just the book files.

Once you have the files for the front and back cover and the interior files, it's quite easy to get set up on Amazon, and then you can have world distribution through Amazon.

Are you concerned that because of the content in your book, that's not an approach you want to take?

No, it was my books with offset printing, what they do is they bleed out into over the pages.

Okay.

And so if I were to do a soft cover, they would take the files that I currently have that have already been developed.

Yes.

And there'd be a line right down the center of the page.

And so some of my pictures, like this one, I don't know if you can see.

I know it's hard, but this bleeds all the way through into the next page.

So when you open bleeds together.

So with a soft cover, there would be a line right down the center.

And again, that's quality.

And so I'm trying to determine, are the kids even going to notice that?

That's a really tough question.

Because you know what?

I've got five grandchildren, and even as adults, we might appreciate the quality of the book.

I just find with my five grandchildren, anyway, they just want to flip through it and.

Exactly.

So, again, I'm not saying there's any right or wrong way.

That's why we started with our soft cupboard first and took that approach.

But I don't think there's a lot of people do start with the hardcover first and then take that approach.

So it's just a different dynamic.

But what you've done is quite interesting because you've taken it to another level in terms of how you're doing your distribution.

Because a lot of people don't do offset printing anymore because of the simple fact that they don't want to tie up a lot of funds in having inventory.

And I don't know what your minimum run was and how much inventory you're carrying.

The minimum is 500 for the offset printing.

And the company called IAPC.

Okay, so it's IAPC.

That's the company that I work with.

There's other offset printing companies, but they're based out of New Jersey, so they have a warehouse in New Jersey and they warehouse your books and they mainly do the hardcover.

But I will say the quality is outstanding.

The quality is just outstanding.

If you wanted books with very high quality, for whatever reason, there's.

Whatever reason.

Yeah, the offset is fantastic.

I've seen ingramsparks the.

They have different levels in ingramsparks the quality.

Because I just did the ebook for the first one, and I think that they're very nice.

I like it actually a lot.

And.

Yeah.

And so the question has been on my mind, do kids even notice?

And if they're going into schools and libraries and things like that, which I'm hope they're in every school and library, you bet.

I don't think it matters.

And so that's something I'm pondering.

Absolutely.

And it's a tough one because I talked to a gal from Oklahoma and she's the one who put me onto a website called madeinchina.com and she used that website to find a.

A printer that's in China that does her hardcover books.

And her minimum run, I think she said, was around 500 copies, but the price was very attractive.

And she said the quality, because she actually tried two different companies and they sent her samples and she said the quality was outstanding and the price just made it a lot more attractive for her to start with the hardcover.

And that's what she did.

Just so our audience understands.

So when someone goes to your website and they order Bell and the Bird, Explore Anger, for example, do you ship it directly or it comes from your distributor?

Okay, that's a fantastic question.

And first, my Amazon account is horrible.

I will admit that, because it's a seller account, and that's on me.

But now that I have a distributorship, I'll be able to go into a vendor account.

So I don't even have to deal with Amazon myself.

But just aside from that, because I know that my Amazon is.

It says different things.

The seller account is very difficult.

But to answer your question, if they go on Amazon or my website, it goes directly to the warehouse and they fulfill the order and they package it up.

And I've actually had emails from customers who've bought my book who have said, wow, I've never had a book shipped so nice to me.

And they've sent me pictures and I was like, wow, this is nice.

So they double bubble wrap and they package it and they mail it.

So every order goes directly to them.

I get an email of every order.

So I just put it into a file so I can keep track.

And Amazon, if it sells through Amazon, Amazon pays you, correct?

It sells through Amazon, right?

Exactly.

And if it sells through your warehouse, through your website, of course you get the funds immediately and then you pay your distributor.

Is that correct?

That's right.

I pay the fulfillment center.

So that's another.

See the definitions, right?

There's so many.

So they fulfill.

So they warehouse, okay, and fulfill the orders.

Picture, like this warehouse with my 500 books, like right there.

And this person coming over, oh, here's an order.

And then they nicely package it up and ship it out.

Terrific.

Thank you for sharing all that.

Because it's just a different way of doing business.

So I want to jump in because you talked about, almost affectionately, you talked about your illustrator.

And I noticed your first two books, you're using the same illustrator.

Are you using the same illustrator for all four books?

Yes, I am.

I contracted with Leah.

Leah is my illustrator.

And how did you find Leah?

Because again, I tell you what happens, because again we're talking about you're the independent publisher, you're doing all the work, you found the editor, you've found the illustrator.

I just want people to understand because my preference is to.

If I can convince people.

Being an independent publisher can be a lot of fun and it's not as difficult as sometimes you might think it is.

Now, I'm not trying to dissuade anybody if they're happy with their self publishing company.

You know what, there's a lot of great ones out there.

Please use that.

Tell us a bit about your illustrator, how you found them and why are you developing this long term relationship.

And also why are you giving them so much credit?

Because I noticed on the back of your book you give them as much credit as you're giving yourself as the Authority.

So tell us all about that.

That's such a good question.

So I feel like everything in my book series has a story.

It's the story behind the story, right?

Absolutely.

That's what this is all about.

And that's a fantastic thing about my book series.

And every book, right.

There's always a story behind it.

So I was going through many illustrators.

There's so many wonderful, fantastic illustrators out there.

And I was going through the web and going through plethora of illustrators to see which one connects in my mind with what I'm envisioning with my book.

And it took a good six, eight months to determine the illustrator for me.

And I came across one that I connected with and I loved.

She was from Scotland.

Okay.

And I.

Her illustrations, I said, yes, these are.

This is for my book series.

Reached out to her agent because a lot of the illustrators have agents.

Some illustrators don't have agents.

They could be independent through Red Z or whatever and any independent site, right?

Yeah.

Or they have their own website.

That's how we found our illustrator is I just happened to come upon his website and he's actually in the UK and but we hit it off and he was able to work with us and give us exactly what you're talking about.

You know, I wanted.

I wanted a hand drawn watercolor, like a hand drawn.

I had a vision.

So when you start writing a children's book, you should have a vision of what authors do you like, what authors from your own childhood have been kept with you, have stayed with you.

And thinking about all the authors and books that I've read to my own children, many hundreds and hundreds.

I wanted that kind of classic watercolor feel.

And because they're pastor scenes, that's another reason.

And so I found this illustrator in Scotland, reached out to the agent.

The agent never reached back, but she reached back to me, illustrator and said.

I'm sorry, how did you.

Where did you find, like, how did you recognize.

Did you see her work somewhere?

And that's.

And you said, ah, it's similar to what you did with the author with the plushie.

So you did.

Yes, there was a website and I'm trying to remember the name of it and it has all kinds of illustrators on this website.

And I'm sorry that I cannot remember the name of the website, but there is a website I remember after the show.

You can always send me that information and I'll put it in the show notes for sure.

Definitely.

I will definitely do that.

So I contacted Her.

I sent her an email and I contacted her and it copied her.

Sent her agent an email and copied her.

And she got back and said, it sounds fantastic, and I have to go through the agent.

So waited.

And I waited and waited for the agent, and we didn't hear back.

And I thought, oh, goodness, what's going on here?

And.

And as fate would have it, there was an illustrator conference in New York City.

Okay.

In January of last year, year and a half ago.

And now I also have.

Just so your audience knows, I also have an art director.

I have a woman in New York City who does like the art direction in the book.

Okay.

She's an art director, and she does placement, and so she does the book.

Formatting, in other words.

Yeah.

She happened to be at this Illustrator conference, and Leah was there, and she sent me Leah's work in one look.

And I said, that's the one.

That is the one.

So there was a reason why the other illustrator's agent didn't get back to me, because here comes Leah, and I thought, oh, my gosh, she's the one.

And I reached out to her and, yes, absolutely, I want to do your book series.

And then we drew up the contract, and so she's contracted to do the four, and hopefully more in the future.

Oh, good.

Fantastic.

Fantastic.

That leads me to my next question.

So thank you for this segue.

I noticed one unique technique you've talked about, dealing with anger and the use of the emotion wheel, which I love.

And I noticed that the emotions are divided into six categories, much like a piece of piece.

And so I just.

So people can visualize it and tell us about this concept.

How did you come up with it?

And then your books are addressing each piece, but as you mentioned earlier, it looks like you've started with anger, then you're going to go to sadness, and then happiness, fear, and then there's two other emotions, surprise and disgust.

I guess what I'm asking is give us the whole complete story behind that whole unique idea of the emotion wheel.

Love that you asked that.

That is just so fantastic.

So the emotion wheel is not something new.

And I didn't create the idea of the emotion wheel, but I did create the emotion wheel on my website.

I specifically designed the feelings inside each slice.

So, yes.

So because Henry is so angry that he can't have a slice of pie, we can call the pieces of the emotion wheel a slice.

So it does look like a pie.

Either a pie or a pizza pie, whatever, but it's actual pie.

So the idea Is So we use the emotion wheel in therapy.

The emotion wheel.

There's tons of emotional wheels out on the web.

Okay.

And over the years as a therapist, I never liked any of them.

And I always would incorporate them with my adult clients.

The adult clients love the emotion wheel.

It gives them the words.

So do the children.

That's the point, is that we give them words, emotional literacy.

We give them words to help them define what they're feeling.

So the emotion wheel, as you said, it has the emotions in each of the slice.

Then my wheel, that's available on my website, it's a free download.

In the slices, I have feelings.

So when you first experience an emotion like anger, that's a physiological feeling.

That's something that your body first feels.

And so in my books, I start with what we would call body cues.

So that you become self aware of what you're feeling.

And when you can define, like, you could understand that these feelings, like, oh, I'm clenching my fists or my teeth or my shoulders are up in my ears, that's important to define that.

Now underneath each emotion, underneath picture and iceberg, and above the iceberg is the emotion.

Underneath that are feelings, which with anger could be mad, something as simple as mad, like a scale.

Okay.

And something as large and big as furious.

Okay.

So there's lots of different feeling words.

And I never liked any of the reels, I'm sorry to say, out on the web, because they didn't get the feelings correct.

They weren't real feelings.

They were just words that people created that they thought were feeling words, but they're not.

And I did a lot of research, my background in education and as a therapist with the correct emotional literacy words for each of the slices, you start.

With these four emotions first.

Yeah, I felt first, like anger, like the world was very angry at the time when I first started writing.

And I felt that was a really important emotion to begin with.

Yeah, I think it's.

It's an ongoing theme currently.

Yeah, it is.

It is ongoing.

And then I.

My second book, I decided on sadness, which is a sadness book, because I also felt that there's a lot of sadness in this world.

There's a lot of hurt people and sad.

So I wanted to focus on.

On that as well, on the sadness.

My third book is Happiness, which is a positive emotion, which is great because after the heaviness of anger and sadness, I was like, I gotta bring in happiness.

Absolutely.

And then I wanted, definitely wanted fear because there's a lot of anxious people.

Anxiety is often behind Anxiety, it's fear.

And so I wanted to make sure that I brought in the fear.

And I started with four, because I want to see how they go.

Okay, now surprise, like you mentioned, surprise and disgust.

They are really just as important.

And I've created stories in my mind on those two and hope that they come down the pike.

Okay, I want to talk to you now about your website because it's interesting, everybody.

When we first started, someone said to me, oh, where's your website?

And I said, website, Because I just thought, okay, we'll just make sure we have distribution of our book.

I soon realized we needed our own home for our books because we were building a book series and building it out and we had other ideas just like you have.

And that's what I want to talk to you about.

So, first of all, hats off to you with your website.

It's a beautiful website, and the thing I like about it is that you've combined fun and educational elements together.

So tell us about the fun stuff tab.

I just love that.

So tell us about that.

Yeah, you said I wanted something fun, and it mimics the books, which are fun and educational.

So I wanted to marry them together.

And I do.

I'm so glad that you noticed the website in that you thought the think the website is fabulous.

I think the website is just so fun and fantastic too.

And it's a tricky thing with websites, right, because do people go on them?

Do people subscribe?

So I.

You know what, Dina?

It's tough because what they always say is that when you're building any type of business online business or your book business, is that what you want to do is capture your own mailing list.

Because you can build out your social media accounts, but if Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or whoever changes their algorithm or as we all know right now, TikTok is having issues with the American government.

And so you don't know what happens to all of those followers that you built.

They could disappear overnight.

But through your own mailing list and through your own website, those are your treasured assets.

And so, so true to your point, how do you get someone to give freely of their email address?

Oh, it's tough, right?

I had my website person put up.

I emailed her and said, you need to put up that.

I don't know if you.

When you, if you notice when you go on, it says join the emotion Explorers Club.

I had her put that up because the subscribing thing is way down at the bottom.

Correct.

So the pop up.

Yeah, the pop up.

It's a learning process, I tell you.

You're always learning.

Because now I just learned yesterday actually through somebody that when you go to my website, it has that pop up, which is great.

And I had my website person put my first book right there on the front because people do not want to click and click and click.

We want it right there and really easy to access.

So it used to be on my book and shop page, which it still is, but it's right there as well.

So when you go to that, it should be just one click and they could buy.

And then she added the second book.

But I found out yesterday that I should have a products page instead of the books and shop, where they click on the book and it brings it to a products page.

So if you go on to, I don't know, clothing store, they have like that you click on a pair of pants and it.

Yeah.

So I'm going to start working on that.

But back to your question.

I'm sorry about the activities.

Yeah.

The fun downloads.

I think as a children's book author, everyone should have some downloads.

Something fun that you can give your audience for free just to bring them in.

And it's part of this series and help them understand that they also are part of this children's book series.

Good for you.

Social media.

Talk to us a little bit about your social media.

Do you have a plan to build out your social media?

Talk to us about that.

That's another great question.

Okay, so I am not a social media person.

So that's a problem because that is where you build your audience.

But I'm just not at Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

I'm just not.

And so the last three months, four months, I created my social media.

Wow.

Can social media be time consuming?

So I am not very good at it.

But thankfully there are lots of social media content people out there who are.

Right.

I have hired someone to do my social media with me.

Obviously involved.

You're involved because you're involved in the content and what they put out there.

You want to be.

There are places I was talking to Book Brush, Book Rush.

Okay.

And they do social media.

Fantastic company.

Very reasonable to implement postings.

They do six postings a week and they're very reasonable.

So they can do social media long term.

I know social media is the avenue.

That's where you're going to build it up.

So how do you get people to come to your page and do all of that?

I think there's a lot of behind the scenes that happen behind the algorithms and all of that.

And I'm starting to learn about that.

One thing I would recommend for you, and this is where I'm getting the most traction, is I'm just like you when it comes to Instagram and Facebook, and I'm slowly building a following, but it's not the easiest thing.

But one thing that, because I had a professional career for 30 years is I always had a very good LinkedIn page.

The interesting thing about LinkedIn is you can join groups and I know you're trying to reach educators.

And one of the groups that I joined was principals and teachers, a very large group on LinkedIn.

And when I could tell from the clicks I get, because you can see who's engaging with my posts.

Because what I do is I always do a post and I put it on about five or six different LinkedIn groups of this episode.

So you're going to find that there'll be a post and a link to this episode, but I also do a blog post.

What happens is a lot of us get engaged with other authors, but at the end of the day, I can't expect that all my author friends and my author community are going to buy my book, nor would they expect me to buy their book.

And so if you're speaking to people who aren't, a lot of times we're speaking to that audience, but they're part of your support group.

They're not really your customer.

Right.

Yeah.

Who is your audience?

Right.

So for you as an educator and for what you're trying to achieve, I would certainly look for children's influencers, like principals and teachers groups on LinkedIn and start doing some blog posts to attract them to your book series.

I think you might have better success because of your curriculum and what you're.

That's fantastic.

Yeah, I know you could see that from my LinkedIn.

That's something very new, too.

I've never had a LinkedIn page.

Right.

And this is a good chance.

I would suggest to you get.

You get the company that you're hiring.

You said a book brush.

That's one that I looked at.

Yes.

So anyways, have them do the Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, because you're a professional now.

This is just a recommendation.

If I were you, I would work on your LinkedIn on your own.

Don't let somebody else handle it because you know the language, you know how to talk to principals and teachers.

That's my personal opinion, but that's what.

I would do is that I think that's fantastic.

I Appreciate that.

No problem at all.

So I'm also interested in talking about motivation.

I can tell you're highly motivated.

I know you've talked about Bella, Bird, Henry, and you talked about getting the horse Bella shipped all the way across the country.

But is there something behind that?

Is there a specific person or event that's motivated you to finally do this, to get your children's book on into the marketplace?

You're serious?

That's such another good question.

I think behind anything this big, there's that underlying purpose.

And I think that for me personally, it's been many years of what is my purpose?

And my husband would say, your purpose right now is this or this.

And I'm like, no, there's something else I refuse to believe.

Good.

Yeah, I did.

I refused to believe because.

Okay.

Because I don't know if you saw my website, but I have four degrees.

Yeah, that's pretty crazy, right?

In and of itself.

So my Undergrad, I have two masters and I have my PhD.

After my PhD, I went back for my second master's.

Now, who does that and what do you do with that?

And my husband's.

You need to do something with all of this.

Okay.

So I was always teaching.

I've been an educator.

And then I became a licensed mental health counselor, clinical mental health counselor.

And I just.

And I thought, okay.

But still there was this underlying inside me saying, there's a purpose.

What is that?

And when the hurricane and Bella came and all of that happened, it just all came together and clicked.

Okay.

And I think that's what happens with a lot of people.

It just comes together and clicks that this is the purpose of all of that.

All the experiences I've had.

Absolutely.

And I've had some authors say a book came to them and they wrote their whole children's book overnight.

And some have said it took them a 30 year journey to fill their whole life before they actually brought their book to life.

So it comes, like you said, at varying points.

You just have to recognize it when it does come.

Right.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And it's funny because my husband says.

Because I'm like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe it.

All that I've been doing in my life, in my education and jobs and experiences as a mom, is coming out in this children's book series.

But I'm not surprised.

You loved growing up with my boys.

Who.

Grown adults.

I read we have a library full of children's books.

Like children.

And when I look back, it is true.

Children's books have always Been a big part of who I am, but not to the degree that I'm like, oh, I'm.

I want to be a children's book author.

Pretty incredible.

I want to talk to you about character development because we got the sense you've told us Bella and Bert are the inspirations behind them are real.

And Henry.

So talk to us, talk to us a little bit about Henry.

Is it, is Henry a real person or just that you knew it had to be an eight year old boy?

That is so good.

Henry is.

Brings out all the messiness in all of us.

Right.

Because who doesn't get angry?

Yes.

And when I started writing about anger, it just came natural to think about my own childhood and to think about the things that I was angry about.

And I can remember multiple times my mother would bake, she would bake brownies and cakes and things and I wanted to, to taste it and stuff.

And she would always let us lick the bowl and spoon.

That was just like something she always did.

And so when I was creating Henry and I was creating like, what is Henry going to be angry about?

I know that I had, for each of the emotions, I had to come up with something universal.

This is something really important.

When you're writing a children's book, you have to connect universally.

So like in my sadness book, sadness is not grief.

Grief is a component of sadness, but it's very different.

But I couldn't have Molly, my little girl, be sad about the death of a goldfish or the death of her grandfather because not everybody experiences that.

Not every child can connect to that.

Now there's some great stories out there that are meaningful, but I was looking, how do I connect to a wide range of people?

And so I can remember as a child being angry, wanting things and not getting things.

And I thought that's pretty universal.

Even as adults right now, we want things and we can't get them right.

And so I came up with the idea of Henry being angry.

He's wanting what.

What is it that he doesn't have?

A pie.

It's his grandmother's birthday.

He wants his favorite piece of pie and he can't have it.

And so I did combine my own experiences in every one of my books, my own childhood experience, adult experiences, and married them together.

Henry's one of the main characters in your first book.

Sounds like Molly's one of the main characters in the second book.

So the constant will be Bella and Bird, Is that correct?

Yes.

And so for your third and fourth book, is Henry or Molly coming back or you got some.

Introducing a new third character.

The happiness book, which is being illustrated right now, is a little girl named Piper.

She's a redhead little girl named Piper.

And she just come.

She comes bounding into the pastor, and it's her birthday, okay.

And she wants every day to be her birthday.

Excellent.

I love.

And Bella and Bird, of course.

Of course we want every day to be our birthdays, but that's not reality.

Right.

They teach her how to cultivate happiness.

So in the anger book, Bella and Bird teach Henry how to explore.

Okay.

His anger.

In the sadness book, Bella and Bird teach Molly how to tend sadness.

You tend to sadness.

In the happiness book, you cultivate happiness.

And then in the fear book, you navigate.

You learn how to navigate fear.

You.

So those are, I'll say, big literacy words that I'm also behind the scenes trying to teach and introduce to the children and to adults.

I think everybody's getting a sense of each theme I'm wondering about.

Is the central teaching separate from the theme in your mind?

Yeah, I think it goes hand in hand.

My.

The books are a story, and in the story, it's about having a conversation about each of these emotions and introducing tools, lifelong tools that kids could take along with them.

And adults can learn them, too, because they may never have learned them.

I often get feedback from adults that say, I love your book.

It helps me.

My illustrator would always say that, like every book she's working on, she's.

I take these tools and I utilize them in my everyday life.

So talk to us about.

I think that you.

When you're doing book tours, how are you sharing the central teaching?

I've done multiple interviews to read online, you know, so to read online so that people can try to get the idea behind it is.

It's very heavy, right?

It's.

There's again, the framework is the emotional intelligence.

So how do I introduce that concept?

How do I get my audience, everybody out there, to understand when they see a book that says anger or sadness.

Oh, God, goodness.

But it is the idea of learning how to have open, honest conversations about these emotions that every single human being feels.

There's no one that doesn't feel them.

And animals as well, which is the nice connection.

And it's getting them to realize that these skills you can utilize.

You can role model to your children.

And what you're doing is you're planting seeds and giving your kids really a gift.

Because I noticed in your book, you also introduced box technique and you also introduced counting to 10.

And so that's interesting that you have all of these kind of themes threading together.

Would you say that?

Yeah.

So each book has different techniques or skills that I introduce depending on the emotion, because every emotion has its own unique skills that's attached to it.

And that's what we're trying to teach.

And it does mirror what you would probably learn in therapy sessions.

Do you use singing to yourself as a technique?

The reason I say that is I had to go for my annual physical, and of course, I take my blood pressure.

And one of the techniques I use is actually there's a happy song that I sing, and.

And it seems to bring my blood pressure down.

So not sure if you're using singing as a technique.

I always say emotions need motion, so emotions need motion.

So whether it's singing, walking, drawing, no matter what that is, that's important.

So important to learn is that your emotions need motion.

You just need, as an individual to determine what best suits moving those emotions out.

And for different emotions, it might be something different.

In my sadness book, Molly draws.

That's one of the techniques.

I'm sorry, interrupt.

She draws.

Nice.

That's one of the techniques.

It's beautiful.

Like you said, you've got two books written and formulating the other two.

So let's talk about your writing process, because that's one of the difficult things that people have is so can you share some insights into your development and writing process that helps you move along to write your next book?

That look like, gosh, that's such a.

That that's a tough one.

I first, I think you.

You have to set the motion and the mood and the intention to sit and write.

And we're so inundated with distractions today.

Yes.

And so I think, as for writers, you have to really be intentional and tune everything off and out, and you really have to find.

You have to make an appointment.

But for me, on my calendar, I have the days that I write in the afternoons that I write, and I dedicate just that time to writing.

And it's interesting.

I was thinking about yourself, and I always ask people, besides your personal experience, do you conduct any additional research?

But one thing I found is it seemed to me, now, if I'm mistaken, please feel free to correct me.

But it's almost like your education got harnessed up.

It was like you kept building on your education, and it was looking for a release mechanism, and all of a sudden, boom, you had all these things happen in your life, and then all of a sudden it turned into a children's book.

Series.

Have I got that right?

Have you taken all of your educational experience and turned it into something incredible?

You have that absolutely perfect.

I'm going to write that down because it's exactly what happened.

And it's funny because it's like that's how the hurricane really.

And Bella the horse really hurled in everything.

It really brought everything that I was working on throughout my entire life to that point of writing.

And like you said, just brought it all out.

All my education, all my experiences, heavy research.

Like, I am a heavy researcher.

I had to be with a PhD and the degrees I have.

Absolutely.

My first master's, I focused on school violence.

And my PhD, the framework is on forgiveness and resiliency.

And so I researched those topics, and bullying was the framework, was the topic on my PhD dissertation.

So I.

All of that and all the research I've done, the research side for all the tools in my book and the writing in my book, because you gotta research a lot.

It came natural and that came easy.

I want to delve a bit.

When we first started our conversation, I talked to you about a business book plan because.

And you've got a beautiful website, you've got the development of a great book series.

But I'm curious, I want to dig deeper into how do you measure success?

What does success look like to you?

And do you think it's changed a little bit as you now move into your second book to release your second book?

I think too, success has changed for me over the years.

And I think younger you have these ideas that you have to do this and this.

And for me, it was getting degrees, and I wanted to be an educator, and that would define my success.

And of course, it didn't.

I became an educator and I still felt this yearning, this yearning for something.

And I'm not sure if that yearning is for success, because I think.

How do you define success?

Success is, for me, being content and doing something in the world that benefits people, that helps people.

That's what's always been.

My goal is helping, helping others.

So let's jump into your role of writing then.

So now that you're a published children's book author, tell us what being a children's book author now means in the grand scheme of things of your life.

That it means that I don't want to stop at just writing these children's books.

And so I have thought about, and I'm in the process, actually, of developing what's called the Soar campaign.

Okay.

So soar with emotional intelligence.

So for me, my books are just one part of this bigger plan that I have in my mind.

So what's, how do you spell soar?

S O, A, R. Okay.

Like soaring in the sky.

Okay.

Soar with emotional intelligence.

So my, my focus is not just the books, it's more with getting what is emotional intelligence?

How can we get it out there in schools and into the communities, into every home?

And how can we help children and adults build their emotional intelligence so that we could be such a much healthier world?

So soar stands for self, others, awareness and resilience.

Because that's what emotional intelligence is.

It's understanding yourself in the feelings and emotions that you have, understanding that of others, not taking on the emotions and feelings of others.

We can never do that.

But it's just being in tune and noticing and then awareness, being self aware.

And then you become resilient.

You become resilient.

And that's what builds leaders.

And so emotional intelligence is about building leaders in many ways and it's about building healthy adults.

And so my long term goal is to have that campaign and to hopefully have schools bring that campaign into schools and communities.

And I can see how that can be very inspiring.

So thank you for sharing that.

As I mentioned earlier, we try and talk to aspiring children's book authors who might be listening and saying, wow, Deana's done a lot.

This woman's incredible.

Like, how do I ever, how can I do this?

So what advice would you give an aspiring children's book authority?

I would say first, take your idea, then just write it down.

Write it down and let it transpire.

Don't let go of that idea.

Because no matter who you are, where you are in your journey, every single idea can be turned into a story.

And your story matters, and that person's story matters, and that person's story matters.

And if you really want to be a children's book authority, just keep writing.

You have to work at it every single day.

That's one thing is that you just, it doesn't, it's just not this easy thing that just happens overnight.

Right?

You have to work at it.

You have to go into the groups, into these author, children's book author groups on social media and whatnot.

Attend the podcast, attend the webinars, learn everything you possibly can learn about writing and network with people.

Thank you.

And yeah, I always save this towards the end, but it's probably the most important piece and that's encouragement for readers.

Why should readers read your books?

Yeah, readers should read my books because it'll bring them into an adventure and a journey, and they'll feel part of that journey.

They'll connect, they'll relate.

They'll learn something.

They'll feel, oh, I understand, Henry.

That's me in this book.

And they'll walk away.

They'll walk away with feeling better and having tools to take along with them.

Terrific.

Final thoughts.

Is there anything you said, oh, son of a gun.

I wish Rick would ask me that one question.

Is there something that you'd like to share that I didn't address?

I don't think so, but I have a question.

Absolutely.

How did you come up with your first book?

And I'm sure your audience probably knows this.

Yes, they did.

But was there something but?

No.

Thank you for asking.

So it all started with my oldest granddaughter.

Her and I spent a lot of time in the Rocky Mountains.

We did a lot of adventures.

I taught her how to ski, horseback ride.

We did horseback riding in the winter.

If you've never ridden in the snow, there's even different horseshoes that go on.

The horses are different.

Just an exhilarating experience.

So her and I did a lot of adventures.

I call her my digital baby because there was no film.

Everything now is all digital, so there's no negative.

So I call her our first digital baby.

I have every adventure right here in my iPhone.

Her and I would go to Starbucks and I'd buy her a hot chocolate, and she'd say, you know what, Papa?

I know we look at these pictures, but you know what?

These are all adventures.

We should turn this into a children's book.

And that's how it all started.

And you know what?

We wrote our first story, and then she said, oh, let's just write down future stories.

So we used our journal, which I have behind me, and we actually wrote down.

I think we're up to about 38 different stories.

Wow.

That's fantastic.

We call her.

She has an old soul, and she was the first grandchild by five years.

So when the other grandchildren started coming, she was, like, the focal point.

The other grandchildren were relying on her wisdom and her life experiences to help them.

My middle granddaughter and my oldest granddaughter, we wrote our second book, which is called hi Jinks from the Big Head Folk Music Festival.

And so the other thing that I've got my grandchild involved in is we've taken about half of our stories and made them into audiobooks because of their young voice right now.

That's fantastic.

Yeah.

So that's how it all started for us.

And I think that's a good point.

I think when you sit down and you write the first story, I think after the first one, there's just so many other ideas that start flooding in.

Absolutely.

For other stories, I couldn't agree with you more.

And that's what I'm finding with most of my guests is there's no one and done.

It's like a freight train.

It keeps going down the track.

And it gets easier and easier to write the stories, too.

I feel like the first one, it was just so difficult.

Cause I've never written a children's book before, and I write in an educational way.

Now I have to write with these three characters.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Dina, thank you so much for being a guest on the Adventures in the Heart of Children's Books Children's Book Authors Podcast.

Your generosity of Time insights will significantly benefit aspiring authors and readers.

We promise to provide our audience with Dina's social media and website.

Her website is phenomenal.

You have to go there.

And if you've enjoyed the episode, please feel free to hit the subscribe button to listen to future episodes.

And feel free to share this episode with anyone inspired by or who enjoys hearing about Dina and her children's book series, Bella and Bird Explore.

Thank you, Dina.