​I did want to get back to marketing and selling your self-published book. The last post pertaining to these topics was the categorization of your book within the market so that people can find your book ("Categories, part 2," Feb. 26, 2017). A final word is: remember that you can change these from time to time, and then take note if sales numbers are impacted immediately after changing the categories. It's probably best to do this for a few cycles just to see if there is a pattern.
 
With all the different social media outlets available to us, the problem lies in how much time it takes to sustain these outlets. ALL of them require you to be a consistent presence on the platform. Now, for some outlets like a 140-character limit for twitter or image posting on Instagram, this might be easier. But if you decide to blog, for example, be prepared for an investment of time.
 
I had a friend who did social media for her livelihood, and she said if you are not consistent with your postings, you may as well not do them at all. She also said do as many as you are likely to sustain. So if you can do 4 outlets, keep to that. Some outlets allow you to link up to others, as you'll see in my diagram, where my Mailchimp campaigns get automatically posted to my twitter feed and FB personal page, which I then share with my Centipede Dragon FB page.
 
I haven’t even begun to touch on the traditional ways to advertise and market, like talking to local libraries to carry your book and businesses for presentations, and newspapers to review your books. But those are avenues definitely worth exploring as you may be able to build community relationships that become key avenues of reaching an audience.
 
This is a very overwhelming part of the book business, and the only thing I can say (since I haven’t figured it out myself), is that you have to follow through with the goal/s you’ve set. For me, blogging seemed to be a way to "talk" to readers, to share more in depth the hurdles I have had to overcome, and those that have knocked me down. But it also has required a tremendous effort to think about how to tell this complex experience in a way that is not only interesting, but maybe even helpful to you in your own journeys.

Let me know if it's working, or not working, for you! Do I need to make my posts shorter? Do I sound too authoritative? I'd love the feedback!

​Let’s get back to answering a question posed in the March 30 “The blank page” post: what is another name for a visual road map?

The answer is a storyboard!

Storyboards are used in the film and TV industries and usually have three components: the narration (the manuscript), the sketch that shows what’s happening when that narration is heard, and the directives. Now, directives are an important distinction from a storyboard made for a book, because in movies and TV, there is the element of movement. So within the directives, you write out how the scene “comes onto” the screen, how it transitions to the next scene, you describe any movement occurring, any special effects; basically, you include anything visual that is happening during this chunk of narration. 

You’ll recall that I’ve made dummies of my books before. This is another approach to mapping out the story arc for a book. The dummy helps to figure out the pacing for the text, since you make a small version of a book with pages. As you read through the text on each page, and turn the page to find out what happens next (just as a reader of your book would do), you see how the story unfolds across the entire span of the book. Is your action too bunched up within the 32 pages, such that only 4 pages are interesting while the rest feels like filler? Does your exposition (introduction of setting, characters and “the problem”) take up too many pages so that getting to the action would challenge even your attention span? Can you space out the action to create even more suspense? Try it out, you’d be amazed at how helpful a tool this is!

​Once again, a heartfelt thanks to Diana and Amy at Charles Beatley Jr. Central Library, who welcomed me with open arms for yet another great story time on Saturday, May 19. Our reading of Centipede Dragon A Benevolent Creature versus the Rascally ReptilLion was attended by a HUGE group of kids and their families. This was an energetic, warm audience and I’m grateful to be able to support and be a part of these programs.

And what’s more, I tested out a new game! Instead of creating a single object from pieces of Centipede Dragon scale, I attempted to draw a half-this, half-that creature in one minute's time. I naively thought this was plenty of time, and planned to reduce it with each successive round. The reality was that I easily blew right through that minute each round!

The game ended with a surprise, but the beauty of making up a game is that you can also bend the rules as needed. I cannot wait to play this game again, with more strange and wonderful creatures added to the mix.
 
Congratulations to the winners of the raffle as well! Keep reading and adding to the 1,000-books before kindergarten goal.

AND a reminder to ALL on the mailing list that unsubscribing is EASY; the last thing I want to do is clutter people's boxes, so if you'd prefer to occasionally read along this children's book publishing journey of mine, you can always visit the website on your own!

Hope to see you again next time.

Come join me for another reading of Centipede Dragon A Benevolent Creature versus the Rascally ReptilLion at Charles Beatley Central Library on Saturday, May 19, at 11am.

In support of Charles Beatley's 1,000 Book Before Kindergarten program, I will be raffling off books. As a reminder, you must be present at the end of the presentation in order to win.

Hope to see you there!

This week I want to (famously) interrupt myself to talk about two exciting events sponsored by the Charles Beatley Central Library in Alexandria, VA.

The first is that I would like to share with you a program that Charles Beatley has rolled out called 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten. This program sounds exactly as it is titled: to read 1,000 books to a child before s/he begins kindergarten. But there are two important distinctions: 1)  Re-reads count, and 2) Story times (like a special magical creature one coming up on May 19) count.

Reading a storybook to a child takes under 5 minutes (un-interrupted, that is!) per book. Reading Centipede Dragon takes about 3.5 minutes. So the math to 1,000 books can add up quickly, time-wise.

Sign up here:
https://alexandria.beanstack.org/reader365
and, if you’re in the neighborhood on May 19, you can start your kid’s journey in the program with Centipede Dragon A Benevolent Creature versus the Rascally ReptilLion.

Why? How? This leads nicely into the second exciting event: I will once again be presenting at Charles Beatley Central Library’s Story time in Alexandria, VA, on Saturday, May 19, at 11am!  I will read book 2, Centipede Dragon A Benevolent Creature versus the Rascally ReptilLion, and maybe even bring back the Magical Scale Game, since I haven’t done that one in a good long while!

OK, let's get reading!

I would like to describe in more detail how sketching in my job has positively changed my creative process. Let’s recap what I did for book 2. I started out with a very strong image that kept popping into my mind, kept me up at night, etc etc etc until I drew it to get it out of my head. This in turn unleashed a torrent of illustrations, an amazing experience, but certainly not a normal one for me. By contrast, coming up with the illustrations for book 1 came rather tortuously. The pages were an endless blank sea, much as I'm showing with this image of the thumbnail squares I recently faced filling in for book 3. The text has already been laid into each square, for pacing purposes.
 
As you know from the last post, this time I decided to try traditional sketches. With the text placed in each square, I had a starting point for the image that could go in the square, but remember, you don’t always have to “match” what’s happening in text with the imagery. Regarding text, you also don’t have to spell everything out; instead you can use it to suggest what might happen next, or what had occurred immediately before.
 
The hardest thing as an artist (who is constantly seeking the approval of others) is to try and remember that these thumbnails are not supposed to be masterpieces, and that we shouldn't hold them as precious. They are supposed to become a road map that tells a visual story. They also show you if your story is visually a cohesive story; can you tell what the story is about if there wasn't any text?  The thumbnail format will reveal these issues early on in the process, before your artwork truly enters the "precious" stage. And what’s more, if a thumbnail isn’t working, you can throw it out knowing you didn’t really spend much time on it.
 
Can anyone guess another name for this type of format? Answer, next post!

Hello friends of Centipede Dragon! I hope you are still out there.

I had grand plans to get back into the swing of things last November after Thanksgiving, but as you know, there hasn’t been a peep from me since. I mentioned previously that there was a fair amount going on in life, and therefore, something had to drop off the radar. Unfortunately, it has been these posts, but as I find them so therapeutic, I won't give up on them no matter how long the time in between.
 
I’m happy to report that one thing has not dropped off my radar: the continued writing and creating process.
 
My new(ish) job has indeed greatly impacted upon my time to create. But it has actually inspired me to re-think my creative process. Every day at work I am surrounded by incredibly intelligent and talented individuals, and what has that done? It makes me push myself beyond the "very comfortable Alice" that existed prior to January 2017. This has meant that I have taken a new approach to illustrating book three.
 
What is this new approach? Sketching! I’m talking real, pencil-to-paper, eraser marks everywhere, tiny 2.5 x 2.5” squares of drawings. You’re probably surprised to hear that an illustrator hasn’t been in the habit of sketching! I am guilty of neglecting this invaluable skill; a while back when project budgets started getting skinnier, I actually eliminated this step from my production process in order to save time. I began directly drawing in digital format, and while I always lamented that the quality of my illustrations suffered, the clients seemed to be happy, while I was saving time to take on more work.
 
Sketching, however, is more than producing a road map for your final artwork or a skill to lose if not used. It is practicing coordination between mind and hand, and it’s a thinking process in itself.
 
Therefore, I hope you’ll forgive me my post-writing absence. Know that book three is well underway, and could perhaps make a 2019 release date!

Happy post Thanksgiving, dear friends of Centipede Dragon!

I must take this opportunity to apologize for my absence over these last few months since my reading at Charles Beatley Central Library at the beginning of August. 2017 has been quite the year, and though I am so grateful that the numerous hospitalizations and changing of jobs and travel events that have occurred in family (not to mention my own new-ish job) have all had very positive outcomes, I won’t lie, they have been draining.

But, now that Thanksgiving has come and gone (an extremely enjoyable Thanksgiving day at that!), I am ready to get back to it! So aside from my apology with explanation of what these past few months have looked like for me, I am doing a double post to pick back up on the theme of that all-important elevator speech, of which we discussed many many months ago (March 12, 2017, to be exact).

The purpose of that elevator speech as you recall was to give you a chance to explain succinctly what makes your book unique from the tens of thousands out there in the market. But be comforted by the fact that that’s not the ONLY weapon in your arsenal for making your book stand out from the rest.

What I’m talking about specifically is that you can do other things to distinguish your book, your presentations, and yourself. One of the earliest bright ideas I had, for instance, was making my reading book format into this one, long, accordion style book.

Why and how did I come up with this idea?

When reading to an audience of tiny folks, you have to be close to them so that they can see the pictures in your book, and for those who can read, so that they can read along with you as you read your book. This is very HARD to do when you’ve got a crowd of tiny folks. I first started researching into how much it would cost for me to get 32 pages plus a cover printed at poster-size and the price tag was well more than I could afford. So, I started thinking of other ways to make my presentation of the book more impactful than this 8.5” square format.

I had a pile of defective books from the self-publishing platform sitting in my closet in my office. I started thinking about what a waste those books were, since not ALL the pages were messed up. And then it hit me, that I could take those individual pages that were good, and somehow re-use them in some way. And then I remembered that back in college, our school’s museum had an exhibit on children’s story books, one of which included was David Wiesner’s Freefall. Now, the beauty of this book was not only that the illustrations were exquisite, but that he had drawn the original artwork on one long scroll of paper.  And I thought, what if I did something like that?

So after many scotch tape fiascos, I finally emerged triumphant with a uniquely formatted book with which to use at my presentations. And I tell you, with the audible gasps and wondrous faces I see each time I start to unfurl this thing at events, I have a feeling these presentations left a “unique” impression on the kids.

Once again, I was welcomed back to Charles Beatley Central Library for the very first (public) reading of book 2, “Centipede Dragon A Benevolent Creature versus the Rascally ReptilLion.” Saturday, August 5, was the library’s last summer story time before going on hiatus for the rest of August. So I hope I sent the kids off with a boost with all my crazy facial expressions that seem to accompany my presentation antics.

As usual, the crowd at Charles Beatley was an engaged and participatory one. I decided (of course) to develop a new presentation, focused on character development. This time, I talked about how budding writers can create their own characters by first listing characteristics or personality traits about themselves (the WHAT), then stating WHY they think those descriptions fit them, and finally, explaining HOW they fit through specific examples. Then, we practiced by looking at fun pictures of crazy creatures, listing physical features about those creatures, imagining what/why/how the creature uses that funny feature, and whether it hinders or helps it, and then coming up with stories of how these features helped or hindered the creature.

It was a great way to kick off book 2, and so thank you again to Isiah and Diana at Charles Beatley for being such amazing hosts! Maybe I’ll see one of you for the next presentation!

It’s that time of year again folks! Back to school, you ask? NO. Creating our Halloween costumes? NO. Planning our Thanksgiving meals? NO! Shopping for Christmas gifts?

NO!!!!!!

It’s time for the very first public reading of “Centipede Dragon A Benevolent Creature versus the Rascally ReptilLion”!

Saturday, August 5, 11am, at Charles Beatley Central Library, Alexandria, VA. There’s no sign up, there’s no catch, just come and be entertained for the most captivating twenty minutes of your life!