Chirstmas Time Is Here....

Okay, where did the last couple of months go??!! Our second book has been out about a month and things are going well. We did a book signing at Sauder Village in November and two signings in December. We have a couple of events planned each month for the next few months! I have to get busy on polishing up my educational presentations since over half of our appearances involve that aspect.

Richard and I have started working on our third book about a combine, the second in the farm series. It is really exciting to see what he comes up with for illustrations. It is really odd how often he reads my mind in terms of what I am thinking?!!

Our presentation at the Mazza in October went well and we are working on putting together a short clip to post on you-tube. It was fun to work with all of the preschoolers that were there.

Hope to see some of you out at the upcoming events!
Merry Christmas,
Stacey

August is here and things are rolling!

Can you believe that August is here already??!! I have been back from vacation for a few days and am finally feeling caught up with things. In mid July, Richard and presented for 2 days at the Mazza Summer Institute. We had good attendance at our presentations and did well selling our tractor book. It was also great to talk with all of the different people who attended, teachers and librarians especially! I am really looking forward to kicking off the Funday Sunday program in October with our "Down on the Farm" gig.

We sent in all of our book files for the bulldozer book. I will need to call the publisher early next week to run through the checklist of items but at least this is the final leg. We are hoping that the book will be ready in late October. It is a little later than we wanted but working with things on the tractor book has kept us busy. We also needed some technical assistance with this book in the bulldozer cabs and with the technique of building a pond. Fortunately, we found a couple of good men that helped us with both. Now, on to thinking about the next book......

Hope you enjoy the last few weeks of August! I know that I have a "Stacey Do" list that just keeps growing!
Stacey

Summer is here and the tractors are busy!

Yahoo for summer! Although the area in which I live has received a lot of rain, all of the farmers have their fields planted. Most are showing new plants popping up through the soil. A great time for kids who love to see tractors!

Being a teacher, this is one of my favorite seasons...summer! I love to be home spending time with my family and not having to plan 1-2 hours a night for MY homework.

The second book that Richard and I are working on is coming right along. The bulldozers have a lot of intricate parts to draw and we hope to have it ready to be sent to the publisher in about a month. We are gearing up to take part in the Mazza Summer Institute in July. Richard's part is already finished, mine needs some polishing. I need to delve back into the world of self-publishing and marketing to be able to share more information in those arenas for our presentation. I am also pursuing some ideas for conferences and trade shows in the fall. I still am interested in spreading the word.

Hope your summer goes slowly so you can enjoy every minute,
Stacey

Spring Has Sprung and Time Has Flown!!

Wow! How can it be the end of April already??!! I have a lot to share so keep reading!

The Literacy in the Park event in late March was a lot of fun and what a busy time! They tell us that around 500 people attended and a whole bunch of them stopped by our booth. We were unable to use the Kidpix program to color Richard's drawings but the tractor and barn cutouts were a hit. We also brought along some sunflower seeds, dirt and biodegradable cups for all of the children to take home a seed. I think some snuck in two :)

Richard must have tired hands since he has been drawing up a storm of bulldozers for the new book! Things are progressing right on track. Most people that hear the news that a second book in is the works are giving us positive feedback.

This month, we were invited to Birchard Public Library in Fremont, Ohio to celebrate National Library Week where they were showcasing local authors. I hope you were able to see the photo posted on our website. It was fun meeting the children and parents who stopped by.

Richard and I also were honored to be asked to make a half hour presentation at a local church for their Mother and Daughter Banquet. We discussed my story of having a son in love with tractors and construction, how Richard and I met up, how we published the books as well as how Richard creates his illustrations. Overall, things went very well. It was fun to try our hand at this new piece of our puzzle.

Hoping Spring has sprung for you, too!
Stacey

Second book, this one is on bulldozers and a pond!

This second book now has a title, "The Bulldozers Dig a Pond". Richard has finished all of the initial sketches and has started his craft of turning these sketches into his wonderful illustrations. This book will be about two bulldozers, one large and one small, that dig a small pond for the same family from "The New Blue Tractor". My son came up with the great idea to use the same farm house setting from our first book! It is starting to really take shape!

We are hoping to have this second book published by early fall. Of course, there are many factors that play into that date so time will tell.

We are busy planning the Literacy in the Park event where we will get to see and hopefully meet Steven Kellogg. We are using the Kidpix computer program to have the children "color" some of Richard's illustrations. I have created a couple of cut-out activities in which the children will make a tractor and a barn putting together 8 pieces. Richard has printed up some small magnets using images from "The New Blue Tractor" for us to hand out and I have put together a packet of activities to hand out for those people who purchase our book that day. Last year, Marc Brown was at this event and it drew around 1500 people. I am hopeful that we will get some great exposure here!

Hope the Easter bunny is driving your way on a TRACTOR!
Stacey

We were on TV and Space with the "Greats"

Yes, we were! How exciting, at least for me. I had emailed and phoned a local TV station that has a Saturday morning show back in December. I finally heard back from them the second week of January. I received the call on Wednesday and they wanted us to be on that Saturday. Wow, just about put me in a tailspin! While this wasn't really something I had ever wanted to do in my life, the opportunity occurred.

Driving to the station on Saturday morning, Richard informs me that he has been on TV before! Well, many sides to this fellow. While doing the craft show circuit a few years ago, he had been on TV multiple times. It was a fun morning and I held up even with the "jelly legs"! It was a good thing that I got to sit down while doing the interview!

Currently, we are still pursuing other avenues for our book. We are going to be part of a literacy day at a local state university this March, we have a book signing coming up within the next few weeks, and finally the WOW event.....Richard's work has been accepted at the Mazza Museum in Findlay, OH! For those of you unfamiliar with this museum, it is a pretty prestigious honor! His work will be among those of other fantastic illustrators like Jan Brett, Marc Bown, Eric Carle, Steven Kellogg and Chris Van Allsburg just to name few. We are also kicking off a presentation there this fall with our book "The New Blue Tractor".

Things are also rolling along with our second book. We have a potential layout finished and Richard has begun working on the initial sketches of the pages. I am still messing around with some of the text but it is essentially finished. We met last week with an insightful gentleman about this whole process of pond-building. I certainly don't want to make any technical errors! It was fascinating to learn all of the "ins and outs"!

Keep "plowin' into reading"!
Stacey
<

A Great 2007 for The New Blue Tractor

Wow, what a fantastic year 2007 has been! I met a wonderful illustrator to make my book idea a reality. He has also become a true friend. I have truly been blessed this year in this area of my life.

I had wonderful local sales the month of December and things were a little crazy in my life. I now have 5 local stores carrying my book on consignment and the holiday season was a good season for my tractor book. I have sold almost 500 copies locally. I wonder how many have sold on the internet? It would be great if my publisher had a way to check this online. We won't know until April how many sold between October and the end of December, that is a long time to wait! Not really, but it feels like it.

My illustrator and I are set to meet next week and go through the monetary aspect of this business. I think we have cleared our initial investment with just our local sales but am still in the process of finalizing a total. We are also going to meet to get started on our second book about the bulldozer. He has some things sketched up for me to look at and the whole process starts over again! How exciting! At least this time, we are a little wiser about the whole process.

We are considering looking at a different publisher since I would like to have a perfect binding instead of the saddlestitch. I have found that some of the brick and morter stores will not accept books that have a saddlestitch binding in their stores. I would like to be able to sell my books in the bigger stores, so something to look into.

Some of the other local children's authors that I have met have published their books locally. If we went that route, we would have to sell on Amazon but I am not sure how we would get into the large distributors like Ingram and Baker and Taylor. I think this bears looking into. Would we hire a distribution company? If so, I wonder what the cost would be? It could lower the cost of producing the book but then would we be stuck with hundreds of copies sitting in my living room? Lots of questions and lots to think about. Onward and upward with this whole children's book process.

Thankfully things have slowed down, but hopefully not TOO much!
Stacey