Novel vs. Illustrated Children's book - a world apart

When I set out on this new publishing adventure, I didn't realize it was going to be such a different adventure.  Putting together and publishing an illustrated children's story is a very different experience than publishing a coming-of-age novel.  In fact, one has very little to do with the other.  Let me count the ways:

1. With a novel, you paint a picture with words.  Lots of words.  With an illustrated children's book,

And the illustrator is...

Old Man Dalantai Copyright Solongo Drini

When I read The Solstice Dance to my kids, they like it. But they want to see the pictures.  The illustrations in a book can make it or break it.  The text has to start out good - I'm still working on that, trying to make the rhythm correct and the imagery magical - but the illustrations are of the utmost importance.  That is why I am so excited to be working with Solongo Drini.  You can find more of Solongo's work at http://msolongo.com.  She has the education, training, and imagination needed for this particular story, and I can't wait to see what she comes up with.

Now you're as excited as I am, right?  Once I've got the English text finalized, I'm going to reach out to my friends around the world to see if anyone's interested in translating it into other languages.  I was thinking German, Swedish, Icelandic, Japanese… If any of you wants to offer, I would be delighted!  The text is in rhyming prose in English, but I would not expect translations to rhyme.

I've also figured out a timeline for the project now.  Once Solongo has finished the cover image, I will go ahead with the Kickstarter campaign.  If she can manage to finish all of the artwork by June, then I'll work on formatting the book by July, and maybe even have it in my hands by the end of July.  I'll then send it off for its Kirkus review and do the formal release and marketing blitz in the Autumn.  It should be in consumers' hands well before the Winter Solstice.

There has been some discussion about the title… the original title was The Solstice Dance.  Then it morphed into Moonflower's Solstice Dance.  Now, I'm thinking that "Moonflower and the Solstice Dance" might be a better title.  Do any of you have any thoughts on this?

It's coming together!!

Recording an Audiobook & Waking a resting project

As I've mentioned before, it takes a really long time to record an audiobook.  My book has 28 chapters, and each takes about half an hour to record.  So 14 hours, which doesn't sound long except that I really have other exciting stuff to do, like laundry, taxes, and tidying up.  So if I manage to record one chapter a day, I am happy.  Some days, I've recorded two, but that won't happen today because I promised myself I would work on the taxes, and I've also promised myself that I will write at least one blog entry a week, and it's already been a week...  And if you think that recording takes a long time, consider this: I am not capable of reading from my book for half an hour without making mistakes.  I mispronounce words, skip words, read in the wrong "voice"... the audio has to be edited.  The way I've been doing it is to just repeat the messed-up sentence and remove them later.  My lovely husband has offered to do the editing for me, but it takes a really long time for him, too, even though he's much better with the equipment than I am.  So I've asked OpenBookAudio if they do that sort of editing, and at what cost.  Worth asking, but I'm guessing it's probably more than I'm willing to spend.

There's also a question on my mind, of whether I should offer the audio as free podcasts until the audiobook is complete and for sale.  This could build interest and an audience, but I don't want to simultaneously offer my book for sale and for free.  So I could only do this if it's possible to delete the podcast once the audiobook is on Audible.  Something to look into.

Meanwhile, I've decided to continue querying a project that has been resting for about a year - it's a children's picture book I wrote about Nardugan, a celebration of the winter solstice, and the book is called The Solstice Dance.  I had some interest when I queried it to agents, but no bites.  I'm not even considering self-publishing this one, because the cost of self-publishing a picture book is prohibitive.  In addition, I'm not a great artist, so I'd prefer to have a real artist do the work.

I had a friend, who is an artist, do the artwork of three pages, and offered it when I queried, but I later learned that in fact it doesn't work that way.  You are either a writer who is paired with an illustrator by an agent or an editor, or you are an author-illustrator.  They don't seem to want you to find your own artist.  Unless you're famous, probably, but I'm not famous.  Rather than querying agents this time, I'm going to directly query small publishers.  I don't know how that works, either, but a few of them do accept unsolicited queries, so I'll try that once I've written myself a list of the publishers that might be interested.

So much to do, and so much fun!