I’m excited to announce the release of my leaf-lullaby children’s book, Did you see us?
The inspiration for the book began on a driving holiday, with my husband, through the Okanagan in beautiful British Columbia Canada. My husband enjoys discussing English words that sound the same but have different meanings, like there, their and they’re. I mentioned that it would be inappropriate to confuse the two similar sounding words carnivore and conifer. That sparked a conversation on the topic of conifer and deciduous trees. That discussion led to my teasing assertion that it’s easy to remember the word deciduous as a brag – Did you see us? – in the fall, when leaves twirl, flutter and flirt the full glory of their autumn colours.
Initially, the children’s book was a side hustle – something to focus on while I waited for the PeakSpire illustration team to finalize drawings for the Fleck series. I’m grateful to Siraj – director at PeakSpire – for his persistence in working with his team of illustrators to achieve the best possible original images for the Fleck Series and for the Did you see us? children’s book.
My role was to write the children’s book lullaby and to provide detailed instructions for the creation of the accompanying illustrations. I was keen to have the first illustration (forest in late winter) created in a way that would allow us to zoom in on specific aspects of the forest, for the balance of the illustrations in the book (e.g., the path, a tree, a branch). Two illustrations (the Spring and the Autumn illustrations) are the exact same image shown in fresh greens for spring and in reds-oranges and yellows for autumn. I hope you find a little fun comparing and contrasting the illustrations.
Once the Fleck series was written, I had a little trouble securing an artist to create the covers for the novels. The solution I found was to learn the rudimental elements of Adobe Illustrator so that I could create the, admittedly simple, covers myself. The swirls represent the concept of magic. I chose the primary colours red-blue-yellow for the covers and focused on the Fleck image.
There may very well be as many types of writing styles as there are writers. I tend to be a flow writer rather than a formatted writer. Often, I approach the keyboard with nothing in particular to say. When my fingertips tap upon the keys, words tumble out flowing onto the page forming dialogue and revealing plots. I’m generally curious to see what a character will do and how the story will unfold. For me, having a writing style that’s not overly controlled allows the novel to have a natural unforced-flow of events – making the story less contrived and (I hope) reflective of to the characters’ traits, tendencies and motivations.