My name is Joan Epp and my children's book is called Ice Cap.

Welcome, Joan.

Thanks for joining us and being a guest on Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors Podcast.

I'd love to start jumping right in and talking to you about your inspiration behind the book and your origin story.

I've been an elementary teacher for years and years.

I recently retired and became a grandmother.

Reading and writing with children is for me, second nature, but a true joy with my grandchildren.

About a year and a half to two years ago, I was reading Frosty the Snowman on the couch with my little granddaughter.

I was babysitting her.

It was snowing out, it was really fun.

And I asked her, how did you like that book, Audrey?

Was that a good one?

She said, I love Frosty the Snowman, but I grew up with him.

So I said, hey, how about we write our own snowman story?

And she loves to read and write and I, I write with her often.

So this is nothing unusual for us.

She was about three and a half at the time.

So we came up with this character.

Uh, he had to be a snowman, of course, he had to be magical.

And we, it had to be Canadian because we are Canadian.

And we just came up with this grand story about Icecap.

Her grand story was four pages long.

She's left handed.

So it was written right to left on paper.

And it was very cute.

Lots of scribbles, lots of letters, and her little tiny illustrations.

And I took that book and I thought, wow, I have always wanted to write a children's book.

I've written so many stories.

I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this for her.

So I looked into the publishing world a little bit and discovered that it was a very long, dedicated process.

And I wanted to do it now while she's young, while she's going to appreciate it and be wowed by it.

I wanted to ask you, I, first of all, what I loved about your book before we could jump into the publishing of your publishing approach.

I loved how you incorporated today's technology into your story.

So I was thinking, I've got to talk to Joan.

What was the inspiration?

Because you know what, Because I co authored a children's book with my oldest granddaughter.

I could see the generational gap.

And of course, today it's a little audio here, it's a little text there, it's a little video everywhere kind of thing.

And so I thought, oh, Joan, you've got to tell us a little bit more about that.

Part of the story before we jump into the publishing side of it, if you don't mind.

Oh, not at all.

You know, we all have phones.

We're always taking pictures and videos of the kids.

And when we were building our character, I said.

He said, snowman for us.

So what should he have?

They.

She loves her iPad, and they don't get a lot of technology because they're very limited, but he had to have a phone.

And so when I was writing that story, we talked about that.

Should he really be texting kids without their parents permission?

She was a little young to understand that kind of concept yet, but it made me think a lot.

And we decided that, yes, he would have his phone, but mostly he would be playing.

Okay.

And that's the important part, is technology is a wonderful way to connect, as we're doing right now.

Yes.

It is a tool.

Correct.

It is not the be all and end all of life.

Absolutely.

And what's interesting, because that's exactly how my granddaughter and I started this whole thing, was that we had done hundreds of adventures with her plushies in the Rocky Mountains, and we had taken a lot of pictures, and all these pictures were sitting on my iPhone and never were to come to life.

And she said to me, papa, we need to do something with these pictures.

Can we write some stories about our adventures?

And that's how it all started.

And actually, at the back of our children's book, we have an area where we encourage children at the end of this story to.

To write their own stories.

And then we created railway tracks in the form of a picture frame so they could draw their stories inside the picture frames.

How you're describing this is very close to my heart because it's almost an identical process of how we started as grandparents with our grandchildren.

So thank you for sharing that.

Yes.

And in the back of my book, when I was teaching, in my early days of teaching, there was a story in one of the readers that we had called Rodeo Pup, and the author left his email address for kids to write stories to.

So I've always remembered that.

And I thought, when I write a book, that's what I'm doing.

And I did that.

And good for you.

Good for you.

That's accurate.

Yours is similar.

Yeah, I.

We don't take ours as far as you have, but we actually, on our website, you can go.

If you submit your email address, it automatically sends you more of these, I call them activity sheets, so that you.

If you don't want to do it in your book, you can actually Print them off at home and do it from home.

So, yeah, it's definitely.

It's nice and I really appreciate you sharing that.

So let's jump into your publishing approach.

And each of us comes at it in a unique way because we're self published.

And I find there's various ways of going about self published.

A lot of people will go hybrid, which is a combination of traditional and self published.

And then there's traditional, of course, where you try and get yourself a literary agent and then find a publisher.

And I also find that some people do it a la carte, which means they have some skills in putting a book together.

They just don't have all the skills.

They hire out part of the work.

Tell us about your publishing journey to get your book published.

My book was actually almost perfect when I had it in hand.

And from what I know, it pretty much has to be ready before you get started with anything.

So what I did was I called many self publishers all over the place, all over the United States, all over Canada.

I joined a writing group, Brooke Gansmer's Journey to Kidlit and her Biblio Kids Publishing was the publisher, hybrid publisher.

I chose because I got to talk to her, I had video meetings with her, and she actually really knew what she was talking about.

Whereas when I called many other self publishing houses, I was getting a marketing student and it just hit me the wrong way.

I needed to connect with somebody who really understood what I wanted.

Brooke Gansmer is actually a children's author, so I really connected with her.

I wanted to have a Canadian publisher.

It didn't work out this time.

Next time I really hope it does.

Okay.

Fantastic.

You have pretty well contracted all the elements of the self publishing side of it.

So you wrote the story and then they help you find an illustrator.

Or did you have an illustrator?

No, they gave me a choice of several illustrators.

I chose Claire Sidolovic because she was the closest to my vision and she's a watercolorist.

And so she a lot like Michael Marchenko, she had the ability to use soft images to bring my story to life.

I wasn't excited about the AI looking generated, looking cartoony ones.

Right.

So that's why I chose her.

Okay.

And she did a marvelous job.

It's beautiful.

It's a beautiful book.

And it's interesting you should say that because I interviewed a young writer from Buffalo, New York, and he has written seven children's books.

And it's interesting that you're talking about the illustrator and matching your concept because with his seven books, he's had three different illustrators.

And at first I thought, oh, was there a problem with the illustrator?

And he said, no, that's not it at all.

He said, each one of my books has a different feel and look that I'm.

I can visualize.

That's why I chose the different illustrators, because I just got a sense that they understood that this book is different from my other book and.

And what I was trying to capture it.

Definitely.

It's incredible how it comes down to your visualizing what you would like.

Yes.

In fact, when she sent me the sketches, they were good.

And I've had long conversations with Brooke about working with an illustrator.

I was a little bit more controlling and I had to really pull.

Rein myself in.

So I sent a lot of stock images of Canadian landscapes, the flora and savanna of Canada.

I actually sketched Icecap myself.

And I said, I love your ice cap, but I need him to look like this.

No, good for you.

I took it and ran with it.

Fantastic.

And you know what is interesting?

Because we went through the same kind of experience.

Some illustrators keep all the rights to their illustrations and their characters.

Even though you've created the character, some of a lot of illustrators keep the images as their copyright.

It's interesting because I was talking to an author last week, and she created a really cute character, but she doesn't have the rights to the images.

Whereas our character.

You can probably see him in the back.

Yes.

Caboose, the Rocky Mountain bear.

We designed her in advance of me ever contacting an illustrator.

So it certainly made a big difference because we actually had the illustrator sign a contract that we, as the.

The writers, had the rights to the illustrations.

I have the all.

And that's another part of being an indie author, is that you own your words, you own your story.

And for this book in particular, that was very important to me as it was a legacy for my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren and the.

And I have permission from Brooke to use images in any way I need to advertise.

So that's why I got the ability.

To do that when you started looking for a.

And I don't want to confuse people, because a lot of times people think of self publishing as actually you doing it yourself.

And that's why I try and say to people that most times when people are talking about self publishing, they're really talking about hybrid publishing.

Yes.

Because they're contracting a company to do a lot of the work.

And there's a lot of these type of companies out there that actually take on the work of authors who are, like you said, indie authors who don't have a traditional publisher.

Yes.

I think you can go the other route.

I do have illustrator friends who I have in my back pocket.

Okay.

They didn't fit my story this time, but for future stories they may.

A friend of mine, she owns the tees and apple orchards in Leamington.

I don't know if you'd ever been.

There, but no, I have not.

But they wrote their own story and they had all that work done separately with local people and they have it in their store.

Okay.

I could have gone that route, but I really wanted the look and feel of a book that had some very skilled editors and illustrators.

I wanted their skills.

My book, good for you.

And that's important for people to understand because as you become more experienced now that you've done your first book, your approach to your second book, if you have a second book in mind.

I have several, actually.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

And you know what?

I.

I'm finding every single self published author, indie author that I've talked to, they all have multiple books just dying to get out of them.

And it was interesting because I talked to an author from Seattle and he said to me, you know what, Rick?

I thought it was one and done.

And now he just launched his fourth book.

So I think for most indie authors, there is no one and done.

No, I don't think so.

I've taken the Little Tomato and created a story out of it recently.

I just actually finished it about two days ago, but I have a few more already written.

But that one might be the next one.

One author I talked to from California, she wrote a book called Carol the Carrot Bowls for the Salad Bowl.

So it's incredible what we can do with different options.

And that's why I like to talk to people.

Your imagination is endless.

And that's the beautiful thing about children's books, is you can do anything you want and create an engaging story.

I just touched base a bit more about the self publishing.

Do you do print on demand or did you run a large quantity of books?

What's your story there?

Like?

How did you go about printing?

So the Biblio Kids takes care of that and they use Ingram in the States.

Ingram Sparks.

And so I believe it's print.

I believe it's print on demand because my book is available across many platforms, including Indigo now.

Yes.

Yeah.

The order they print, they say.

Okay, so it's primarily print on demand.

I ordered about 200 books myself, and I've sold most of them already locally through all kinds of different local stores, vendors, word of mouth, teachers, school.

For your second book and your third book, we all, we're all learning.

And I myself, and I've actually got all of my grandchildren involved to some degree.

I'm just wondering, what would you change now that you've gotten into this publishing approach?

Would.

What would you change in your.

In publishing your next book?

As far as how who I approach to publish it, do you mean would.

You take on more of the work now?

That.

I don't think I would.

Okay.

I don't think so.

My, my strength is a story.

I'm actually also a bit of an artist.

Okay.

But I understand how time consuming that is.

Yes.

And I, I also, I feel like I'm a patron of the arts also.

I really like to support fellow artists and so I would definitely connect with one of my illustrator friends to do that again.

Because the other thing that other illustrators do for your story is they sometimes bring out details that you hadn't thought of or considered.

So for example, Ice Cap rides a snowboard.

Yes.

And there's a whole story by high snowboard too.

Right.

But she designed the, the Blue Lightning and he's fast and I loved it.

I'm like, oh my gosh, I never would have thought to do that.

So other illustrators bring their own kind of knowledge, experiences and creativity to your work.

That's probably the biggest reason I would want another person to have their hands on it.

Okay.

Okay.

And I can tell you from my experience that we will always use an illustrator because I just don't have that skill set.

And at this point, none of my grandchildren have that skill set.

So that, that's definitely very important that we work with a.

As you said, an illustrator.

And like I was talking about earlier about Aaron, who has seven children's books and worked with three different illustrators.

Again, I'm just trying to.

For anybody who's an aspiring children's book author, don't be afraid to go outside your comfort zone.

And there's.

You don't have to stick with the same illustrator for your next book.

I most likely would not.

Okay.

Because the subject material has a different sort of vibrancy to it, Right?

Absolutely.

And hers would not match.

Okay, terrific.

So the other thing that I love to talk to you about is your website.

I like your website and it's lots of fun.

And as a self published author, did you launch your website before or after you launched your book?

I launched it before because my publisher told me that I had to.

That's the difference between traditional and indie authors or traditionally published and self published.

Published authors is that you're self published.

You have to do all the marketing.

Basically.

That's correct.

I did this with my niece Abby, who's a wonderful niece of mine and just love her to pieces and she has a few little skills.

Then I spent a little money and I redesigned it this summer.

Okay.

Or I had it redesigned and that took probably about three months to get that.

So the beautiful thing about it is you already had the graphics from your book that you could incorporate into your website.

And the reason I tell people that story is that now obviously you had the graphics before you published the book.

In our case, somebody said to us, my granddaughter and I were about to publish our book and somebody said, where's your home?

And we said what do you mean where's our home?

And they said where's your website?

Like where do people go to buy your book?

And I thought, oh, we'll just send them to Amazon or we also publish through IngramSpark.

So we said our books available anywhere there's online book retailers.

Anyways, long story short, luckily, because we were almost finished our book, we had all the graphics like you did.

But it took us about six months before we actually launched our website to support our book.

But in your case, you got.

It looks like you got sound advice and had your website up and running.

Prior to launch was actually a requirement from them.

Okay.

To have that done.

And how did that work for you?

How do you feel that worked for you having a website?

I really loved that, that particular publisher because they had a whole student portal that led you through all the steps of marketing, getting ready, what should you have in your back pocket?

They had it all laid out for you.

It was very helpful.

Is there any of those steps that you said maybe I can just take on myself next time?

Absolutely.

For example, I probably don't have to take on those steps again because I already have done them, which is the website knowing how to get your social media going.

I haven't done enough with that.

Right now I'm wondering whether I'm going to get off of TikTok or not.

I'm not certain about that one.

And stick maybe just with Instagram and Facebook and so forth.

But what I found so far in all the children's book authors that I've interviewed, I a hundred percent use Instagram and I haven't seen too many using TikTok and some definitely have Facebook.

But I'm finding most gravitate towards Instagram for whatever reason.

And I've been inspired by those people to do more on Instagram than I had in the past.

So just so far, that's been what I've seen in terms of social media and where most children's book authors kind of gravitate to.

Yes.

And just recently got onto Threads.

Yes, yes.

And that has been amazing.

Just the support from other authors and just telling each other our stories.

For any new authors, I would get a hop on to there and start listening and reading.

And just so everyone understand Threads is attached to Instagram.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I just want.

So if there's any aspiring listeners.

Authors.

Aspiring authors who are listening, you can definitely see what Joan is talking about once you get into your Instagram account, then you can use that.

Use Threads as a way to build a community.

Yes.

I do want to mention Indigo.

I love Indigo.

They put the little Canadian sticker on the page, on your selling page on top of your book.

And the climate in our country at the moment is to buy Canadian.

And so that.

That's been awesome.

I did appreciate that very much.

Okay.

And for those who were maybe listening in the western part of Canada, it's.

It's call.

It's Chapters.

Indigo or Indigo.

Chapters, yes.

Indigo.

Ca.

Yeah.

Like my wife and I were in Chapter.

I took my youngest granddaughter, she had just bought a book, and I took her to Chapters last night for her to pick that.

Pick the book up.

I'm also wondering about when you say your website.

So you said your niece was involved.

She got it up and running for me.

Okay.

And then I.

I interviewed a whole bunch of people to do my website again.

I was looking for a Canadian, didn't find one.

Okay.

Ended up with a.

Someone out of California, I think.

And they have taken the ball with it.

So, yeah, very nice job.

Yeah.

People should definitely visit your website and we'll make sure we have links to your website in the show notes just so everybody can go and see how needed is.

The other thing I want to pick up on.

And I tend to not get too political about this because what I found, and I hope when everybody's listening to this, what I found with children's book authors is that we're all trying to bring our creativity through our words to.

To illustrations and bring it to life.

And a lot of the children's book authors that I've interviewed, some of them are in the States and some of them are in Canada, and some of them are in great Britain.

But what I'm finding is that illustrators are from all over the world.

Like for example, our illustrator is in, in the United Kingdom.

And similar to what you were just saying, Joan.

So I want everybody to understand this is that for example, we tried to find someone to illustrate our book in Canada.

That just didn't work for us, just like it didn't work for you.

I think it's important for people to understand that the children's book community is global.

I don't think anybody should be putting up any walls, especially when it comes to children.

Absolutely correct.

Thank you.

Just want to everybody understand that this is global.

Children's books are global.

I started the our podcast.

We have listeners in over 19 countries.

That's wonderful.

I have a cousin who has been awesome.

She's bought so many of my books.

One of them is going to land up in Finland.

They're all, they're from all over.

I have lots of cousins in the United States and I do love traveling there.

I love the country too.

I talked to a mother and son who, the who wrote a book about dyslexia and their book.

Even though they're.

They're in the States, they just got a large purchase from friends.

Nice.

So you just never know what's going to happen with your children's book.

It gets recognized and when people come on shows like ours and then people are listening globally, you just never know what happens.

I was talking to an author the other day who was on our show and she was shocked when she found out she had sold some books in India and she lives in Texas.

I'm trying to encourage people to understand.

Even as a self published children's book author or indie book author, it's incredible that our reach is global.

That's right.

So when you decided to, to change your website, tell us a little bit about how did that come about?

Because I talked to a lot of children's book authors and they do the same thing.

They start on their own and then once they get some traction, they tend to be a little more professional about it.

So tell us about that journey that you went on.

My website page was my face.

That was all right.

And although my face is okay and everything, my family seems to.

My husband seems to love my face.

That's good.

I really wanted to showcase the book and in the future other books I think it was.

And I looked at a lot of other authors web and they're famous.

I'm not famous, but I'm also a teacher and a little bit of a perfectionist So I thought, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this right, and it's going to be hopefully a wow when people open it up and see how visually pleasing it is.

And that was important to me.

And yes, it cost a lot of money to do that.

But when I go into schools and I say to the teacher, pull up my website for the kids, it's, wow, that looks so professional.

So it's important.

It's important.

They say you don't judge a book by its cover, but actually people do.

It's important that I, we share that with everyone.

And that's why I tell the story about the neat thing about having a children's book and you have the illustrations is that you can transform those illustrations into a beautiful website.

And that's what Joan's done.

That's what we've done.

I'm just trying to give aspiring authors a little heads up if you're about to start the journey.

I think the advice you got, Joan, was great advice.

You've got most of your illustrations completed, and then that gives you the resources to then build a cool website.

That's right.

I know you talked about your granddaughter.

You said Audrey, Yes, Audrey, yes.

So you talked about your granddaughter, Audrey, about being your motivation.

Was there any other person or event that motivated you to finally, after all these years, get your children's book out into the world?

I would say yes, because I did promise all of my students that I would be an author one day and I would write a book and it would be out there and they would be able to purchase it.

That has been such a dream of mine.

And I have been very motivated.

Unfortunately, sometimes you're.

Since we're the sandwich generation, I've.

I have elderly parents.

I did much caregiving so that you have to take time and honor those parts of your life.

And so I did, absolutely.

But when I was more free from working on the farm and because I sold my farm to my son, but I still was planting tomatoes and doing different things, so I'm a bit more free of that.

I had the time and my.

I have to tell you my greatest joy.

Not just giving this book to my kids and my family members, but it's to.

To get it to the students that I had in from JK to grade six.

I was in a.

In my.

The school I taught in recently, well before Christmas, and one of the kids I taught was a student teacher there.

And the stars in her eyes were just.

They just warmed my heart.

I'm Thinking, wow, wow, what an impact that a person can actually have in someone's life.

And I've got a million stories about that.

But that was to me, I know you asked the question, like, what makes your book successful?

That's it right there is sharing your story and having kids say, wow, Mrs.

App, thank you so much for coming.

Are you.

When's your next book coming out?

Or I can't believe you actually did it.

Way to go.

And being.

And them asking me in those younger grades, how do you write a book?

Could I do it?

And I always say, why, of course you can.

You can do it right now.

Good for you.

And it's interesting because I was mentioning an author who's out of Seattle.

He.

And that's one of the things we had talked about was when I said to you.

He said, one and done.

And then I said to him, okay, so explain to me how you went from this emphatic one and done to now you're launching your fourth book.

And he said that every time I went to schools and I read my book, what did students say to me, oh, Mr.

Darcy, when are you coming out with your next book?

Yes.

And so definitely very inspirational.

And it sounds like that's the same for you.

It's true.

I've actually written a sequel, two more about with Icecap in it, but I'm hanging on to them for a little while.

Okay.

No, that's good.

We've got some more caregiving to do at the moment, but.

So I want to talk about Ice Cap for a moment.

So let's talk about character development.

How did you develop the main character?

I know you told us the story with your granddaughter Audrey, but tell us a little bit more and also explain to us the significance of the name.

He's Canadian.

He had to have a magical hat.

So Cap to Cap.

A lot of people said, how about Snow Cap?

No, I didn't like it.

How about Ice Cap?

And my kids are always drinking ice caps.

Not necessarily from a certain store, but in general, they're drinking that.

That is so funny.

And it's so Canadian.

So that's where his.

In my mind, that's where his name came from.

But.

And with Audrey, I had talked to her about that.

She liked that name.

So I said, okay, let's use that name in developing the character.

What I did with Audrey and I.

What I did with all my students is you just get a big piece of paper.

It was a big, messy, ripped piece of paper.

Right.

With a marker.

And we just started writing.

So what does he look like?

What does he do?

What are his interests?

Is he funny?

What does he ride?

What does he have on him?

So we.

We did all of that kind of physical, superficial kind of stuff, and then I went to his personality.

What do we want him to be like?

He should be really cool.

Snowmen are cool, huh?

But, yeah, he's really cool.

So what is he gonna.

He's gonna ride a snowboard.

He's gonna have a cell phone.

He's a cool snow moment.

Then when I got away from Audrey, I'm thinking of, okay, who are the coolest people that I know?

I know a lot of cool people.

I did write some of this down just so I could remember or have it at my fingertip.

So one of the coolest snowboarders I know, his name is Thomas Whitaker.

He is my cousin's son.

He's a snowboarder.

He's.

He's a boarder.

He.

He is sponsored by Salomon in.

In B.C.

Yeah.

And he goes all over the place.

I've got.

My ski boots are Salomon's.

Okay.

So he's a real snow.

And I have a big picture of him with his huge snowboard.

And I do.

I take that into schools all the time.

In his interviews, he's been dubbed the nicest snowboard in.

In the business.

Okay, terrific.

He's a really nice kid.

The rock star portion of Ice Cap came from my nephews, Daniel and Alexander, and they have a rock group called Brandy Alexander.

So not all kids love sledding, snowboarding, ice hockey, and playing in the snow.

But there are a lot of kids who like music.

So I thought he has to be connecting with all kinds of kids, all different interests.

So that's where my rock star came from.

And they're also super cool.

Very cool with the red guitar.

Yes.

And a lot of the activities that he did, the snowboarding, sledding, the everything building snow sculptures, that all came from what I tell my students.

My imaginary backpack.

Okay.

And so when I'm building any character, it has to come from my imaginary backpack.

And it's not just full of imaginary things, it's my what?

It's like a toolkit that I throw everything into so I can pull it out later.

Good for you.

In my backpack, I tell kids, I put my knowledge, my.

My everyday, longtime knowledge, all of my experiences, travel, everyday experiences, and my.

All my observations of animals, people, landscape, everything.

Everything, food, everything.

And I tell them, if you can put lots and lots of things in your imaginary backpack, that's where the details from your story will come from.

Imagine.

Okay.

What animal should I choose?

I've got a fox, and he's from my forest in the back of my place right now.

Right.

Same with the hares.

The hawk, he's in the story, too, and he's a regular.

Or in the.

Going in the fields.

All my life, every piece of flora, fauna, every little piece of that story, down to the corn husk dolls, came from me.

And I tried to put it in.

I want to tell you a little bit about the corn husk dolls if I can.

Absolutely.

When I was a little girl, I'm a farmer, and I grew up on a farm.

Both field and greenhouse operations.

We had corn.

And my mom taught me how to make corn husk dolls.

And she.

When she was about 10, had a neighbor who was a First nations from one from the Caldwells.

Okay.

Who had.

Were living in a bush with a.

With the owner's permission.

And he came to their house to play every day, and he taught her how to make corn husk dolls.

And Amos Thomas was his name.

Wow.

He's no longer with us, but he was a phenomenal guy.

He was a First nations guy.

Taught her how to make a.

I think it was a violin or a fiddle or something out of Cornhouse.

She promised me to teach me this summer, but she's 94 and a half, so I'm really hoping that we get that chance.

Excellent.

When I was doing this, I ended up crafting a whole bunch of them and selling them at an art society because.

And they loved them.

I sold many of them.

And my granddaughter, what does she want for Christmas?

She wants a corn husk doll.

Wow.

So I made a very special one for her.

Good for you.

And it was really the piece de resistance of my story, because in the story, the greatest gift of all that you can give to other people is from the heart or their gifts of the heart.

Yes.

They may not be off of Amazon, because he goes on to his phone and lots of great ideas to leave the town.

Children's a gift from Amazon.

But he chooses things from nature and has a heart to give.

And so when she asked me for a corn husk doll, I thought, wow, that was the most meaning.

She has it in her room.

It's so meaningful to her.

And, you know, it's interesting you should say that because.

And again, this is for the.

For aspiring authors, is that myself and my grandchildren have written 38 stories in our Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain.

Oh, wow.

That's amazing.

And what we've done is because they grow very quickly as children and grandchildren.

We've been recording.

We've recorded about half the stories into audiobooks because to actually publish every story you'd have.

We'd have to be multimillionaires to.

To get.

That's right, bring them all to market.

The first thing we do is we've captured them in an audio book format.

But the coming back to you, what you said earlier is every single story in those 38 stories is all based on a snippet of a true story, an adventure that we had together.

Yeah.

I'm trying to emphasize that for aspiring authors is understand that just let your imagination go wild and grab onto things that happen to you and just take them and let them grow.

And that's what it sounds like you've done.

I've just followed my own lessons that I've been teaching for decades to children.

When you write with.

On based on your own experiences, it's authentic and you can't.

There's nothing better than being authentic in a few words.

Tell us the theme of your book.

The theme of my book is really a.

It's a theme of kindness and connection.

So based on this character who's all tech savvy, the underlying message is when you put the technology down, you open the doors to a whole lot of experience and real life connection with people that you love, your friends, your family, and so forth.

So would that also be the central teaching behind this, or is it more?

There's a lot.

There's a lot more in it.

But when I asked the kids, what did you learn about technology in this story?

Oh, you got to get your parents permission if you want to text somebody.

I said, yeah, that's right, you do.

That's the one that.

Kids that haven't developed their inference skills.

Okay.

Yep.

That's when the teacher and I draw them into that piece of the.

That lesson of the story that you need to put technology down in order to experience real life.

Because you and I on the screen.

Screen, to an extent, is real life, but it's not like meeting you and shaking your hand and going out and taking a walk in the woods.

Right?

Absolutely.

Quite interesting.

So you said you had more stories in you, and I just want to jump into your writing process, share some insights into your development and your writing process of your book.

Tell us how that all developed and how did you get the words down to paper?

I'm an old poet, as you can know that my book is rhymes, and I always thought it was kids love rhyme.

And it's.

To me, it was very important to have a book that they could predict.

So when they're either reading along or it's being read aloud to them, you can stop and they can predict the next word.

Writing and rhyme for this book was very important to me because for my granddaughter, she needed to be able to have success in reading.

And success in reading is as teachers are all about that.

So that was.

That kind of was the.

The motivation behind that part of my writing.

I'll start by saying it took probably six or seven months for me to polish this story.

Besides your own personal experience, did you conduct any additional research into developing your story?

And if you did, why did you do that?

My research, yes.

So my research was really about the content, the visual content of my story.

So I started Googling because I had to for my illustrator.

I wanted it to be extremely authentic.

I could have gone a little further in it because there are parts where she.

What she illustrated that.

I went, oh, okay.

For an I bring this up with my kids.

It actually turned out to be a good thing.

So when I said he, he put bags full of beans, she used what looked like lima beans around my tree.

And I thought that's about the least authentic bean you could have for a tree out in British Columbia.

I was thinking soybeans.

At least that's a crop grown in Canada.

But when I asked children what kind of beans they would put on their tree if they were ice cap, I got the most fascinating answers.

The best one was coffee beans because those children were from Jamaica.

In any case, the other thing, one of the details I looked into was the traits that he had.

I needed to get maple sugar somehow in there because that's very Canadian.

I have a friend Raelle, who has a sugar bush in or his daughter does in Quebec.

And so I'm looking okay.

Like I don't go out and buy maple sugary sticks, but I needed to see if they actually were existed.

And long people are in Walmart.

So you can use this just fine tuning things.

Good for you.

That's where my.

And of course we live in a Leamington is a.

Is quite a melting pot.

We have many different cultures in our little town.

It used to be our little town was unique in that way, but now every town is unique in that way.

So when I was, yeah, welcome to Canada.

Yeah, it's right across Canada.

When I was sending pictures to the illustrator, I was saying, no, like you hadn't.

And she was sending me sketches back.

I need to have children of almost every culture in the story.

Almost every culture in this story needs those.

Children need to see themselves in that story.

So those kinds of things and that.

You know what's nice?

It's nice.

We're making a.

Just a reflection of reality and that I think that's important as a.

Even as a children's book author, because even for myself, a lot of our book is.

Has animals and humans living together.

I understand exactly what you're talking about.

I think as children's book authors, I don't want to say subtly because it's.

They're in your illustrations, but to have a conscious awareness of making today's world a reflection through your children's book.

That's correct.

Yeah.

Now tell us.

You know what we.

You talked about this a little bit, and I just want to delve into it a little bit more.

At the end of your book, you encourage children to write their own stories.

And so it's like an extension as you tell your story, it's an extension of your story.

I know you mentioned some.

Another author inspires you, but tell us a little bit more about how is that working for you now that you've actually got your book out into the world?

Have you had much, many children reach out to you and tell their story or how are you working with that?

That is something that is in progress.

So when I go into schools, teachers will send me back journals that the kids have written about our time.

Oh, nice.

Or I've been the springboard for the narrative, for the narrative unit, identifying all the parts of my story that are a narrative in it.

And I.

What I'm talking to you about is what I also talk to them about.

I guess it's.

I'll say it's in progress.

So the way kids tell stories can.

Doesn't have to always be in a written form.

Okay.

In every classroom I've been to, I've left little mini snowboards, just white ones.

And with my cousin's son, Thomas, his Salomon snowboard is incredible.

It has all these illustrations on it.

And I challenge them to illustrate their snowboard so that it tells something about their own character.

Okay.

Fantastic.

Those have been clustered all over bulletin boards all over the place.

My granddaughter does it constantly.

She's always doing it.

That is one way in which I've seen that come to life.

So you can see why I'm asking this question is it's incredible.

What, how it manifests into something even bigger than you thought.

That's right.

So when I And when I go into classrooms, I take all the objects that are real with me.

The thistle down, the beans, the berries, the.

Everything I can think of that are.

That's in that story.

I take it with me, and I talk about.

These are the objects that I pulled from.

What do you think?

I'm gonna let them feel them and touch them.

And the kids in grade three are having this huge aha.

Moment going, oh, my goodness.

This is like.

Like the first nations people in the east, on the east coast, they had these corn hustles, and the pioneers took them all across Canada.

Right.

It's been fun that way.

Wow.

So I want to talk to you about your measurement of success.

And, you know, because I've heard so many different stories about perception, it's not the author, it's the audience, how they perceive things.

A lot of times they think, when you're a book author, a children's book author or a book author, that somehow you've sold millions of copies and you're a multimillionaire.

I was told that the other day by one of my guests, and I thought, oh, I never really thought about that too deep.

But most of us don't come to this for fame and fortune.

Tell us what your original goal was for your book and.

Or goals about the whole book launch.

Tell us about how you wanted to measure your success.

My whole goal was to leave a legacy.

So my mother was a story writer.

She taught us how to read before we got to school by writing stories to us.

To me, that was a huge success.

So for me, writing a story that children would read and love and enjoy, whether they're two children or 2 million children, to me, it's the success is in every child that gets to read my book.

I don't know that.

And I laugh at the whole multimillion dollar thing because I'm pretty sure that's a very cool dream.

I don't want to say it's.

It's not a good dream.

It is a great dream.

I just also don't think about that very much.

Right.

My success is.

Oh, my goodness.

I got.

I was teaching in a grade two class, and so did this, and it was so cute because they wanted to write a story about that.

So my measure of success is the impact I have on the children that I meet.

Good stuff.

And that I can share my story with.

So a big coup for me.

I know this sounds weird, but I.

I contacted Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto, and I said, I really want to donate my books to kids who aren't going to get home for Christmas this year or who don't have.

I just wanted to share my book.

They're not.

They're focusing on them being sick and getting better.

There's not maybe the most.

No ability to get out on a sled hill for sure.

So the process for that was quite interesting.

It took a long time.

They finally came back to me, said, yes, please send two books.

And since my daughter is a doctor and she went to U of T for med school, and we drove by there all the time.

I have a nurse friend who worked at Kids for a long time, I really wanted to do this.

I get goosebumps thinking about it, because I think I got to reach those little kids in that hospital who, you know, like, I pray that they would always get out, but maybe they won't.

It's just, for me, it's more about touching lives than it is about money touching my bank account.

I still have to ask this question because everybody comes at it differently.

But did you develop a business plan through your book?

And if you did, what did it?

What's this business plan look like?

Okay, for.

So at first, no, I did not.

No, absolutely not.

I was like deer in headlights because it was my first children's book.

And I did it, as I say, for a legacy piece for my grandchildren while she was young enough to remember that we did this and think about it later.

Yes.

So as an indie author, of course you're not getting into the big box stores.

You're not.

Unless you do go on consignment.

And I worked really hard.

After six months, I got into Indigo Windsor.

I got my foot in the door there.

But to me, it wasn't that important.

Except that was one of my goals I really wanted.

So I did it.

To say one thing.

For anyone who's listening.

In the United States, Indigo is like Barnes and Noble in Canada.

So just.

And then I just want people to understand what Indigo is.

Yeah.

So thank you for.

So my book is on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble, but that would be another trip over the border to talk.

I noticed that on your website you did get your book into Barnes and Noble.

Yes.

Which obviously means you probably went across the river to Detroit.

Is that correct?

Because it's not a Barnes and Noble.

No.

Biblio Kids, they put them on Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

Yes.

And in both Canada and the United States.

Okay.

And I got it onto the Canadian Indigo myself.

Ah, okay.

Okay.

I did that myself.

Good for you.

Like, onto their website.

All right.

Yeah.

And so Anyway, then another part of my business plan in was I bought all these books and I thought, okay, now where am I going to sell those?

Yes.

So I took some to schools with me.

Okay.

And I have to tell you that I didn't make a ginormous profit on any of them because it wasn't really my goal to do that.

But I did want to get my book out there.

So I put them in three local stores.

They sold.

I put them into the or one of our local art societies.

Okay.

Now did you put the these on consignment or did you sell them to them?

They were on consignment.

Okay.

Yes.

Oh, I put it at a Christmas tree farm too.

So that was cool.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, great idea.

Yeah.

So I had them in four, maybe five local places.

Okay.

So that was my business plan to get rid of.

Just to get my money back from the books that I had ordered.

And now my business plan is to keep picking away at social media, because as an indie author, basically you are.

It's your job to do that.

And it's important for the listening audience to know that.

Exactly what Joan's talking about.

The only person marketing your book generally is you.

My kids have often asked, are you going to do a read aloud on YouTube?

And I said, wait till I have a tan and I look a little.

I have a little bit of a glow.

Then I'll set up my room with snowy stuff.

I have all the call.

But wait till I look a little bit more warm or something.

Or we'll put.

We'll put you in the full snowboarding outfit.

Yes, I think that would be a good idea.

Yes.

Yeah, no doubt about it.

The role of writing.

Because obviously, now that you've thought this.

This through a bit, you've started formulating a business plan for.

It's growing.

So the next time you launch a book, you'll probably.

It'll be a little more defined on what your business plan looks like.

I'm going to say.

Would that be correct?

Yes.

So I've actually taken a course on pitching a literary agent.

I have.

Because I thought, okay, I got my legacy work.

It's out there.

I got it done.

Now I'm taking my time.

And out of that course came the realization that if you want to go to a traditional publisher, if that's what you want, your book will no longer belong to you.

But they will market it like crazy, and that is a boon.

If I was 40 years younger, I would go that route.

That's what I would do.

Okay.

But at this age, I would have gone that route in the first place.

But I'm, I, I, I'm a person who likes to achieve things.

Right.

So now I think, hey, I think I'm going to try my hand at this.

You've got me thinking about now.

You're thinking about yourself as a children's book author, because guess what?

You are a children's book author.

I'm curious because I can see the sparkle in your eyes.

Tell us about the role of writing.

So tell us.

You've got, now you've got your first book.

So in the grand scheme of things now, as your life moves forward, what's the role of children's books in your life?

I'd say it was, my husband would say it consumes me, but, but I would say it's a, it's about a 50% part of my life because I am a caregiver and so forth.

And I do love gardening and doing all the things I love to do, but it does have a major role in my life.

I can't sit on the couch and watch television.

I just, I'm not, I just can't do it.

What's the typical amount of time you think you're putting into writing now?

About two hours a day.

And I can, I can go over the same story, okay, 20 times.

And at the end of the day, it's completely changed, right?

Yes.

Wow.

So anyway, what I was saying is right now in my writing journey, I'm trying to be a student of publishing.

Okay.

And even though I know what children like to read, because I've read about 4 million books in my career, I am trying to assess what it is the industry is looking for now.

So I'm asking parents, what do you want them in a book?

And kids, what do you like the most in a book?

The underlying message is they want to be entertained.

It has to be active and it can't be overly didactic, which is like many heavy duty lessons or so for now, when I'm crafting my books, I try to bring really big voices to my characters.

I try to keep a gigantic sense of humor with a lot of wit and pun that parents can pick up on, and they do.

An example from Icecap is when I have the Icecap playing hockey.

The illustrator had him in the kind of the red bird jersey.

And I said, oh, no, you have to put the maple leaf jersey on the main character.

I'm sorry, I'm Canadian.

The, the ongoing.

It's not a fight, it's a tension between Parts of her family between the Red Wings Maple Leafs is a just a huge family joke, so I had to put that in the book.

But it's like when you watch Disney movies with your kids about 4 million times because you have to watch them over and over again.

Yes.

Disney tries to make it entertaining for parents, too.

Absolutely.

And so when I wrote this book, a lot of parents say my kids loved it, but I really like to chew.

It's funny you should say that because as a grandfather of five grandchildren and I've got three granddaughters, two grandsons, taking them to animated movies is quite a highlight for me because I'm just a big kid at heart.

So I get to disguise that by taking them to the movie.

I know what you mean.

Jonah.

I want to pick up on what you've been talking about because I want to make sure I don't miss out on.

On some advice for aspiring authors.

You've given a lot of advice and talking to parents and children.

Talk to us about.

If I was coming to you as an aspiring author and I wanted to get started, what advice would you give me?

First is right from the heart.

Fill your imaginary backpack with knowledge, experience, and observations.

But the biggest one for me, spend time with children because they are your audience.

So if you spend time with children, you will soon learn their sense of humor because it's different than ours.

Yes, it may not be as sophisticated, but it's just really delightful.

Use the language that children can connect with.

I used Rymen vocabulary in my content, and I think it's about a 2.5 reading level.

So it can be read by lots of different people and use in your book, parts of your book, things they can relate to.

So if you're writing about a screen door, you might as well just put that idea on the shelf and forget it out.

Again.

Need to write about what children love and what your book is.

They love animals.

They love exciting things.

They love.

They love it when, like slapstick.

It's funny you should mention about making sure that you involve children, because the one positive thing about getting my grandchildren to read the audio books of our stories is they're the ones who do the editing because they say, I don't understand that word.

Like, where did you get that word?

So it's great because if you just get children to read your story and get them engaged, you can really learn a lot.

So I'd encourage, like you were talking about, make sure you're actually talking to your audience and get them involved.

Yes.

And the other thing is, now that you've made your connection with children and you read your stories without pictures to your children.

That'll tell you a lot.

And then I would say reach out to other indie authors as much as you can, because it can be a very lonely process.

Absolutely.

And join a writer's group.

I did with the Journey to Kid lit, and I now am Facebook friends with a couple of them.

And we communicate regularly and our friends, like, above and beyond being an indie author.

And it.

So there are things, as an author that you don't really want to talk to your family, you know, about because they really don't understand you.

You say the same things in other authors, and they really get you.

And you know what's interesting you should say that, because that's one thing that I'm finding is, as I do more and more podcast episodes, it's a community.

And that's why I say there is no borders.

It's global.

And so it's important, as you're talking about, build your community.

And it's incredible how sharing and giving the community is.

I want to talk to you about readers because I certainly don't want to miss out on the importance of readers.

So encouragements for readers.

Tell us why children's book readers should purchase your book.

I know you talked about availability, which we'll put in the show notes, but so talk to us, first of all, about why children's book readers should purchase your book.

When I wrote the story, it was really loosely based on Frosty the Snowman in a modern sort of way.

Right.

So I really think everybody would love this book because it is.

It's traditional, yet modern.

It can become a great tradition in the wintertime to read this story.

Absolutely.

Kind of like Frosty the Snowman.

I loved writing in rhyme because kids can read it and they.

Every time you read it, they know more and more.

My.

My granddaughter Audrey has almost memorized this book.

She knows every word of it.

She just turned five in September.

She's a bright little button, but still.

You know what?

I don't want to give away the ending I love, and I won't.

But I love your ending.

Yes.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I'll like.

I don't want to give it away.

It's.

But I love the renewal.

That's the only word I'm going to say.

Renewal.

Yes.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

I chose the goodbye very carefully.

The word that says goodbye.

Yeah.

I live in a big Italian.

There's a big Italian community here.

We have.

Through farming, greenhouse farming.

We have so many connections.

And it's a word that means hello and goodbye.

So there you go.

Fantastic.

The other people that I really want to buy this book are teachers, because teachers.

It has all the parts of the narrative.

It has alliteration.

And when the teacher said, hey, kids, what?

And I read a part of the story and they said, what is that?

And all their hands popped up.

Alliteration.

We just learned about alliteration.

It's interesting to talk about teachers because first of all, about.

I'm going to say I'm actually starting to keep track, because it's quite interesting.

I'd say about 65 to 70% of my guests have been.

Were either our retired teachers, art teachers, former teachers, but they all have a teaching background, which is unbelievable.

And what it also did for me was when I'm part of the LinkedIn community and.

But what I noticed there was a huge LinkedIn community for teachers.

Yes.

One of the things that I've realized is that when I'm talking to teachers, whether they're retired or former teachers, I thought, oh, my goodness, they all get it.

And so I knew.

I just started, actually, I joined this huge LinkedIn teachers group because I knew I needed to get your story as a former teacher out into the market.

Because all of those hundreds of thousands of teachers, I'm sure a lot of them are having exactly the same thoughts.

One of my first guests, she had a story in her for over 30 years as a teacher, and when she retired, she had to get it out.

And now she's about to launch her second book.

That's awesome.

Yeah, it's incredible.

We spend our whole life with children.

Yes.

And so I think, like, that is so near and dear to our hearts that we just want to keep going.

People say, do you miss teaching?

And I'm.

And I always say I've got other things going on, but when I get into the classroom, I think, why did I ever leave this place?

And I had to leave for different reasons, but I always think, oh, my gosh, I have such a good time with kids.

Very special connection that I think teachers have to get their.

They want to keep teaching, they want to keep engaging with children.

I can see that.

I can hear that.

Final thoughts.

So is there anything that I haven't asked you that you'd like to share?

Whether it's two children's book readers, or in a lot of cases, you and I are actually talking to parents and grandparents because they're the ones children aren't walking around with $20 in their pocket.

To buy a children's book.

Anything that you'd like to say to parents or grandparents.

Parents and or aspiring authors, being a.

Pub student of publishing and a grandparent.

Take your grandchildren to the library if you have them, take them there and read to them there and take people out for them.

If you're an aspiring author, go know your shelf.

Go find your comp titles and find out what's actually getting into libraries and what's popular because those are the kind and find out from your grandchildren or your students or who whomever, what are the book?

What kind of books are they gravitating to?

That will give you a big clue as to where you will be in your market.

Know your market.

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

Your generosity of time insights is unbelievable.

It's going to benefit a lot of people, aspiring authors and readers.

And I promise that we will put all of Joan's social media links and her link to her website in our show notes.

And again, thank you so much, Joan.

You're welcome.

It was a real pleasure talking to.