Yeah.

My name is Chris McKenna, and my children's books are Olivia May and Her Scuba Diving Day and Captain Olivia and the Treasure of Kindness.

Thanks, Chris, for appearing on the Adventures in the Heart of Children's Book Authors podcast.

Oh, my pleasure.

Thank you, Rick.

Chris has mentioned he has written several children's books, and today we're going to focus on his book, Captain Olivia and the Treasure of Kindness.

And I look forward to our conversation.

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

What it means to me, it will be a connection to my grandchildren.

I'm writing these to my grandchildren and as something that I can leave them when I've passed from this world that they can look back on and say, oh, my grandfather did this for me and this is me.

And I'm hoping that those stories can then weave into reality somehow as they grow and get older.

How many grandchildren do you have, Chris?

Just have the one right now.

We're keeping our fingers crossed for a few more here pretty soon, so we'll see.

And is it a granddaughter?

It's granddaughter, yeah.

Is her name Olivia?

Her name is Olivia May.

So she is the star of these two books.

That's terrific.

Besides myself, I've talked to a few grandfathers, but it's.

It's fun because I don't know if it's a grandfather thing or whatever, but we tend to get engaged with our grandchildren more.

I came to children's book writing because of my oldest granddaughter, and similar to what's going on in your life, I know we're going to have fun talking about this because we're cut from the same children's book author cloth.

Chris, our oldest granddaughter, came and she was the only one for five years.

And we thought, oh, my God, we're never going to get any more grandchildren.

And I think that's why Kira and I bonded so much.

And then all of a sudden, we had four more within a short period of time.

Oh, wow.

So, yeah, just get ready.

Yeah, I have a plan B in case that happens for me.

Curious about what's the inspiration behind your books?

The inspiration is the birth of my granddaughter and wanting to find, as I mentioned before, some way to.

To leave something for her and hopefully foreshadow something in the future.

You just could have set up a educational fund or something.

Seriously, Most grandparents don't go running out and writing a children's book.

What was the motivation here to put it into action?

Yeah, so I think most People fall into one of two categories, Rick.

I think they, they fall into more of the analytical.

Is it the left brain side and then there's the creative types and the right brain side?

I may have that backwards, I don't know.

But I'm one of those unique individuals that falls into the middle.

So while my 9 to 5 job is very analytical and it's that, that type of work, there's a big side of me that is into the creative world, whether that's photography or video or I've dabbled in some painting and things of that sort.

This gets me into more, more of a creative side and it scratches that itch for myself as well as leaving something for the grandkids later on.

Was this something that you had in the back of your mind for a while or did it need that birth of your first grandchild to get you started?

Yeah, so can I say both?

I actually wrote my first short story when I was like 9 years old, way back in elementary school.

It died in elementary school for a couple of different reasons.

But over my adult life I'd started and stopped writing a couple of stories a few times and just never moved them past maybe 10 or 15% of completion.

When my daughter announced that she was pregnant in, I think that was the summer of 24, I think it would be okay.

It's.

Something hit.

It was like being struck by a lightning bolt.

It was like, oh, I have to do something.

I have to write something for this grandbaby.

And that was the, the start of that and that was the motivation behind that.

It was like, okay, I can write a children's story.

I had two kids and I have some history with young kids.

Let's, let's try to put something on paper then that they can grow into, grow up with and have with them for the rest of their lives.

The beautiful thing about it too, Olivia is still quite young.

Yes, turned one last week.

For myself it was similar story except that I was lucky.

I was at that point in my career where I had more weeks holidays than my wife and my daughter and my oldest granddaughter is my daughter's daughter.

I ended up getting this time and so I would end up taking her down to the Rocky Mountains and we would do things that I hadn't done before.

So we would go horse back riding in the snow.

We learned how to ski together, we did dog sledding.

So many adventures.

I call Kira our first digital baby because every moment has been captured on a smartphone.

The neat thing about it is that ultimately my granddaughter is the one who convinced me, because she said, papa, we've taken so many pictures and gone on so many adventures.

Can we write a story about these adventures?

And.

Oh, very cool.

That's what.

Yeah.

I can see with you, Chris, is like, wow, you've primed the pump ahead.

Once you start having those adventures with your granddaughter.

Oh, yeah.

It's going to be pretty incredible.

Oh, yeah.

And it's also incredible that you've actually started this children's book series.

And she'll grow up on that.

And when she gets to that age where you're out doing things with her, you know that 4, 5, 6, before she starts elementary school, you'll be going out on these adventures.

And then all of a sudden, watch out, Chris, you're going to get hauled into this treasure of children.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And I think to kind of lead into what you were saying with your granddaughter.

There is then the child, your grandchild, can help you write that story.

They can be right alongside you as you build that and you develop it together.

And.

And that's a.

That's of itself a special memory that you'll have with them and that they'll always have then as well.

It's true.

And I have to tell you, we're now up to 38 stories in the Adventures of Caboose, the Rocky Mountain Bear, which is our first book right here.

Caboose is spelled with a K. And that's because my first granddaughter, her name is Kira, which starts with a K. That triggered the whole thing.

But to your point, very insightful, because with my other four grandchildren, they've helped me also write stories.

And the neat thing about it, and I throw this out to you as maybe some advice for the future about half of those stories because it's costly to bring them to market, because you have to.

We're not an illustrator, so we have to pay for all that.

But what we did is about half our stories we recorded with their young voices.

We have the audio books to support the story.

Something for you to think about in the future.

That is a great idea.

I like that idea.

I think I'm going to take that and do it.

Yeah, you're more than welcome.

To your point, they all helped write part of the books because our second book is called Hijinks from the Big Head Folk Music Festival.

My middle granddaughter was a co author.

Bailey.

That is great.

And that's going to be a great memory for them long after we're all gone that they'll be able to look back on and just say, I did something really special with my grandpa.

Pretty exciting.

Chris, now that you've got two books and I'm curious about this, and now that I know and the audience knows that your granddaughter is relatively young, even though she's influenced you, there's much more to come.

This question will even seem more appropriate.

I'd like to talk to you about your children's book business, because now with two titles, do you have a children's book business plan or what's the future of your writing look like?

Yeah, so I think that's where I'm falling down a little bit, Rick, and I'm trying to reach out to other people to find out what's worked for them.

I've run my own small business in the past, and of course, things have changed a lot since 2012 and earlier when we were running our business.

But this is a hard business, the book business.

And selling books is very difficult.

And things that may have worked for me in the past in terms of marketing and such just fall short.

They just fall flat when it comes to the books.

I'm searching for that, that avenue that's going to work for me, that little piece that seems to help generate it, because as you said, the economics are hard in this business, or especially if we're self publishing.

It gets very expensive very quickly.

I never intended to really make any money if I can talk business for a second with the books, but it would be nice to break even.

Chris, you've hit it right on the button.

When I started this podcast show, one of the things I thought was, and maybe it was because I was naive, but one of the things I thought, what better to learn about, to your point, about the children's book business than to have published children's book authors on his guests.

And perhaps I could sell some extra books because their audience or their paid readers would be listening to me and hopefully they like me, so they would go and purchase our books.

That hasn't quite worked out the way I had anticipated and which is fine.

It just has given me some insight into.

To what you just said.

This is a.

It's a business or it can be a business.

Some people do it as a legacy or as a passion.

And if they don't ever make any money, and I'm certainly not being critical of anyone, if that's what you truly want to do, then I think that's fantastic.

I just had a guest, Marley Costner, episode 85, and she's a children's book author, and her children's book took her in a totally different direction.

What she was finding is when she was working all these book fairs and going to markets and selling her book, a lot of people were coming up to her and saying, oh, Marley, how do I become a children's book author like you?

Like, how do I go about doing that?

She turned around, and then because it was so frequent, she ended up setting up her own publishing firm, and she now helps people publish their own children's book.

Yeah.

But the interesting thing is she carved out a niche.

And so she helps professional psychologists and people in that type of mental health industry write a children's book to support their business.

Very good.

You can see that's just a small niche, but she's carved out something special.

And these professionals are taking their children's book and they're carving out something special.

The trick is to find out, okay, what's Chris's niche?

Niche.

Yeah, exactly.

Because you know What, Chris, about 90% of my guests are either elementary teachers or retired elementary teachers or early childhood development professionals.

Sure.

And because they're so close to children and they got all these stories, they tend to write children's books.

Yeah, and that would make sense.

That would make sense.

They have that background, they have that knowledge.

They know what's going to resonate with those kids that they're working with.

I've got a lot of them now telling me they do a lesson plan to go along with the book, and that gets them a bigger foot in the door when they approach school boards in schools, because all teachers and principals are familiar with lesson plans.

So I thought, wow.

And you know what?

I'm trying to bring on other guests that we have.

We've had website designers on.

We've had book formatters on the show.

And now I'm thinking I've got to bring on someone who is an expert in lesson plans.

So that if that's something that interests aspiring book authors or even someone who's a book author and saying, oh, my goodness, how do I market my book?

Well, yeah, it might come through.

Supporting it through a lesson plan.

I think there's definite lessons that can be found in my books.

But whether they're appropriate or as formal as a lesson plan that a professional educator would use, I'm not quite so sure yet.

I have talked to organizations.

I'm having a guest, Sherry Serino.

She started a.

A charitable foundation called Ella's Way, and she has about 30 or 35 children's book authors who, through her organization, focus on things like kindness.

When I look at your book The Treasure of Kindness.

Ella's Way might be a great organization for you to look at joining.

We'll put links to Alice Way in our show notes.

That might be something that you get involved with those.

Those authors because I think they meet through a Facebook group and then you get talking about it.

But it triggers IDE to help you maybe have your book flourish.

And a prime example is kindness is definitely a big topic.

I think that is a value that I think is being lost on a lot of people these days.

No doubt about it.

Any way that you can bring it in and introduce it to somebody early on in their life, I think the better.

I couldn't agree with you more.

I wanted and sorry to get you sidetracked here a bit, but that's right now on your books and I'd like to talk to you about first of all, your book formats.

I noticed you're on Amazon.

You have them on your website.

You have in a soft cover or paperback form and an E book on my iPad.

I got to tell you, hopefully you can see this.

Your color on the iPad is spectacular.

Yeah, that looks good.

It's beautiful.

Just absolutely beautiful.

I got to give credit to my illustrator for all that.

She just knocked it out of the park with these.

With your book, your softcover and your ebook.

So why no hardcover?

There is a plan for hardcover downline, but with Amazon there's a certain number of pages.

Yeah, 72.

Yeah.

You have to get over before you move to a hardcover.

That's why the paperback right now.

Without having gone the traditional publishing route and having their resources behind me, it's very difficult to get into the hardcover without meeting those requirements.

I was talking to a children's book author, Charlotte Glaze, episode 23 out of Oklahoma.

And she's got two great skills.

She's not only the writer, but she's also an illustrator.

You and I both know if you have that illustration skill, it can certainly make.

Oh yeah, a big difference.

I talked to Charlotte about her hardcover and she used a company called madeinchina.com and she actually went offshore and purchased her hardcover books.

And I said, oh.

And she said, rick, really, the quality.

I picked two companies.

I paid for samples to be sent to me.

I found the one that I really liked.

Then I ordered and she said, including shipping and and printing, she said, I got a high quality hard covered book and it's cheaper than I was able to buy my soft covered books through Amazon.

And really, that's what I said.

Really?

She uses those when she does live events because she's able to get a premium price for them.

As you and I were just talking about.

It's tough enough trying to get a return on your investment, but if you can turn around and make a higher margin on a hardcover book that looks beautiful, why not?

And she said she had to order 500 copies.

That's good to know.

So that's something that definitely can look at because that's something that's always in the back of my mind mentioned plans for the future.

So I have one more book with Olivia on the horizon for sometime in 2026.

And with these three books, my intent is to put them all together into a three book volume and market it that way as all three books in a hardcover.

That's fantastic.

I've interviewed a gal and her name is Brittany Pettish, episode 67.

And she did exactly what you just said.

She made a compilation.

And so that allowed her to get over that 72 page number and she has a compilation of three of her books.

I think she's published five, but she's got three of them together in a compilation and now she's printing it through Amazon.

Hats off to you.

That's phenomenal.

Yeah, yeah.

So hopefully, fingers crossed, if everything lines up correctly that we'll have that done by the end of 2026.

And have you used Ingram Sparks?

I do.

I have.

The books are listed on there.

So all of the little independent bookstores and all that can find can find the books if they want to.

Okay.

In fact, I have a small bookstore in town that I walked into, I don't know, maybe six weeks ago and showed them the book and was trying to ARR a tabletop sometime on a Saturday afternoon with them and they were able to just take the ISBN number, look it right up and they're like, oh, yep, there it is, there's your book.

So IngramSpark is good for that.

Trying to help other people is that using third party does come in at a price because you don't make the same type of margin with some of the independent book retailers.

If you can make up your own wholesale price and sell it to them directly, definitely more margin in it for you as a children's book author.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I've done that with a couple of community fairs that that we've had here before the holidays where I've been able to print a number of copies and bring them and been able to increase the margin just a little bit by doing that.

Don't have to pay the Amazon royalty.

Right.

I Want to jump into your publishing approach because you know what I talk about.

Primarily for children's book authors, there's three routes you can go.

There's independent publishing, which means you create your own publishing company, you do all the work, you hire all the resources and all the professionals.

And then there's what I call self publishing, or hybrid publishing, where you actually hire a third party company to do most of the work for you.

They become like the general manager.

You pay them a fee, but at the end of the day you get to keep all the rights, but it costs you a fee to get them to bring your book to market.

And then there's what's called the traditional, which a lot of people are familiar with the traditional publishing route, where a publisher takes on all the work, pays you a book advanced, and they publish your book.

The one thing I found in talking to as many children's book authors as I have is whether you're independently published, where you do all the work, or you're traditionally published, where someone pays you for the rights of your book and they do all the work.

They do all the work in terms of publishing it, but they expect you to do the sales and marketing that book, whether you're independently or traditionally published.

Tell us about your publishing process.

My process is.

So I'm doing it all myself now.

Okay.

Do you have your own publishing company name?

Yeah, it's just Chris McKenna.

Okay.

Yes.

So if you were to look it up, you would just see my name in there as the publisher.

When I first wrote Olivia May and Her Scuba Diving Day, I had actually shopped it to a couple of publishers that I could find.

And it turns out they were of the hybrid type that you mentioned.

And yeah, it was really nice to be able to just turn over a manuscript and give them my vision.

But for me personally, what I found was they were just doing a very bad job.

So the illustrations that they were providing me were absolutely terrible.

They were AI generated with different styles.

And the different styles was the result of them cutting and pasting different things.

So if you were to look at, say, page one of the Scuba Diving Day book, there's a picture of Olivia, there's a picture of Pop Pop, and then there's Adelaide the dog.

And what they were doing was they'd AI generate the background and all that, and I presume they were AI generating all the other characters, but then they were cutting them out of whatever picture that they had and then pasting them into the background.

You're looking at this and you're Seeing very different styles of drawings, if you will, of illustrations.

So you got.

I had a crab that was very cartoony.

And then I would have Adelaide, which was more of a traditional type of painted illustration.

And then you'd have the pop and the Olivia characters being something completely different.

I was dealing with that.

And then as we got down line and a couple of the other pages, it just became really unbearable.

They kept assuring me they weren't doing it.

They weren't doing it.

When you get a drawing with six fingers and six toes, it's pretty obvious you can't deny it anymore.

I took it back and ended up just going the self publishing route.

Yeah.

Do you mean you're more independently published?

More.

More independent, yeah.

Yeah.

So I went out in that time.

They hadn't done any editing or anything.

They were just strictly focused on getting some illustrations drawn.

So I went out and found my own editor to do some editing for me.

I interviewed a number illustrators before selecting one.

And then my illustrator actually had some background in getting things on Amazon and IngramSpark.

We worked that together to get the first one done.

Yeah.

So the nice thing about it, you created your own dream team of professionals.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Okay.

And you know what, Chris?

The reason I always ask this question is that for us, because I had written two.

I had mentioned this off air, I had written two books that were business books on investment real estate.

And I ended up being an independent publisher.

That's the route I took.

And so we created our own.

Like on the back of our book, you'll see that it's called Caboose, the Rocky Mountain Bear Publishing Den.

And we create our own publishing company.

I look at it as being fortunate because I just knew how to do it.

Now, I didn't have an illustrator.

But before we talk about illustrations, because you brought up some great points, I want to help people understand when they're trying to make a decision on do I independently publish, do I use a hybrid self publishing firm, or do I try and get a traditional publisher?

I like to get people to tell their stories.

I don't want to make it seem easy, and I'm sure you don't want to make it seem easy either.

But when it came to publishing your children's book, what do you think your biggest challenge was or your biggest frustration.

Right off the bat?

It was with the actual publishing company that I was using the assurances that they were giving me.

I had a vision and I actually had put a mock up together of the book for them to follow.

And it wasn't being followed.

And it became obvious to me that they weren't being completely upfront and honest with me.

And that was very frustrating.

I'd like to say I'm not a control freak, but I'm a little bit of.

A little bit of control issues.

And especially when my name is attached to something, Rick, I want it to be the best it can be.

And if I were to have just let them progress forward without taking back the control myself, we wouldn't be having this conversation today.

Because at the pace they were going, it was going to take two years to get this book illustrated.

But it's interesting.

There's certainly self hybrid publishers that are exactly as you describe.

But so far from my experience, there's also been some really good ones.

And anyone who's listened to our podcast show knows that I've had guests on and that's the way they go.

They found a reputable company who guarantees them that they will have a published children's book within a year.

And they've delivered and they've delivered a beautiful book.

So it's possible.

But you certainly have.

Oh, absolutely.

And all I can do is speak about my experience.

Yeah.

So if somebody's found a good one and they trust them, congratulations.

Stick with them.

Okay.

Yeah.

I don't want to take anything away, but you just need to be aware that you may not get the finished product that that aligns with your own vision.

Be very careful.

Make sure you get everything written out, spelled out in a contract.

Make sure that you have milestones in place.

I think milestones are very important because without them.

Yeah.

You could blow through any deadline that you may have for when you want to get it published.

I think milestones are very important to have if you're working well.

And that that goes even completely independently published, too.

I have milestones with my people as well.

And it's interesting you should say that because I always, when I talk on the show.

And the nice thing about it, because we've independently published two children's books, I can speak from experience and interviewing over 75 children's book authors.

I'm gaining knowledge that way also.

And I'm like a sponge when it comes to talking to children's book authors.

What I tell people is that if they take the independent route, it's very interesting too, because I'll give you a prime example.

I had a guest on Con Livery episode 29.

He's our book formatter.

So he's not the illustrator, but he's a graphic designer.

Who does book formatting and he also is a website designer.

The beautiful thing about having Kahn is that he also is an expert in formatting a soft cover book, a hardcover book and an ebook.

What happens is a lot of times you'll find someone can only format a soft cover book.

So they'll get your book on Amazon and ingramsparks.

But if you said to them, can you format my ebook or my hardcover book?

They don't know how to do that.

It's really doing your homework as you're talking about and making sure the professionals that you need can do the job that you're looking for them to do.

Absolutely, yeah.

Interview, ask a ton of questions.

If you don't know what questions to ask, you can use AI, go out to ChatGPT and have them develop a list of questions for you.

Appropriate questions to ask.

We got these tools available to us.

Use them, no question.

You found your editor, you found someone.

Now, in your case, it's interesting and I want to pick up on this a bit.

Okay.

Is that your illustrator knew how to do the formatting for Amazon and ingramsparks.

Did she do the complete book?

So she did the illustration and she also added the copy to each page?

Yeah, we worked that together as she would send me illustrations to look at.

That was one of the things that was always in my mind.

Okay, where are we going to put the text on this page?

How's that going to look actually working backwards, Rick?

I have done a mock up for both of my books prior to ever turning it over to the illustrator.

So they already had an idea in their mind of kind of what I was looking at and how I envisioned things to look.

In the end, they were able to then take that and incorporate that into their drawings.

Let's talk a little bit deeper about your illustrator, because in our case it's interesting, Chris, is that I tried to find a local illustrator and I didn't have much success and I ended up going.

I ended up going, as you said, online Googling, or at that time it was Google.

AI was just coming onto the scene.

I found an illustrator who was in the UK and was amazed because with today's technology, I never met the gentleman, but because with all my grandchildren, we've actually taken photographs.

We usually have a four to eight photographs that go with whatever event we were at.

We ended up using those photographs and send to the illustrator to help us because we wrote the story and then we'd send the pictures just to give the person a feel.

And this person's never Been to the Rocky Mountains, needing those pictures were.

Yeah.

What's incredible is that my oldest granddaughter and I had this vision of what Caboose, the Rocky Mountain bear, would look like, our main character.

We knew it was going to be a bear, and we knew we wanted it to have.

Because it was named Caboose.

We wanted it to have that train feel.

My wife and I were in San Francisco on holidays, and we went into one of those plushie stores, and we saw this bear, and then we saw this outfit, and the gal helped us put together Caboose.

And when we brought the plushie home, the moment my granddaughter Kira saw it, she went, caboose.

Caboose.

She knew right away her vision, and our vision was exactly the same.

And so what happened was we sent a picture of Caboose to the illustrator, and he came back with the front cover of our book, which I showed you.

It was incredible.

And the beautiful thing about it, and I want to come.

I want to pick up on your point to share with the audience, is he then developed the feel for all of our characters around how he had put Caboose together.

All of our characters have that feel.

And I think you know what I'm talking about, is that there's continuity.

Yeah.

They all belong in that world.

So in our world, it's the Adventures of Caboose, and all of our characters fit into that world.

And in your case, you.

That's what you wanted.

You wanted all your characters, and that's what the illustrator's done for you, Chris.

Vision and needed an illustrator to complete that entire vision.

Talk to us about how you found your illustrator and how did you work with them.

Working with the other company, I knew what I didn't want, and so that was top of the list.

But pastor of my church had published a number of books.

Now, they weren't children's books or anything.

And so I reached out to him and I said, as far as.

How are you putting your books together?

What are you doing?

And he turned me on to.

Have you ever heard of Upwork?

Yes.

Yeah, he turned me on.

I didn't know about that.

The only thing I knew about was.

Fiverr, in a way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The only thing I knew about was Fiverr.

And I had actually started looking through there, and I can't remember if I actually posted anything on there or not, but started looking at different things, and I don't know, nothing was really resonating with me out of Fiverr.

But anyway, he turned me on to Upwork, and so I went out there, looked at it, and as far as the site goes, it seemed to me.

So I posted an ad for an illustrator for three children's books.

One of my requirements was image likeness, like real people.

And Olivia is modeled after my daughter.

So one of the criteria was that that we can create an image, a character that looks similar to, say, how my daughter looked.

And the pop.

Pop character was modeled after me a little bit.

And making sure that whoever we selected and I say we, it was me and my wife could do that.

I put the ad up.

I got two or three dozen responses in, started working my way through people's portfolios and looking and down selected to about six people and then just started having informal interviews with some of them via the platform upwork, and then ended up talking with a number of them in person.

So we'd set up some time and I threw out.

My criteria was, okay, I need you to be able to model the characters after real life people, if you have any experience in doing that.

And are you up for three books and taking those same characters, bringing them through three books.

So I down selected then to two.

And one of them was actually in the uk, like yours.

The other one was in Canada.

It would have been nice to have somebody local, but it just wasn't in the cards.

We interviewed both of them, and my wife make the final decision who she liked the most.

Both of them were incredible.

The lady in UK I'm actually considering for another project I'm working on.

I didn't discard her completely, but Lynette, my wife, says, I like Farheen and let's go with her.

And that's what we did.

We liked her style and she's done both your books.

She's done.

Yeah.

The same illustrator on both of them.

She'll do the third one.

She will do the third one.

Yeah, I noticed.

And just a kind of a quick aside.

In your first book, you didn't really mention the illustrator second book.

You definitely gave the illustrator a lot more credit.

So tell us the reason you did that.

That was her decision.

Okay.

For whatever reason, I think it was because she was in the process of moving from her name to a business name and she was playing around with several different variations of that business name and not sure exactly how to.

How to portray herself on the initial cover.

Now the subsequent cover that I have out there now, it actually does have her name on it.

So we've changed the COVID a little bit to add her on there.

But in between book one and she's.

Going with her name versus, like, on the ebook that I've got, it shows a company name.

Yeah.

On the Treasure of Kindness, it's actually her company name that's on there.

Is that how she's going to do it from now on?

That was her choice.

That was her decision.

No, no.

And I just want people to understand that because a lot of times when people see a company name, the first thing they go to is they think, oh, it's AI.

Yeah.

So, yeah, no, I get that.

But if you look through the book, at the very end, we got her to add an.

About the Illustrator page on there.

Yeah, I love.

Yeah.

So she could talk about herself and give herself the credit.

Yes.

For doing this.

I want to talk to you about your website development.

Is it the chicken or the egg story?

When it came to developing your website, did you have your website before you launched your books or after you launched your book?

It was definitely after.

I'll be honest with you, Rick, I mentioned it earlier.

I've run a small business for many years and I've had my own websites and trying to maintain them and keep the content.

In fact, I still have my photography up and going and trying to keep current with content.

It's just, it's.

It's difficult for me.

I just, I'm a super busy individual.

I have a lot going on.

To keep it updated has been a challenge over the last few years.

Okay.

In fact, I think if you look, my last blog post may have been.

It might be two years old on that.

So it was never really my intention to do an author website.

I just wanted to get the books out there and get them selling, get them listed.

You know what, Chris?

We were the same way when we launched.

Somebody said all you need to do is have a QR code, link it to Amazon and you're golden.

Yeah.

And that's not quite the truth.

It's not quite the truth, yeah.

Now, how many sales have I generated from my website, from my book website, My author website?

I have no idea.

There's no way to tell.

But at least I can point to.

To a place that people can go and they can look at the books probably in a little bit more detail than if you start looking at some of the blog posts I put on there.

A little bit more detail than you would get on Amazon.

I do have some reviews on there.

It's a nice.

And then of course, with some of the other books I'm writing, I'm trying to get some announcements and some news about them out there as well.

If Anybody's interested in keeping track of me as an author, that would be the place to go.

I noticed on the social media that you have Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Goodreads, and most people are very familiar with Facebook and Instagram.

Tell us a little bit about how you're using YouTube and how you're using Goodreads.

YouTube comes with me from my video business, my video days.

And so I was using that initially to introduce some of the characters in Scuba Diving Day.

So there was an introduction.

I did some little videos, a little introduction of Olivia, an introduction for Ozzy the Octopus and Simon the Seahorse.

I did a couple little videos on there for that.

Mr. Mantish, I think, showed up on there.

I did a.

An introduction.

It was a voiceover.

I can't remember the site that I used to create the voiceover, but I started doing a flip through.

It wasn't an author reading, but it was one of those sorts of things.

I did an introduction for that, got that out there.

And that's how I was using YouTube.

Now, did I do that for the Treasure of Kindness?

I did not.

And it was only because of time.

It wasn't anything else.

We had some family thing.

Unfortunately, my mother passed in October, the month before Captain Olivia was scheduled to be published.

And so marketing was the last thing.

And trying to.

Trying to get this story out there was the last thing on my mind during that time.

So I fell off a little bit with marketing.

The second book, talk to us about Goodreads, using that, I'm learning that Goodreads I didn't even know was a site until later on.

I think I had already published Scuba Diving Day.

And one of the influencers, and I use that term lightly from Instagram, approached me about doing a book review and they said, we'll put the review on Goodreads.

And I was, what is Goodreads?

So I had to go out and look at that and see what that was all about.

I don't really use it.

I haven't used it yet as a marketing tool for the book.

Obviously I have my author profile on there now.

I have my books linked.

Books that I'm reading, I'm now putting on there.

So if anybody's interested in following me, they can see what I'm looking at.

And maybe when things slow down a little bit, I'll put.

Probably look into that as more of a marketing vehicle.

Are you able to put any reviews that you've gotten from other people on that site?

They actually will put them on there themselves.

They have to have their own, their own profiles to, to put on there and then they link it back to that book.

I've had a couple of really nice reviews for both books on there.

There's one gal that has done both of my books.

She's been really nice and I've actually been able to take her review and use that as an ed review on Amazon.

Been able to post that in there.

So that was really nice.

And then a few other people have posted their reviews of the books on there and they've all been incredibly nice.

Very generous, I would say, which is nice.

Makes me feel good.

Yeah, no, no doubt about it.

And have you added those reviews to your website to also.

Yep.

So you can go back on my website.

There's a page there that says reviews and a couple of them, I just copied the text in there.

Some of the other ones, I think it's the ones on Amazon are links back to Amazon so you can just click on them and it'll bring you right over to the page.

Right over to those reviews.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's pretty amazing.

And I don't know if you ever watch prime, which is owned by Amazon, but now that they've got commercials, a lot of times it'll pop up with available on Amazon.

They'll put the QR codes.

Yeah.

I'm thinking, you know what, that's the next evolution of your website is you got to start adding these QR codes to your.

Oh my gosh.

I couldn't imagine.

I don't know what their click through rate is on that stuff, but I could only imagine how much that would cost a show like Rings of Power or something like that to have your QR code pop up.

It's probably going to cost you a.

Pretty penny, no doubt about it.

Yeah.

I want to jump into character development because the nice thing about it is because this is the first time we're meeting, I thought that your granddaughter, I know she was the inspiration behind your books.

Yeah.

But I had envisioned that she was older.

I didn't realize that was actually your daughter who you used your daughter's likeness as Olivia.

Yeah, I had to do that because.

Newborn baby.

Yeah.

A little too soon.

I suppose you could use some, some aging software to see what they might look.

Yeah.

But yeah, Olivia, the character is more modeled both in likeness and in her expression, her attitude, her adventurousness is more modeled after my daughter.

I would envision that Olivia is going to be exactly like her mom.

She's already showing that it's probably not too much of A stretch.

Chris has written these two books.

Of course, Olivia is the main character, except the circumstances for each book is different.

The role that Olivia plays is different.

The one common element is water.

Water plays a big role in both your books, Chris.

So tell us, why does water play a big role in both your books?

And in essence, it's a character.

Oh, absolutely.

It's a character.

I grew up in the Seattle area, and so we've always been around water.

Even taking that aside, one of the many things that I do is I teach people how to scuba dive on the weekends, and I wouldn't do that if the water wasn't important to me.

So the water for me is.

It's very calming.

It's a place to just reset myself when I'm not teaching.

That's a whole nother animal.

But just to reset, set myself from a mental standpoint, a hard week.

I'll just go sit in the water and at whatever depth I'm at and just watch fish.

I love it.

It's very calming.

I call it Zen now, being that I'm an avid scuba diver, I got both of my kids into scuba diving at different points in their lives.

I would envision that if I'm still doing this in 10 years, which there's no reason to believe, I wouldn't be that Olivia is going to want to do it too.

I have these adventures underwater.

Why not take my daughter or my granddaughter along with me so she can experience this as well?

Yeah.

And spend time with her Pop Pop.

So for sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

The other thing I wanted to talk to you about is that the parrot plays a big role in your second book.

Talk to us about that whole development, because I know there's all these characters.

Most of them are the crew, the parrot, Jojo.

So I've never owned a parrot.

I don't know how they behave or how they act, except for on TV and in the movies.

Originally, when I was fleshing out the idea for the Treasure of Kindness, it wasn't Olivia.

It was a completely new character.

And it was more of the swashbuckling pirate type.

And of course, in most books and movies and that kind of stuff, pop culture type things that you see.

Every pirate has a parrot.

Jojo.

The parrot was introduced into the book as just more of that's what pirates have.

That's what they do.

And of course, then it.

The book morphed into Captain Olivia, but I still had to keep the parrot.

Now, the parrot does play a pivotal role in the plot of the book, in what it does, right off the bat.

I don't know if you want me to get into those kinds of details.

I'm interested in with the character development, relationship between Captain Olivia and JoJo.

Certainly talk to us about that.

Like I said, the parrot is always part of the pirate lore, so it made sense to have a parrot in the book also providing those pivotal plot points in the book.

Because how do you bring something in into the book?

Oh, the parrot can find it and can bring it in.

Look what it ran across.

And here.

Now you've brought that element into the book without having to go off in some arc that may not be appropriate for a children's book.

Okay.

But when you get to the end of the book, there's a twist.

I don't know if you've read it or not.

Yes, I did.

I read the whole couple of times.

That twist at the end where Olivia then comes back to reality a little bit and the parrot ends up being one of her toys.

The nice thing about it is, like you said, and I just want the audience to understand without giving this too much of the story away, but there is, like all good treasure stories, there is a treasure map and how it.

On how it unveils itself.

And thanks to the JoJo.

Yes, thanks to JoJo.

That was the piece.

I was saying the parrot brings that plot point in, brings the map into the story.

It finds the map, and, you know, rather than having to write something where Olivia and her crew find it doing something else, JoJo brings it into the story.

I think that's.

People love that.

I think most people envision a parrot as being playful and curious.

And that's what you've done with JoJo.

Yeah, definitely play.

He's, I think, on every page in the book, if not in the forefront, at least in the background.

He obviously plays a very important part of Olivia's life.

When we start getting into the acts of kindness, then as well, even JoJo takes part in those acts.

So he's not just a passive observer of that.

He actually gets in.

Let's pick up on that theme of kindness.

Because when I first read the title of your book, and I thought, wow, what triggered this?

When you think of treasure, I don't think most people think of kindness.

Yeah.

And so it's really a nice twist because it's.

Yeah, it's a positive thing.

But explain to us how that whole idea of treasure, of kindness came to you.

I think most treasure pirate stories, they're looking for a chest of gold and silver and jewels and all that and as the story morphed out of some renegade pirate who's nice into Olivia, I started thinking, what good is a bunch of gold and silver and jewel's going to be for 10 year old child?

There's just no value in it.

And one of the things that I wanted to do with all of my books, Rick, was make sure that there's some sort of value lesson in it.

So Scuba Diving Day had its own set and the Treasure of Kindness has its own.

And obviously it's right in the title there.

But when you think of pirates and buccaneers and all that, you generally don't think of them being very kind.

There's all kinds of pirate stories.

Yeah, sharks.

Yeah, exactly.

Anyway, I wanted to instill some sort of value message into the book and how can I do that?

And whether originally.

Okay.

She's searching for a treasure, but along the way she sees opportunities to help others along the way to be kind, to show acts of compassion, to help out.

And it just.

Just morphed itself into that.

That could be why.

That could be what she's after.

It's not a treasure.

And these opportunities to help others doesn't get her closer to a treasure per se.

A treasure of gold and silver and jewels, but some other sort of treasure.

What can that be?

Okay.

And that's that.

And that was the progression of.

So did you.

Was it the storyline first or was it the title of the book first?

It was more of the storyline.

So it's an evolution.

No, Very important.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was very much about gold and silver.

Okay.

At the beginning.

And like I said, it just didn't really make sense the more you start going through this.

And I'm the type of individual, individual that I work from an outline.

Okay, let's pick up on your writing process.

Okay.

Based on what you're saying, can you share some insights into your development process for the storyline and then your writing process?

Because you came to the party with three books in a series in your head.

Yeah.

That wasn't originally what it was.

It was just gonna be.

It was originally.

It was going to be a one off.

Okay.

Yeah, it was.

So take us through this.

Give us some insights into your whole.

The development and then your writing process.

I'm gonna go back to that hybrid company that I was working with at the very start.

So it was just the one book and they liked the story.

I won't lie about that.

They love the story and they love the character and they said you really need to think about turning this into more than just one book.

Now, they may have their motivation for that and we won't get into that, but they convinced me to do a three story book with Olivia.

And three stories make sense for the character.

And Olivia will only get three stories before I move to something else.

But they convinced me to write three books.

And so it was like, okay, I could do that.

I think I can do that.

What's amazing to me is that it's cool what you did because like I said to you, even though Olivia is the main character, the circumstances of both your books, it's totally different in terms of this.

Of the setting.

Assuming the third one will be different.

Again, the third one is going to be completely different than these two.

So you touched on it a little earlier with both of these have ocean themes in them.

The third book does not.

It does not.

We are in terra firma, if you will.

Yeah.

And I can talk a little bit more about that if you want.

As far as the process, getting back to your question about the process of writing.

So they convinced me to do three books, which I said I would do.

The treasure book was already floating around in the back of my mind.

I want to flush this out a little bit more and start working on that.

The third one I had a little bit harder time trying to come up with on that.

Oh, did you actually have the idea because you said you moved from the ocean, the water setting to terra firma, as you put it.

You're coming inland or something.

I was already there.

Well, that idea.

No, I didn't have any idea.

For book three, I started talking with my wife and she was thinking, what about me?

You have to put me in one of these books.

I thought, what can I do with Olivia and Grandma?

And what does Grandma want to do with Olivia?

And I started playing around with that a little bit.

And my wife loves to garden.

She loves to spend time out there with her vegetables and her flowers and all that stuff.

And I thought, there's the story right there.

It's Olivia and Grandma's Garden of Wonders.

Oh, nice.

Yeah.

So I wrote a story around that, and that's down the line.

I don't have a date or anything for publishing on that.

The story is written.

It's not illustrated or edited yet, but at least the story is done.

And it's funny you should mention that because one of our stories, and I wrote it with my wife in mind, with her youngest granddaughter, and with my youngest granddaughter and my wife, we put this story together and my wife did the narration.

The audiobook oh, very good.

We've got it that far.

And.

Yeah, that's a great idea.

Yeah.

So that's the whole thing.

It's interesting because I was talking to an author who wrote a book about a dog.

She didn't even own a dog, but she wrote this story about a dog.

And then all of her friends said, oh, what about my dog?

Can my dog be in your book?

Oh, my gosh.

I'm sure.

Just wait, Chris.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure.

I'm sure Every author has a story like that.

Everybody wants to be a character.

To be a character.

Everyone has their thoughts on that, and they want to be in the book in some form or fashion.

Now, I want to take you on a journey.

Okay.

When I get someone who's not only published one book, but who's published two books, then this even takes on a more important role.

And I want to talk to you about success measurement.

I want you to think back to your very first book and what you envision success to be, and then pull us forward to now.

And what does success look like to you now?

I'll be perfectly honest with you.

So success for me was selling a ton of books right off the bat.

That's what success was going to be.

It hasn't turned out that way.

I'm finding, as we've talked about earlier, this is a business and you have have to market it, and that's difficult to do and it's difficult to get that word out and get it in front of people.

But having said that, yes, success to me now is something completely different.

So while it would be nice to reach a point where I'm breaking even on all this, success is people will send me pictures or I'll see them on the Amazon review of them reading, reading the book to their child or their grandchild.

That's success.

Success is a nice, positive review.

Success is.

I mentioned I was at a community fair in October and I did three story times with some of the kids, and I think I had, I think the lowest attended one.

There was maybe six or eight kids there.

And they all loved the book.

They all loved the book.

They loved the pictures, they loved the story.

Except for the really young kids.

They were all really engaged in it.

And that was success for me.

So that really charged my batteries.

Yeah.

Leaving that event, I didn't sell too many books that day, but.

And that was fine.

But it was the kids that loved the story and wanted to look at the pictures.

And I had made some stickers of a couple of the characters.

And I ran out of them.

That was nice.

So terrific.

Now that you have got this third book in mind, I can see you're thinking, like you said, finish the third book in the series and then you can see yourself going elsewhere in terms of your children's book writing career.

Talk to us about how you see this role of writing developing as you go through this whole journey.

With children's books or just writing in general.

You don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Okay.

How do you see the role of writing taking on more form in your life?

Yeah, since last summer, it's taken on a much, much bigger role in my life that I enjoy.

The process I mentioned right at the onset here, that creative side of my brain is engaged and I'm not doing a whole lot of photography at the moment.

I think we're in a mini recession here.

So I'm not getting out and shooting weddings or portraits.

I like to do a lot of landscape photography too, and things of that sort.

And I just haven't really had the opportunity in the last few years to get out and do a lot of that.

So that side of my brain has not been exercised too much.

But now I've started writing these books and all of a sudden something has reignited.

So the stories are coming.

They're there since last summer, since I engaged with the Scuba Diving Day book, since I started working on that one.

I've written a number of other book books already, so I have a foundation.

So being a scuba diver, is that.

Children'S books or is that just so.

I've written one other children's book.

I've written Olivia, the third one in the Olivia series.

So Olivia and Grandma's Garden of Wonders is written.

I have outlines for two more children's books.

I think they are not.

The Adelaide character in the first book was an offshoot and the Ozzie and Simon characters are an offshoot of that.

As far the Adelaide character goes, I think I'm going to change that a little bit.

But I have an outline written for it.

So at least I have the idea.

And I have an idea for.

And I have an outline actually for an Ozzie and Simon book.

The problem I'm having with that one is it's a very elementary book.

It's 2, 3, 4 year olds.

It's kids learning colors, it's counting, it's that sort of thing.

Whether I do anything with that one or not, I'm not sure yet.

I'm not sure how to self publish a small book yet.

A small cardboard type Book that you might see for that.

Yeah, for those.

I'm not sure how to do that yet.

I need to look into that.

And if I find a way to do that, then I'll probably move forward with those characters in that book.

In terms of other things, I've written a foundations and underwater photography book, being a scuba diver, being an instructor and a professional photographer.

So I've written.

That one's in editing right now.

I have a nonfiction book coming out in two weeks, my first adult fiction book.

Okay.

And I'm writing two more books, adult fiction.

So I'm busy writing.

I'm busy writing.

And that they're all independently published.

I will do them all myself.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

So the foundations in underwater photography.

I've been shopping around to a couple of the more traditional publishers.

The layout in that book is going to be really extensive, as you can imagine.

A how to photography book.

I'm not sure I'm ready to turn that over to somebody that is not affiliated with a traditional publishing house just yet.

I may get there real quick, but we'll see.

We'll see.

Okay.

I'm just curious.

I've only scuba dived a couple of times, and I'm not sure of the main manufacturers of scuba gear.

Maybe there's somebody there that might sponsor your book that's.

That you're using their equipment Anyways, I just throw that out at you.

I've already talked with.

I got a number of photos for some camera housings.

I know we're going off topic here, but camera housings from one of the manufacturers.

So, yeah, I'll probably approach them again and say, hey, you want to do something else?

Right.

Advice for aspiring children's book authors.

Chris, tell us, what kind of advice would you give someone who's an aspiring children's book author but just doesn't know how to get going?

What would you say to them?

Them?

I'd say, sharpen your pencil, get out a piece of paper and just start, I think.

And whatever that is, whether it's the title, maybe it's the ending.

I was talking to somebody a couple of weeks ago, and they were.

They were talking about getting started and how do you know?

And maybe you start at the end of the book and work backwards.

With the children's books, I definitely think that having a message, if you're trying to convey a message, know what that message is.

I work from outlines, so it's not just write the verbiage and it's done.

It's okay.

Part one, part two, part Three, here's the beginning, whatever it is, the character introduction, the ending.

What does that look like?

And then just start filling in the pieces.

It's interesting you say that a lot of times.

I know with myself, I've started with the end in mind.

Mind.

I think that's great advice.

Now that we've heard a lot about what's going on in your life as a children's book author, what keeps you going as a children's book author?

I think it's that success that we talked about just a few minutes ago.

Getting those pictures, those reviews, those comments from people and the events that the kids come in and you read to them and seeing how engaged they get.

That'll keep me going.

That'll keep me going.

There's just something non tangible there, I think, at least for myself, that recharges those batteries and says, yeah, I need to keep doing this.

There's some value here, right?

Encouragement for readers.

Why should children's book readers purchase your books?

I think the message that's in both of them, I think is very important, that I don't see a lot of places, especially with the first one, that whole intergenerational connection, the connection from a kid's perspective to, say, older generation and what they can offer and teach and convey to the younger generation and vice versa.

I think, too, it's people of my age, hey, get involved with your grandkids.

They may be more into what you do and what you have to say than you might think.

To your point, the nice thing about it, when I had my grandchildren help me write, write, and then do the audiobooks, the beautiful thing about it, they ended up being the editors.

And who better to be your children's book editor than the people reading your books?

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

You can read on their face if a point is being made or not.

Final thoughts.

Chris, is there something that you'd like to share or a question that I didn't ask you?

You don't really have a final thought, per se.

I think your last question about what to give aspiring writers, I think that's a great way to end it.

You know, if you have an idea, explore it, pencil it out, reach out.

Especially in today's age, there's lots of different resources out there that you can bounce things off of.

There's a couple groups on Instagram that I'm part of.

There's lots of Facebook, Facebook groups out there, and there's.

People are more than willing in a lot of cases to.

To help you out.

So reach out if you have an idea and you want to see how that develops.

That's what I found.

It's amazing how giving this children's book author community is very.

Oh absolutely.

I think even though we're all competing for the same sale, perhaps people are more than willing to help each other out last month or over Christmas.

Reading a couple other authors book and providing some feedback and having them do the same for me.

Invaluable.

Invaluable.

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

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

And we promise to provide links to Chris's social media and his book and website.

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

And feel free to share this episode with anyone inspired by or who enjoys hearing about Chris and his children's book, Captain Olivia and the Treasure of Kindness.

Thank you, Chris.

Thank you, Rick.

I appreciate your time today.