Path to Publication: Creative Inspiration

I am in the process of having my original action adventure chapter book for kids 7-12 published by Morgan James Publishing. I've been detailing the road that I trod on this journey from nothing to a publishing deal.

In this installment, I will talk about how I created the concept, because the concept is really what causes most of the interest in my project.

The books and apps that we create teach simple lessons of green living and sustainability from the standpoint of love, not fear. When I tell people that, they listen. So, how did I come up with it?

Like many businesses, it started with the classic desire to fulfill a hole in the marketplace. I saw what was out there, and thought, 'There has to be a better way'.

Rewind to the Sustainable Living Fair 2007. My friends, knowing that I am a professional speaker, asked me to read a book aloud to kids at the fair. Sure, no prob. I asked for the book so that I could become familiar with it.

I hated it. It had no structure. It went beginning, middle, end, middle, end. I thought it was a mess, so I looked for another one. I could not find one other book that taught simple lessons of sustainability. Not one.

So, I read that one for the fair as they asked me. And then I did nothing.

More than a year later, after reading Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I was lamenting the fact that I had virtually no prospect at leverage in my current career. As I reviewed any skill that I had that could create something more than an 'hours for dollars' situation, I remembered how much I have always loved to write. That is one path to owning something that can pay me again and again for work I did once.

Then I remembered the perceived 'hole in the market' I'd discovered the year before. There was no children's book that was teaching green living to kids.

The concept was born.