Goodnight Nobody and other haunted bedtime stories has a cover!! In collaboration with my daughter and husband, the book cover was a couple years in the making. Andrew, my partner, is the cover artist and interior illustrations. He is former toy designer who is writing and illustrating his own children books. (link website forthcoming).
The chapbook has 8 stories based on nostalgia I experienced reading bedtime stories. A sprinkle of fairytales, folklore, and homage to SCARY STORIES to Tell in the the Dark, I had fun imagining the additional lore with Queen Logan of the Isle of the Wild, old lady in the Great Great Room, Grandmothers, and getting lost in the woods. It’s a collection of enchanting and eerie childhood inspired tales. Half of the stories haven’t been published elsewhere. Sitting down to create a small world of stories was a new and creative experience.
This was a learning experience. This was the first time I worked with my partner on a creative project. I figured out the nuisances of the KDP platform, picked a custom trim size, and completed my first book layout with Scrivener and Word. It isn’t perfect. Through this process, I learned to be less precious with my writing. It was important to start with a purpose because internal questioning popped up on this journey.
What if I want to submit a story to a magazine? There will be more stories. A majority of them were already published.
Should I wait until I have more stories? An 8 story collection doesn’t qualify this book for awards or recommendations. I stuck to the main objective — (1) create a physical object to hand out to people at events, (2) hands-on training for self-publishing, and (3) organizing my website and socials to support book launches. Those are the goals I could control.
I understand a little more why owning the rights to your creative works is so amazing. You can remake these works as you see fit. I can spin off these stories into other books, animated stories, graphic novels, and other things. The tasks required for creating a book took more time than I expected. I had to put aside my other projects to try out new technologies, set-up proofs in the mail, and finish book layout. But at the end of the day, it was worth it. We did it
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