Just stumbled onto an illustrator who writes YA stories. Maybe we can help each other get through the  tangle of choices and decisions to get published? She’s been on the peripheral of my circle of family/friends for years, but we’ve never hung out. As soon as I know more about this serendipitous discovery, I will post it.

Meanwhile, back at the all-night research/writeathon, I’ve gotten a few things accomplished. I finally perused the children’s books similar to my WIP (work-in-progress), which I checked out of the library. This inspired me to make page breaks in my story manuscript to see what it looks like. I tried to just go with the flow and make the page breaks as natural as possible. This gave me 33 pages of text with room for illustrations on each. Yikes, that’s 33 illustrations. Maybe some pages will just have colored backgrounds? So, that’s 33 pages, plus copyright, title, dedication, and contact pages. 37 pages in all. Hmmm, this is all more than I knew yesterday.

I’m also popping in and out of websites that show layout and design information so I can learn terms and standard practices in publishing illustrated children’s books. Wikipedia gives lists of links for all the things I’m exploring. I’m still not even sure if self-publishing an illustrated children’s book is the way to go.

I know I want hard back books and ebooks. But, let’s face it, the money tree hasn’t bloomed in years. Maybe crowd sourcing is the way to go? Kickstart.com is very interesting, and people have had book projects succeed there. Hmmm.

There are several underlying challenges I’m dealing with. The birds started chirping at 4:30 this morn and that made me keep looking out the window, thinking I could go walk the beach soon. See, that’s a challenge.

The biggest (real) challenge is with computers. GGGRRRR. One laptop has issues with serious lack of speed; something is wrong, but I’ll have to pay to find out what. The other laptop has a problem with a flying curser; not great while typing. I’m juggling between the two, and can I describe how fun that is? Not fun at all. The beach idea is looking better by the second.

My minor challenge is that I cut my thumb gardening yesterday and the damn thing keeps trying to help, but I scream when it touches anything (like the space bar). Wimp.

Have any questions? Any answers? Please leave me a note by clicking on “leave a comment” at the top of the post, left of the title. If you’re too busy for that, please click the like button at the bottom of this post.

And thanks for reading!

Patti