Trains - Free Promotion April 7 - April 14th

Trains will be available free on Amazon April 7 - April 14th. I would love for you to download and  review my book. Trains is great for babies - young toddlers that love trains. 

Click Here to go To Free Down Load!! 

If you have an older toddler - preschooler that loves trains please check out Dream Trains also available on Amazon. 

Helpful Monsters

I reworked and cleaned up my Helpful Monsters field guide. It is now a field guide with helpful hints for little monster hunters. I am really pleased with the changes and excited to be working in Photoshop and illustrater again.

My children's favorite monster is the Sock Monster. I really revamped the layout of the books and am really pleased with the outcome.  I added a field guide diagram
motif to the images. Used a grid overlay to give a scientific sketchbook feel and added basic notes to help little monster hunters. I hope this adds to the interaction
between the book and my boys.











Another addition at the back of the book is an
activity area. I added a count the cuddle bugs page.
A maze that asks the reader to reunite the sock monster
with his socks and a name the helpful monster book.
These extra pages are just experimental. I will try them out
on my boys later today to check how they are received.

Stranger Danger and productive promises

Admitting I have a problem with launching myself into a project and then ceremoniously abandoning said project for my next shinny new idea was step one.


This morning I tweeted. "Making to do lists about goal setting. Active procrastination? Tweeting about active procrastination = denial #help"


I like to make lists and dream about the end result of a project. Devout a month or two to building the dream then getting bored or discouraged and jumping off the train. A mix of fears, impulsiveness and inquisitiveness often sideline projects before they have barely begun to live.


I have steadily grown into an adequate gardener and make an acceptable income baking (hopefully this becomes a hobby and not an income stream soon!) but I have a sculpture degree collecting dust, a tiny ceramic kiln that should be fired a lot more often; not to mention my circuit cutter, button maker and metal stamping kits.


Over the last year I placed three books on Amazon through there KDP (kindle direct publishing) site and without any promotion made roughly 100 dollar plus 8 Euro. The 8 Euro I will only see if it can make 92 friends allowing kdp to cut me a 100 Euro check. (I have dreams of cashing the check with my phone and then hanging it above my desk). It is time to consider the real possibility of giving the hobby and lifetime dream of creating books (which my gorgeous and grammar fanatic of a husband will edit) a chance at being a real career pursuit.


Promises



Give it a full year of active pursuit to see improvement
Learn to Tweet and blog in a productive way
Actively participate with other "e"people
Create and publish multiple new works
Make more use of my dusty "A" type personalty ( my introvert is trembling, stranger danger)
I WILL NOT SELF SABOTAGE

Kindle Comic Creator

I finally figured out how to format children's books for kdp! I mostly make books for my twin boys who are almost 4 years old now. WHERE DOES THE TIME GO!!

I started with a really simple book called Trains  and formatting the book for an e-reader was a mess. I tried  a pdf, jpegs, a word document with jpegs embedded etc. and nothing left me with a an easy page turing experience. Recently, I came a crossed a free download for kdp that allows you to upload jpegs and it formats everything for you!

The formatting is better than most overdrive books I read with my boys and I could not be happier.
Check out the free download here and start making books/memories today.