My name is Sarah Elizabeth Graves and I'm here with my son.

And together we wrote the a book.

Called Monster Attack of the Monster Pickles.

Attack of the Monster Pickles.

What a great title.

Sarin.

Parker, thank you for joining me on the adventures in the heart of children's book authors.

For the listening audience, we're going to have Sarah, Sarah and Parker answer some of our questions.

And throughout the interview, Sarah and Parker, whatever you feel comfortable in talking about, please do that.

And just so everyone knows, Parker is.

You're 10 now, Parker.

You're in grade 12.

Yeah.

He just graduated fourth grade.

So he's going into fifth grade.

Congratulations, Parker, on graduating grade four.

That's fantastic.

We have a weird system here where we live where they end elementary at fourth grade.

So he's going into middle school next year.

That's why I said mentioned graduated.

Right.

Because my grandson is just graduated grade six.

Okay.

And that's.

So it's kindergarten to six.

Is elementary where I live?

That's what I'm used to.

But they had a graduation ceremony and everything for him in fourth grade because we have a middle school, which is five, six, and then a junior high, which is seven, eight.

Yeah.

And ours, junior high is seven, eight, and nine.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

So there we go.

The first thing I'd like to ask both of you is what does it mean to be a children's book author?

Oh, what does it mean to be a children's book author?

Do you have an answer?

Parker's a little bit shy, so he's nodding and shaking his head over here for me.

I've always wanted to be an author my whole life.

I'm now middle aged, coming out with my first book.

But life takes detours along the way.

But I do remember having this sense of looking at.

It was a children's picture book.

I wish I remembered which one, but I don't.

But I was looking at the book and I was thinking to myself, there's people behind these books.

Somebody writes these books.

And I had this thought of, that's who I am.

I'm a writer.

I was five, I want to say, okay, somewhere around kindergarten age.

So debuting with a children's picture book, I feel is like coming full circle for me because the first book I looked at when I realized I wanted to be an author was a children's picture book.

And Parker, why did you want to become a children's book author?

I'll tell them this.

Tell them the story about how you came up with the book.

Maybe the book idea.

So I think it was something.

You were in bed and you heard noises in the kitchen.

Is that true?

Yes.

Then what happened?

Mommy came in and I tried to help him get to sleep by telling him what the noises actually were, of course.

Which just like the mom in the book, he did not believe me.

So then I tried something different.

And I asked him, what do you think the sounds are?

And what did you say?

Yeah, he said, creepy Pickles.

So we changed the title to Monster Pickles because there is a creepy book series.

Creepy crayon, creepy pair of underwear.

I think it starts with creepy carrots.

Our publisher suggests we.

We not use creepy title Creepy for that reason.

So we did.

But he did say creepy pickles originally.

But I thought the answer was so funny and weird, like pickles, really, Sarah.

And for Parker, was that the inspiration to, like.

Then how did you say, oh, my goodness, I think this would be a great story for a children's book.

Tell us.

Yeah, I didn't at first.

My thought was, what a weird answer.

Yeah.

So I just asked them more questions.

Pickles.

Why pickles?

What are these pickles about?

What are these pickles doing?

And as you started to answer the questions, that's when a story started to emerge that we Eventually, I think it was probably Mommy that had the idea, let's turn this into a book.

Because it seemed like a really fun story.

So did you start sit down and write together at the kitchen table or go get a notebook or how did you get the story started?

Do you remember any of that, sweetheart?

Yeah, we came.

He originally came up with this idea.

I want to say he was in kindergarten.

If I look back at my spreadsheet of the timeline of querying agents, I can probably give you an exact date, but it was.

I want to guess he was around a kindergarten.

Yeah.

Sometimes when people ask him that question, he doesn't quite remember.

But I.

I just started writing down his ideas.

I'd ask him, okay, what are the pickles doing?

What do the pickles do next?

Tell me more about the pickles.

And I would just start writing down the ideas, remember?

And then we originally had a draft that didn't look anything like what the book looks like now, which is probably pretty common for many writers.

Yes.

But then one day, Orion's voice popped into my head.

So he's one of the main characters in the book, and he's actually the narrator in telling the story.

And once his voice popped into my head, then the story kind of wrote itself, but I'd keep.

So I did the Words.

But he did the ideas.

He was the idea guy.

So I would run my drafts by him and say, is this what you want?

Is this.

Are the pickles doing the things that you're imagining?

Those kind of things.

Do you like where this is going?

That kind of thing?

Mommy would draft it, and then he would give his seal of approval or not.

I wrote our first children's book with my oldest granddaughter.

And similar in the way that her and I did a lot of adventures together in the Rocky Mountains.

And ultimately, it was her idea that said, we've done so many adventures.

Can we turn them into a children's book?

And so there was a farmer's market where we were living, and we went and purchased a notebook, and then we started writing our story.

And then from there, it was interesting because every Saturday, we'd go and write the story.

And then eventually we got the story done.

But then we had so many other ideas.

Our book is full of about 38 different stories, and it.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All sit.

All stemmed from sitting down and putting ideas down to paper.

So it's nice that you, as a mother, can take those ideas from Parker and then put them down on paper.

So that's fantastic.

Yeah.

And it's great bonding time.

I'm sure you found that with your granddaughter, that it was a project that we were working on and doing together.

Absolutely.

This question, Sarah, is for you.

So I'm just a little bit curious on when you started this journey.

Parker just graduated grade four.

You said you started the.

Started this journey when he was in kindergarten.

So about four years ago.

Yeah.

Did you start formulating, or do you have a book business plan for this book?

We have a marketing plan, if that's what you mean by business plan.

Okay.

But this, us being new to this, it's a trial and error process of trying to figure out what works and what doesn't.

We have done a bunch of school visits.

Parker got the chance.

I really wanted this book to come out before he graduated fourth grade so he'd get to share it with his school, and he did get the chance to do that.

Oh, cool.

Yeah.

So that was super fun.

And then because the book came out May 1, our publisher actually chose that date because she was thinking that we'd be able to do school visits at the end of the year when teachers needed people to come and fill in the extra time after the teachers have finished the curriculum, that kind of thing.

Okay.

But she may not have realized, and I didn't know enough to tell her, because, again, Being new at this, I didn't know how long it even set up a school visit or when I'd get the arc, the advanced reader copy to be able to chair and that kind of thing.

So we didn't really get the chance to visit more elementary schools than just his.

But we had been visiting daycares like that run summer camps during the summer.

Oh, great idea.

And oftentimes since it's summer, they have older kids as well, not just the little kids.

So preschool through elementary.

And so that's who we've been presenting to.

So that's been super fun.

The marketing plan doesn't necessarily translate into a sales plan, is that correct?

And what I mean by that is most.

I've done some school visits.

Of course, children aren't carrying 20 bucks in their pockets to write the book.

So tell us how you see your marketing plan developing into sales.

Yeah, that is an excellent question.

And again, being new at this, I'm not entirely sure because I did do the research.

I looked at other authors launch plans and what they do to market books.

And so I wrote everything down.

And I am again, a trial and error process trying to figure out what works.

I've done things like I have an author newsletter.

I actually had the newsletter previous to this, but that's because I also have a side gig, I guess you call it.

Okay.

As a freelance writer.

It was connected to that, but I've morphed it a little bit into being more of the author newsletter.

I was hoping to use some of my freelance writing to promote the book, but so far that hasn't gone anywhere.

I think it may be because a lot of times publications don't want you to sound too much like you're promoing your work.

I've tried to.

I've tried to come up with topics that were maybe tangential, but so far I've only had a couple of those.

Get accepted as a freelance writer, you have to send out pitches.

And you send out pitches of different publications, different editors.

Sometimes you're working with the same person, but it can be hit or miss, what they need at the time or what they want to accept.

So that was unique, I think, to my marketing plan.

Let's see what else is in my marketing plan.

Well, I noticed you had you offer variations of school visits.

The only thing I didn't see, and I again, as I've interviewed children's book authors, there's different ways that people approach it, but I didn't see any prices listed.

Yeah, you don't see it as A revenue source.

I do.

Again, that was one of the things I was trying to feel out.

So as far as the schools that we're going to now, the summer daycare camps, they really don't have a budget for author visits because, as you can imagine, daycares and preschools and whatnot, they're all.

They're operating on very limited budget budgets.

They're not public.

So those of us parents who know, we pay a lot of money for our kids to go there, but unfortunately, that money doesn't actually really go that far.

It pays the staff, it pays the teachers, so there's not a whole lot extra for that.

So I have been doing those visits for free with the.

What's the word I'm looking for?

As long as they agree to distribute our order form.

Of course, we're not making much money on the cost of each book.

Right.

So it's.

That's not really paying for itself in that way.

But we're having fun and we're learning, so I see it as a learning opportunity.

Okay.

And then when we start approaching elementary schools in the fall, public schools generally have bigger budgets, although you never know, for author visits.

And so then we'll try to start offering money, because one of the things that my publisher did tell me is that if you offer author visits for free, you're undercutting other authors because authors do this as a business.

And of course, when you go and visit schools, because you're not really making that much money off each book and you really can't account for how many books you'll sell anyway, like you were saying earlier, your target reader is the kid, but the kid doesn't necessarily have 20 bucks on them to buy a book.

Absolutely.

We've had great reception to the book.

The kids have been super excited.

Almost everywhere we went, the kids have started took up a chant of, read it again, read it again.

Nice, Nice.

But you know how that translates into going home and saying, mommy, Daddy, buy me the book.

You never know.

And plus, you're not making that much per book.

Anyway, to your question, I probably will revise my website because I always did have in mind the idea of charging.

What I'll do is I'm gonna.

I'll do.

I'll do two things for you.

I'll send you a link to podcast episode 28.

I did, where we actually talked about paid and unpaid visits and how to go setting it up.

And in that link, you'll find one of the children's book authors that I interviewed.

She has done the best job I've ever seen of setting up her website to reflect on cost of a school visit.

So, yeah, I would love that link.

Thank you.

It'll just help you and give you some guidance and then you can take it.

Yeah.

Because that's mostly what I've been doing is just looking at other children's book author websites and seeing how they do it.

But I did come across, I think it was a blog maybe, that I read, where one of the children's book authors was talking about how if you don't include prices on your website, some authors don't, so you kind of have to feel it out what works.

But this particular author, I don't remember the name, but I'm pretty sure it was a blog I was reading, mentioned that if you don't offer the prices on the website, in her experience, people will just pass you by because they don't want to ask and then be like, that's too much.

They want an idea of what is the investment here.

I think if you publish a price and then you could have some flexibility, for sure.

Yeah.

And that's what I was thinking.

Put a price on there, but then maybe like an asterisk or something that says for schools on a tight budget or whatnot, there's discounts available.

Something like that.

Yeah.

I'll send you the link.

So I want to talk to you about your publishing approach because you've talked about your publisher several times now.

There's indie publishing, which is you act as the publisher.

There's self publishing, where you get a hybrid publisher, and then there's traditional publishing, where a publisher actually takes on all the responsibility of your book.

Tell us about your publishing approach.

Okay, I am going to talk about that, and I would love to talk about that, but Parker is tapping me on the shoulder.

I think he wants to say something.

Oh, sure.

Fire away, if that's okay.

Yeah, I know.

Absolutely.

What's up, buttercup?

Oh, I think he lost the thought.

Sorry.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

You know what, Parker?

Jump in anytime.

Yeah, just interrupt us.

It's okay.

Yeah.

So we ultimately went with hybrid publishing, and that took a long time to come to that decision.

Because the thing about hybrid publishing is that it's a middle ground between self publishing and traditional publishing.

But you still.

The middle ground part is that like self publishing, you're taking on the risk.

You're fronting the money, in other words.

Yes, but the hybrid publisher does everything a traditional publisher does in terms of finding you, the illustrator, working with them, designing the book formatting.

It, getting it uploaded and distributed to all the sites and all that kind of thing, which.

All of that learning, trying to learn all that felt really daunting to me, especially since I don't personally know any illustrators and didn't know how to go about finding them.

So that was also a crucial kind of piece of.

I did take almost three years, I wanna say, trying to find an agent for the book.

And as we probably all know, that is super difficult.

And I've heard on average this day, I used to be like, on average three to five years.

Now it's taking an average of five to 10 years to find the right agent.

But I was getting a lot of what I like to call glowing rejections, in the sense that I would actually get responses back from agents that were saying things like, great idea or wonderful book.

I even got one that said, I know you'll be successful with this book, but not for me.

Agents have their particular lists.

They have their list, and it has to fit into their list.

And so they're looking for particular things.

So it doesn't necessarily mean that you wrote a bad book.

It just means you haven't found the right person yet.

But Parker was getting older, and I really wanted this.

Like I had said before, I really wanted him to have this before he graduated from elementary school.

And that was happening when I'd made the decision to pursue the hybrid publishing.

He was going into fourth grade, so this was his last year, his last chance to do that.

And I knew even if I did find an agent tomorrow, the traditional publishing processes are also super slow.

Like, even after they buy your book, it can take two years for it to come out.

But I already knew the publisher.

I'd worked with her.

She's actually the one who taught me how to write children's books.

Because before, I'd been working on novels and that kind of thing, and I never had the idea to write a children's book until I had a kid.

And then we were reading children's books all the time.

And he would do things that would prompt ideas on that kind of thing.

But I had no idea how to write children's books.

So she taught me how to write a book.

She also edited this particular book several times.

I work with a few other editors, too, just to make sure it was in the best shape it could be before I tried to publish it for sure.

So I already knew her.

And so she told me.

She was like, I can have your book out in six months.

So I'm like, all right, let's do it.

Fantastic.

For me, it was the perfect blend of, you know, self publishing in the sense that we can turn this around really fast.

And I also had some input in it that you wouldn't necessarily get from a traditional publisher, like, oh, you.

Parker's chiming in over here.

He says he has a book idea.

What's your book idea?

Oh, he's going to tell me later.

Parker always has ideas.

I'll say, I'll save that thought.

But he's full of them all the time.

Ideas.

But anyway, we had some input in, like, the illustrations, which was super cool.

We got to pick from a portfolio which illustrator style we like the best.

And how many illustrators were presented to you or styles?

They presented the whole list, but then they made a suggestion of three that would be probably best for our book.

And then they had those three illustrators give us samples, like, of what our pickles would look like and our main character would look like.

And from there, we chose the one that.

That we ended up with.

Okay.

But what was also cool was that we got to go through rounds of pictures, so we got to put input.

He would make the illustrations all on his own, but then when we looked at the illustrations, we'd say, this is what we like, or this is what we don't like.

And then they'd make revisions on both the sketches and then the colored art after that.

And of course, with a traditional publisher, you don't get any say in any of that.

As soon as you sell them your manuscript, it's gone.

And Parker, did you like doing that?

Did you like being involved in the illustration and picking the right one?

Yes.

You did.

You loved it?

Oh, yeah.

In fact, I would say that was probably the most exciting part of the process, because every time they would send us example illustrations, I would show them to him, and you could just see his eyes light up with excitement because here was his story that somebody else was bringing to life in their imagination.

And that's one of those factors that's really super cool about writing picture books.

See it come alive on the page like that.

And I noticed you gave your illustrator credit at the back of your book.

So tell us that experiences, because sometimes the illustrator will get a name mentioned, but not much credit.

You actually put the picture of the illustrator with you and Parker in the book.

Tell us about that and why you did that.

To be 100% honest, that wasn't us.

That was the publisher.

I never knew that was even a do or don't like.

It was a question they Took care of all that.

The book designer.

Because we had a book designer in addition to an illustrator and they did all of that.

Okay.

It was A.I.

Oh, Parker says it wasn't us, it was A.I.

no, we had.

We had a human legitimate book designer.

Excellent.

To answer to your question, even though I really didn't have say in that, I'm glad he's there because I think the illustrators, they do a big part of bringing the story to life.

They're telling stories through the pictures the same as we're telling it in the manuscript.

And there are definitely some images in there that really help tell the story.

The final image in the book, I won't spoil it because it gives away what's going on in the whole book.

But the final image I did specifically ask for, but it is an example of how important illustrations are to helping to tell the story.

I'm glad he's there.

I want to talk a little bit about your website and your website development.

So as a self published author, did you launch your website before or after you published your book or exactly at the same time?

I had launched it before because I wanted to have everything set up and ready to go.

So it was launched in the sense that it was online and you could see it.

But I did certainly fiddle with things, especially after I had an arc and after I had a cover.

Because in the beginning I didn't even have a cover.

So I was putting things on there that was like va.

Just as a placeholder.

Absolutely.

And I'm continually fiddling with it, especially not necessarily the design of it, but the information as I figure things out and learn about what's.

Especially with the marketing, what's working and what's not working.

I'm always fiddling with things.

You've used your name as the.

For the website name.

Yeah, that was a time thing.

Okay.

Because I have a full time job as well as this and my full time job is being a teacher.

So teaching during the school year.

Definitely.

We also.

Teachers also do things in the summer in terms of course planning and whatnot.

But definitely during the school year.

A around the clock, labor intensive kind of a job because you're always class prepping or grading something.

Oh, Parker.

Parker finally remembered.

Sorry.

Hold that thought.

Sure.

Parker finally remembered what he wanted to say.

He said he wants these pickle books to actually be a trilogy.

So he has an idea for three books.

Oh, fantastic.

And so he was saying he.

He came up with an idea for the second book.

That's.

You said what a red vegetable Is there a specific red vegetable?

A pepper.

Okay, you can't.

Okay, so we're working on it.

We're working on manuscript number two.

It's in process.

Excellent.

But anyway, so long story short, and because I'm a teacher during the school year, that was also a reason.

Sorry, I'm hopping back and forth between ideas.

But that was also a reason why I'm not sure in the future whether I would ever choose May 1st as a launch date again.

Because my semester was ending at the same time the book was launching.

So I was trying to do.

I teach college.

So I was trying to do like finals week stuff and launch a book at the same time.

And that was really crazy.

Making short answer to your question is I plan on making him a website.

I just haven't gotten to it yet.

Okay, so you're thinking of going to a monster pickle brand website, Something that's.

More on brand with the pickle story?

Because I would say that I don't know that my website reflects that monster pickle idea, but it does reflect me and my branding.

But of course, the monster pickle book was Parker's idea.

So I think his website will look more like that book belongs on it, if that makes sense in terms of monster kind of stuff.

And I don't know Monster pickles specifically because he does have ideas for other books also, but.

But it will have more of that kind of feel to it, I think.

So let's talk about character development.

I know you had talked about your main character is Orion Sinclair, the monster hunter.

That's a neat thing.

I also noticed that, Parker, you're one of the characters in the book.

Yep.

But I noticed in the book Parker doesn't have a name because the story.

Is told in second person.

Going through this for aspiring children's book authors to understand why people do certain things.

If you expand on that, talk about the main.

I think though, I can actually expand on that without giving away the ending.

Okay.

But the idea is that Orion is telling the story and he's telling.

He's narrating to the main character who doesn't have a name because it's second person.

So it's always you this and you that.

But the idea is that he's teaching this boy who's afraid to go to sleep because of these scary sounds.

He's hearing what to do about the scary sounds and how to overcome his fear.

But you do learn who Orion actually is in the end of the book.

Let's talk about your theme a bit.

So describe without Giving the ending away.

Describe the theme of the book.

Obviously, we've been talking about how in the case of this book, it came from a real life situation with Parker.

So talk to us a bit more about that whole theme.

Yeah, so the theme is really using imagination.

I like to say using imagination as your superpower, but it's the idea of using your own imagination to overcome your fears.

Which is why we have these kind of silly villains that are monster pickles.

Monster pickles aren't really speaking to life.

Hopefully that didn't spoil anything.

But.

So it's all in an imaginative kind of bedtime battle.

But he's using his imagination to overcome his fears.

So that's really the main message there.

But that was also inspired by real life experience because Parker, for most of his childhood has slept with toys that he's used his imagination to try to bring to life and combat his fears.

Yeah, he says literally all of his childhood.

No, that's fantastic.

No, I don't think so.

Because you wouldn't have had.

I don't know.

I'd have to think on that.

But that's true.

I got him.

Parker is actually named after Spider Man.

Here's a little.

Oh side.

That's where his name comes from.

As you can tell by our background here, Daddy is really into superheroes.

Actually, believe it or not, he.

My husband likes to say that was not.

Not actually his idea.

I was just for fun one day running through like a superhero's, like, mundane names, like their secret identity names and thinking, wouldn't it be fun to name Parker after a superhero?

And I said, you could have been out loud, Clark.

Yeah, he could have.

But when I said Peter Parker, I was like, parker.

I really like that name.

Let's use that one.

That's a great name.

That is a great name.

Ironically, his favorite superhero is Batman.

But I'm not.

I don't know about.

You would have ended up being Bruce or Wayne or something.

But Parker was my favorite.

Alfred, isn't it?

Alfred is the butler.

Yeah, yeah, Alfred's the butler.

Okay.

Yeah.

We have a joke in my house that I.

What?

Parker asked me to do things as kids ask their mother, can you get me a drink?

Can you get me a snack?

And I'm like, what am I, Alfred?

There you go.

So I want to talk to you about the.

How your book formats support your theme.

Because what I loved is you.

You did something different.

And I know I'm not giving anything away.

Explain to the audience how you set up your layout for your rules.

Because Your rule page is different from the.

About the first seven pages in the book.

And then you get to rule number one.

Explain to us how you came up with that whole layout idea.

Yeah.

So the idea is again, that Orion is teaching the main character how to deal with the monster pickles.

So he's going.

This list of things to do.

In my original imagining of the book, this is where the rules actually came from.

The final scene in the book was going to have a notebook or something sitting on the nightstand where he was writing this down.

The main character in the book.

So that's where that came from.

It's like step one, step two.

This is how you fight the pickles.

But I don't know, it might give something away, but we might do that in book two.

I have an idea of putting together a monster manual.

Great idea.

The actual layout itself was that you guys throwing ideas around and then going to the illustrator?

Yeah.

You mean the.

How the pictures are laid out in the book?

Yeah, because you actually put the rule number one or the rules in a box.

Oh, yeah.

No, that was something that the.

I think the book designer did that part.

Okay.

Because the illustrator, when we saw the illustrations, they didn't have any words on them at first.

And then at one point in the process, we would see little notes on there from the book designer saying, this is going to be in the margin.

Move this over, or things like that.

And then eventually, when we saw everything finally together, that's when they put the words in, because some of the words are graphic and like you said, some are in boxes.

So I think that was the book designer that did all of that.

Yeah.

Great.

And in terms of what the book looks like and the illustrations, we didn't really tell them too much about what to do.

It was more just a.

They did it, and then they gave it to us and said, do you like it or not?

Do you want us to change it?

And we would put our input in that way after the fact.

Talk to us a little bit more with your teaching background.

Talk to us a little bit more about the central teaching or lesson through this book.

What do you think?

You want to talk about the imagination part of the book?

The theme of the book.

What lesson do you want other children to get out of the book, Parker?

To fight their fear.

Yeah.

Because that was your idea, Right.

Because that's what you do.

Your fears.

I used a weight blanket.

Oh.

He says that he goes to sleep at night with a weighted blanket.

It helps.

He did have a lot of nightmares when he was Younger.

Okay.

The weighted blanket seemed to help.

But also, like I said earlier, toys.

Like a super cape.

You think of your weighted blanket as a super cape.

Oh, he's.

He says, I don't know if you can hear him.

It says he's too heavy for that.

Oh, okay.

I want to talk to you now that I know you've got some other ideas formulating in your brains about other books.

Give us some insight into your.

How you now are developing these ideas together as a mother and son team.

Yeah.

So mostly it's.

Parker, you write ideas down in your notebook.

Right.

Do you want.

Do you want to say something a little bit about that?

What's your part in the process?

Make the book.

She adds the words and the illustrator draws it.

But he collects ideas.

He just like mommy and daddy are writers also.

Okay.

We have.

We.

We get giddy at back to school shopping time because it's.

Oh, the notebooks are out.

But anyway, so he's got his own stash of notebooks and he keeps his ideas in them.

And then he comes to me and says, mommy, I got an idea for a story.

Here's what we should do.

And then we go from there.

That's a great process.

Fantastic.

Good for you, Parker.

Excellent.

What's your idea for a story?

He says he has an idea of what?

Monster pickles.

Okay, that.

But another.

I want to do that.

I told you about that.

I told you I did want to make a graphic novel about the.

But also I have a different idea.

Okay.

Is it like you're.

He has an idea for a middle grade novel.

That sounded pretty cool.

Is it like that one?

Venture Base.

Okay.

Since he's like super into superheroes and mommy is.

I want to say for.

I'm talking about myself in the third person.

Like most parents I just noticed.

Been a fantasy reader, I want to say, for at least half my life.

So I always like to weave in magical elements into the stories that I write.

So this is a magical idea for a middle grade.

But it involves comics.

So one of the things that he said he wants to do when he grows up is write graphic novels.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

He also wants to make toys and make videos.

It's nice that you guys have started this when he's so young.

Yeah.

It's also super cool that we have these tools available now that we didn't before because like I'd said before, I wanted to write books since I was 5.

I would say I can't pin.

I remember the.

Remember the memory, but I can't pinpoint the age.

Exactly, exactly.

But none of this option to self publish or hybrid publish or any of those things.

We used to have something called vanity presses, but they were not hybrid publishing and something totally different.

So just for anybody who's not clear about hybrid publishing, I wanted to make that clear because it's not a vanity press.

It's a legit.

It's a legit way to get something published.

But what's the question?

Get a lion's name.

Yeah.

Dark side Son.

No.

Yeah, he's.

He's asking.

He's talking about superheroes.

So Darkseid is one of the main villains in D.C.

and he has a son named Orion.

But honestly, I didn't get it from anywhere.

It just popped in my head.

Sometimes inspiration just strikes like that.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I was having a tough time actually writing the story before because I don't.

I don't know.

Are you familiar with the children's picture book?

It's a series called Stinky Face.

I think the first ones I love use Stinky Face.

There's like a good night.

Stinky face.

I want to say.

No, I'm not familiar with that.

Okay.

That was one of the books I read to him when he was a kid.

And in this book, the character.

That's true.

You are still a kid.

Yeah, I meant a younger kid.

We were.

When he was little, I was reading Ralph the Farting Dog to my.

This is a board book though.

So it was.

It had.

I would say it would.

Had as many words as a typical picture book, but it was designed as a board book.

So when he was really little.

But anyway, the main character in this story, she says something in the beginning of the story, I love you, my son, or something like that.

And he says, what if I was a giant gorilla?

And he.

And she said, I would feed you bananas and I would still love you.

That kind of thing.

And at one point, the title comes from at one point in the story where, you know, what if I was a stinky?

I only vaguely remember it, but what if I was a stinky.

Whatever.

And she said, I would give you a bath.

But it's always this kind of what if kind of thing.

And so my original draft was like that because Parker would actually say things to me like, what if this happened?

And that happened?

And.

But the draft wasn't working.

Plus it sounded a little bit too much like these other authors stories.

And Orion just popped in my head one day.

And he popped in my head one day with a name and a voice.

And then it just Wrote itself.

Create his design.

Did you do that?

No, that was the illustrator.

You mean what he looked like?

Yeah, that was the illustrator.

I didn't have any idea for what Ryan would look like.

Yes, he was.

Yes.

But using Indiana Jones is the copyright violations.

Yes.

In terms of when you started out on your children's book authorship journey and we talked about your business plan.

But what I'd like to talk to you about is what you had in mind for success.

So what's your vision of success for the book?

That is a great question because I think probably all debut authors.

I had a much bigger vision than maybe reality.

I thought I wanted to sell 5,000 copies and I arrived at that number by figuring out like what the book cost.

And so I'd have to cover the cost of the book since I.

Since I paid for it like you would with self publishing.

And then.

And I wanted to make that money back and then I wanted to make a profit on top of it so we could do it again.

That's where I came up with the 5,000 copies number.

But I think at this point I'll be happy if I get a thousand copies.

Most books don't sell more than 500, so.

That's right.

They say the lifetime of a book is between 105 copies.

And that's why I always ask about, do you have a business plan?

Because a lot of times I'm finding that everybody has this passion to bring a children's book to market.

It's to your point, Sarah, the nice thing about these hybrid publishers, and they do a great job.

I've interviewed a ton of children's book authors and a lot of them have used these hybrid book publishing people.

The only thing is that they get you to a beautiful book.

Publish, distributed.

But after that, generally the marketing and sales part of it is entirely up to you.

Yeah.

And I'm also wondering.

I love the hybrid publisher that I work with.

And like I.

I said, I chose her company.

She has.

I keep calling her a she, but she's not one person.

She has an entire team of people that work with her, some of them that are coming from the big five publishers.

So they know what they're doing.

And I.

That's what I really wanted.

I didn't want to try to figure out, like I said earlier, the whole self publishing, everything that goes into that, especially with a kid's book.

Book.

But it was not cheap.

Sure.

No.

So my main goal, that was really just to make my money back.

I don't know at this point if we'll do that.

We'll see.

We're just at the beginning.

But I don't even have sales numbers at this point.

They told me I will have my first set of sales numbers in August.

So I don't.

I can't even tell how the book's doing at this point.

All I know is the people, the feedback I'm getting from in person events.

Feedback.

But that feedback has been wonderful.

So I.

I redefined my definition of success.

Be like, you kids are loving this book.

They.

They think it's funny.

I think it has a positive message of using your imagination to overcome your fears.

Yeah, that's the.

Parker says you just need to make people know about it.

That's that.

Sorry, I keep repeating what he's saying, but that's because I'm not sure if his microphone is working the whole time or if he's putting his hand over his mouth.

Are you a Trekkie by chance?

I love Star Trek.

Have you ever seen the spoof movie Galaxy Quest?

I love Galaxy Quest.

Do you know in that movie where Sigourney Weaver's character is always repeating the computer?

And that's like her official job is to repeat whatever the computer says?

I feel like that's what I'm doing right now.

I'm repeating the computer.

I want to talk to you about the role of writing.

Dig a little deeper into because, like, it's interesting how you're both.

Now that Parker's got a book that he writes in and his ideas down in.

How are you now?

Are you.

Is there any formal plan with that?

Do you guys set aside any time during the week and write and take Parker's ideas and start creating dialogue or a story?

We have not done that yet.

We definitely need to do that.

We need to have a regular routine of it.

It has been a thought in my brain.

You did that Dead Rails.

And I was going to make my own story of Dead Rails.

My own Dead Rails story.

Dead Rails is a Roblox game.

He's very into playing Roblox.

Okay.

Yeah.

But I do think that we need to, because I feel like we could easily fall into the trap that has pretty much been, I would call my trap my entire writing life, which is, I have these ideas.

But then if you don't actually schedule time to sit down and make the ideas into something, they never really come into fruition.

So I think we need to do that.

It's always a little bit tricky because life getting so busy between him, him being a kid and the things he has to do for school and then me being a teacher and things change from one moment to the next.

I think we need to do that.

It did receive cause I'd like to segue into.

You were an aspiring author over the last.

Wow.

Like you said, maybe lifetime.

Yeah, lifetime.

Four decades.

I'm almost five decades old, so probably about four and a half decades.

Four and a half decades.

So what advice do you have for aspiring children's book authors?

I think my biggest barrier, I did mention the time thing because just like the apple does not far fall far from the tree.

So just like my son, I always have a gazillion ideas at once.

And then trying to figure out which one am I actually going to pursue at this moment has been a problem.

But my biggest barrier has just been fear.

When I was younger, I used to be painfully shy.

And so it didn't feel safe to be visible.

In fact, even now, part of being an author, I love the idea of sitting down and writing the stories and creating the stories.

But you can't.

Like we said before, you can't just do stop there.

You have to go market them.

But putting myself out there is not natural.

It's just that fear of being visible and fear of being seen.

So how would you talk to aspiring authors about getting over that?

Yeah, so I actually talk to my college students about this all the time.

And it's that piece where you have to understand that writing isn't actually a solo activity.

For example, when I went to college, I even though I knew I wanted to be a writer and in particular write fiction, I write nonfiction also, but I really wanted to write fiction.

I didn't major in creative writing.

I majored in criminal justice because at the time I thought I wanted to write mysteries.

And so I thought, okay, that will teach me what I could write about.

But the thought that was in my head was I can just do it myself.

Nobody has to look at these.

I'll read books on writing.

I can just do it myself.

But it was really fear talking.

Cause I was afraid of anybody looking at my work and then judging it or criticizing it.

So what I try to tell people all the time is how crucial feedback really is to the writing process.

And I know it's scary and I'm not sure it ever doesn't become scary.

You can get used to it.

But even though at this point in time, I've been a professional writer with the freelance with the articles for about five years now, so.

And different editors every time, I am always scared when I send it in, even if it's an editor I've worked with before, but those editors work with it and they polish it.

And if there's revisions, it makes it so much better than it was before, because none of us can actually write alone in the sense that we can't be 100% objective about our own work because it's in our head.

So for aspiring authors, are you suggesting they join a writers group or something?

Yes, something.

Something where you get used to feedback.

You can hear that.

Okay.

Yeah.

Work with editors and just understand that it is scary.

And that's normal.

That feeling is normal.

So it does become crucial to understand.

First of all, it's normal and it's part of the process, but it's necessary because you need feedback from others.

And I'm glad I realized that at some point, because my writing, as I said before, I thought I could write on my own.

Just.

I'm going to write in secret.

I'm just going to read all these writing books and write.

And that does work to a certain degree, but not.

It's like night and day once you get feedback and you.

So have you joined any type of writers group?

I used to belong to a writer's group for about 10 years, but we moved.

Okay.

And with.

Again, with life happening and being a parent and having Parker, it's hard to figure out how to fit that in.

But it has.

It has been something I've been thinking about.

And actually, it goes back to your marketing question, because one of the things I've been thinking about is that as we are getting out there and doing stuff, I'm meeting other children's book authors.

And I've.

One of the things that I've heard in terms of marketing the book is that collaborations are super helpful.

And so I've been keeping.

Taking people's contact information and whatnot, and I haven't done anything with this idea yet.

But I do plan to create a group of those of us who are writing children's books and then for critique.

Partners.

Yes, but also marketing partners in the sense that we can help promote each other's books and do events together and that kind of thing.

Great idea.

Great idea, Parker.

Parker wants to share a book idea.

What's the book idea, Parker?

Okay.

I don't think they know who Ethan, you and Liam are, but these are friends of Parker's.

Okay.

Yeah.

I don't know if you can tell the three Musketeers.

Like adventure.

Yeah, yeah.

Because he said he wants them to go on adventures.

Terrific.

Our illustrator actually drew the main character in the book, it looks like Parker.

And that was intentional.

I did not ask for that.

That was.

The illustrator did it on their own.

But he.

When he gave us the example for the main character, he just took it from Parker's pictures, and we were like, we love it.

Go with it.

That's pretty cool.

Our main character, her name is Caboose, the Rocky Mountain Bear.

And Caboose starts with a K, and that's named after my oldest granddaughter, Kira.

Okay.

So that's how we came up with that.

But there's no resemblance.

So I want to have you talk a bit about encouragement for readers.

So tell us why children's book readers should purchase your book.

Sure.

Because it's a good book.

Fargo said that's important.

Yeah, yeah.

I think, like we've said before, I think that message is really important and really powerful.

And probably if we do end up doing two other Pickles books, they'll all have the same kind of idea of using your imagination as your superpower.

And it has laser eyes.

Parker says that's important, but it's also.

It's also silly and funny.

And I think that humor is a.

I don't know if the right word is a good way, but it's an effective way, a helpful way to combat something that's scary.

Bedtime fears, fear of the dark kind of thing.

And we didn't want to write a scary book, even though it's a book about monsters.

Our monsters are silly.

They're not scary.

So it's like using humor to overcome your fears.

And you're illustrating a good job in creating those illustrations.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's why we picked them.

Yeah.

We liked his examples.

Absolutely.

It actually reminds me of those old Frankenstein movies, the black and white ones from the 1940s or whatever.

Yeah.

And that actually was part of the inspiration for what's going on in the story.

It's like a B sci fi movie.

And I came up with the title, but the title was inspired by one of those old black and white movies, was called Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

Ah.

And the.

If you look closely at the pictures, the illustrator actually put an Easter egg in there.

The posters on the boy's door are showing that movie.

That's so cool.

Yeah, I love it.

That's great to know for aspiring children's book authors is you can always put.

A little rubber stamp and some stuff in there.

Yeah.

Waldo kind of thing.

I'm not sure anybody would know that.

It's an old black and white movie, and I'm not sure anybody with that, but yeah.

So final thoughts.

Is there something you'd you and Parker would like to share that maybe I didn't ask the question and how we can help readers or aspiring authors?

Disney needs to hire me.

He says Disney needs to hire him.

Yeah.

This kid is full of imagination.

Yeah.

Actually something that I didn't mention is that Parker has adhd.

And the reason why I mentioned a lot of times kids who are neurodiverse, they get left behind or the thought could be there where they might not be as successful as somebody who is a neurotypical I think is what it's called.

So one of the messages that we have as authors and creating things together is this idea that doesn't have to hold you back.

You can be just as successful as anybody else.

Absolutely.

And you can tell by your creativity, Parker, it's fantastic.

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

Your your generosity of time and your insights.

And I thank you, Parker, for sharing from a 10 year old's eyes.

It's so important that that be shared because you're talking through the eyes of the people that we hope will read our book.

So I just love that part.

We promise to provide our audience with links to Sarah's website and all her social media links.

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

And feel free to share this episode with anyone who's inspired or enjoys hearing about Sarah and Parker's book, the Attack of the Monster.

Pickles, thank you so much for having us.

This was fun.

My pleasure.