Keeping your Writing Dreams Alive: Author Interview with Lozetta Hayden

My author today has served children in the roles of mentor, counselor, home-school provider, daycare owner, foster parent and teacher. Using those skills, she currently works as an educational consultant and motivational speaker. What's tops on her list is to remind students to DREAM and to do a little dreaming herself.

You’ve recently published your first children’s picture book called, My Alphabet Nightmare. Who or what inspired you to write this story?
When I was in my junior year of college, I wrote My Alphabet Nightmare as a class assignment. My now husband, drew the pictures and we had a rough version bound at the local print center. I would read it to different groups and sometimes take a copy with the words only and let the children illustrate it. They loved it! When my professors read it, I received an A++ and was told that I should get it published.

This was back in 1993 before the internet was fully functional and self publishing wasn't a thought. Weary of selling my creative rights and future royalties, I placed it in a file and waited for the right time to proceed.

Who helped you polish your story? 
Since my college professors had already critiqued the book, there wasn't much left for me to do when I decided to publish it. I did have fellow educators review the proof for errors, before authorizing the final print version.

Prior to writing this book, what was your publishing and writing background?
Prior to writing My Alphabet Nightmare, my writing experience came from writing poetry and creating my own teacher materials. Many times I didn't find what I was looking for or didn't feel the materials available were effective. I discovered students were more engaged with the material I composed and this resulted in academic improvement. As a matter of fact, I discovered writing with a purpose came easy.

Who encouraged you along the way?
I received the greatest support from my husband David. As I mentioned, he was involved with My Alphabet Nightmare from its inception. Throughout the years, he would encourage me to submit it for publication, saying "This book is too good to sit in a file. Think of all the kids that are being denied the opportunity to enjoy your creation."

Our children also knew about the book and constantly asked when I was going to publish it. I remember an exact moment in time when I decided that I had to follow through with publication as a tribute to my family. They too needed to see that DREAMS do come true!
I love the concept in your bio of how you encourage children to DREAM which is an acronym for Decide, Reach, Embrace, Achieve & Move. Can you give me an example of a time when you could see this concept clicking with a child?
As I reflect on the many opportunities to share the DREAM concept, I fondly remember children reciting, "Decide Reach Embrace Achieve & Move", weeks and sometimes years after I taught them. However, one fifth grade class in particular, seemed to grasp the concept as a group. I was requested as a long term substitute, by the principal, when their regular teacher had to have emergency surgery.

When colleagues found out which class I was providing coverage for, they wished me luck and looked at me like I was just sentenced to a prison term. I found myself a little apprehensive, but quickly dismissed the feeling knowing that I never let anyone's opinion of a group influence mine. In the beginning the students were off task, lacked motivation and at times were disrespectful. I shared my journey with them, set the expectations and encouraged each of them to take ownership over their choices and therefore the outcome.

I implemented an incentive program and acknowledged effort and perseverance. The entire class rose to the DREAM challenge, improved both academically and socially, and began to embrace the steps to actualizing their dreams. I still keep in touch with many of them and attend their honor roll assemblies.

When did you decide to self-publish?
Like many aspiring authors, I wanted the manuscript to be picked up by a traditional publisher. Early in the process I realized that I wanted to keep as much creative control over the final design as possible. Therefore I decided to pursue self publishing.

Tell me about the process. How did you decide where to publish?
I spent countless hours researching the self publishing process, joined the Society Children Book Writers & Illustrators, subscribed to blogs and developed a plan. After weighing the pros and cons, I decided to use Createspace as my publishing companying. This decision was influenced by the ease of their upload process and affiliation with Amazon. The whole process took over two years from deciding to publish to receiving the final copy. During which time I was teaching full-time.

What are some of the promotions that you’ve done for the book that have been the most successful?
School assemblies are a great way to promote my book and my message. During the 45 minute assembly, I use a power point presentation and a dance to help students plan tangible steps to accomplishing their dreams. Books that are preordered are addressed to each child ad inscribed with the following: "Always follow your DREAMS they do come true. Decide, Reach, Embrace, Achieve, Move. Schools can opt to receive a discounted price on the books or 20% of all sells.

I also attended Book Expo America in New York City this past May. My Alphabet Nightmare was part of The New Title Showcase and I had a space in the Author's Hub. This provided a great opportunity for networking with potential customers and vendors. I am currently negotiating with a company I found at the conference to develop an app and ebook.

How did you go about finding an illustrator? What did you look for in an illustrator?
From the moment I decided to publish My Alphabet Nightmare, I knew I needed an illustrator that had a passion for drawing, great skills and a connection with the story. I found my illustrator, Manuela Pentangelo, during one of my many late night internet searches. I stumbled upon examples of her work, looked her up on Facebook and visited her website. My husband was uncertain about using her since she was in Italy, thinking it would complicate the process. However after "stalking" her facebook page and getting a better feel for her personality, I was positive she was meant to illustrate My Alphabet Nightmare. It took a year but my husband also agreed that she was destine to illustrate the book.

Was your illustrator paid a flat fee or paid through royalties or a combination?
She was paid a flat fee and all correspondence was through email, Facebook and Paypal. Throughout the process, she would asked for clarification and make suggestions. Though we have never met, I feel a kindred connection to her. She breathed life into each page and embraced the project as if it were her own. Since then, she has completed three additional projects for me and I consider her a vital partner.

What has frustrated you the most in putting these books together?
My biggest frustration has been that without an agent a company, like Scholastic, will not even consider the my works. I understand that they are inundated with requests but wish a bridge program existed. Not that I am opposed to having an agent. I'm just waiting for the right partnership to present itself.

What has pleasantly surprised you in the process?
I was pleasantly surprised by the easy of the printing process with Createspace. My illustrator uploaded the file and we worked with the staff to ensure a quality project.

What advice would you give someone who wants to write children’s stories?
With so many wonderful children's stories available, I would advise an aspiring writer to create a high quality project that engages. Finding a skilled illustrator with great work ethics is critical because the illustrations are just as important as the text. Lastly, I think it necessary to field test the proof copy before going to final print.

What is the best writing advice you’ve been given?
The best writing advice I received was to take writing seriously and hold myself accountable to deadlines.

How much time daily do you have for writing?
I recently made a conscious decision to write as often as possible. To aid me in accomplishing this goal, I carry my iPad or notebook with me everywhere. I write while eating lunch, waiting at appointments or sitting at my bistro outside. My favorite location to write is the beach!

What message would you like parents and children to take away from your books? I want my books to captivate children and make them want to read them over and over again. The repetition will help with mastery of various reading skills. It is my desire that my works make it easier for parents to engage with their children. I like to "hide" learning throughout the pages. There are also additional resources on my website to extend learning and help encourage a love for reading.

What future plans do you have for publishing?
Until recently, I considered myself an educator who also wrote a book. Now that I've embraced walking in my destiny, I say I'm an author who also teaches on the side. I have other manuscripts completed and plan to submit them to traditional publishing companies, but am willing to take the self publishing route, too.

One of my favorite stories I recently completed is called No Principal For the Day. The students tricked the principal, Mr. Ive Ben Strick, and the teachers into not coming to school. They thought it would be awesome but quickly learned what happens to schools without any rules. I am anxious to see the chaos leap from the pages.

Is there any other tips about writing or publishing you’d like to add?Now that I'm out promoting my book, I meet a lot of people who have also self published or desire to. The best piece of advice I have is to ensure quality work prior to printing and marketing your work. Invest in editorial services, find a skilled illustrator familiar with children's books and do not rush a substandard project to print. Consumers shouldn't be able to tell the difference between a book that was self published or one done by a traditional publisher.

That's it for today's interview. If you'd like to learn more about Lozetta's books, here's some options.
www.myalphabetnightmare.com       www.facebook.com/myalphabetnightmare

If you live in the Baltimore, MD area, you'll have the opportunity to meet her in person at the author's tent at the Baltimore Book Festival on Friday September 26th. Here's a link to more details on the festival.  http://www.baltimorebookfestival.com/home. At the New York Book Festival in June,
My Alphabet Nightmare received an honorable mention.

Writing for Children - How to Set up School Visits

For those who have written children’s books, they know one way to promote their books is by school visits. But if you’ve never been a teacher where do you begin? Who do you contact? Today's interview is with an author who is well versed in doing school visits.

Mara Rockliff is the author of many books for kids and teens, including My Heart Will Not Sit Down (Knopf, 2012), the Green Earth Book Awards 2011 Honor winner Get Real: What Kind of World Are You Buying? and The Milo & Jazz Mysteries series, published under the pen name Lewis B. Montgomery.She has been doing school visits for seven years, including a visit to rural Jamaica, where the school lunches are delicious.

For someone not accustomed to doing public speaking, how do you plan for this? What is the first step?

If you’re a published children’s writer and you have a website saying where you live, you will probably get emails from schools in your area asking if you do author visits. 

The best way to encourage this is to make sure your website has a page saying you do author visits, giving schools a way to contact you, and describing the program(s) that you offer. You’ll also want to get listed on sites such as America Writes for Kids, Kim Norman’s Author School Visits by State, and SCBWI.

Of course, then you need to HAVE a program ready to present! A great way to get some ideas is to watch other authors doing school visits. Your local school may let you attend an assembly, or if you have writer friends who are doing visits nearby, ask if you can go along. Some children’s writers post video clips on their websites. You can even google “author visit video” and see what comes up.

Teachers and librarians are a great resource. If you know any, you could ask them nicely if they’d read your books and make suggestions. You might offer to do a free school or library visit in return. 

Once you have a program planned, if you’re not used to public speaking, PRACTICE. That probably sounds obvious, but it took me ages to figure out! 

What I used to do was just make notes of what I wanted to say, then show up and hope for the best. When it didn’t go well, I thought it was because I wasn’t a natural speaker and didn’t get enough practice speaking in public. It never occurred to me that I could actually PRACTICE AT HOME.

Finally a friend tipped me off. Now I rehearse my school visit programs many times before I go. I’ve heard of people doing this in front of a mirror, which sounds like a terrific idea. I tried it and I couldn’t get three words out of my mouth. So I borrow my daughter’s stuffed animals and talk to them. 

Fun, right? NO. I hate it. But my programs have gotten much better. 

One last suggestion: Check out Schoolvisitexperts.com. It’s full of wonderful advice to children’s writers about how to improve our school visits.

What type of books work best for school visits and why? Picture books? Easy Readers? MG books? YA Books?

That’s an interesting question! In my experience, YA authors get fewer school visit requests. I think that is because elementary schools have more flexible schedules and more active parents’ groups, which often raise the money for an author visit. When YA authors are invited to a middle school or high school, they’re likely to be asked to do a writing workshop for a small group—maybe just one class.  

Elementary schools are more likely to want an author to do large assemblies, often for several grades at a time. Authors who write for different age groups definitely have an advantage. For instance, I write picture books under my own name, but I also write a humorous chapter book mystery series under the pen name Lewis B. Montgomery. Schools like that, because I can use my picture books with grades K-1 and my chapter books with grades 2-5.

Still, if you only write one type of book, that doesn’t mean you can’t do school visits. Picture book authors can talk to older kids about the writing and publishing process. And schools might bring in a middle grade author just for the upper grades. 

Personally, I’m not a huge fan of author visits for the little kids. I do them, and the kids have a great time and so do I, but they would have an equally good time with any grownup doing something fun. The thing is that kids under second grade do not understand what an author is. I don’t care if they can all sing “The author writes the book, the author writes the book, hi-ho the derry-o, the author writes the book.” They still don’t get it. 

How do I know this? Because my daughter, who is a reasonably intelligent child, LIVES with a children’s author. And well into first grade, when one of my new books came in, she would read it and then say to me, “You’ll never guess how it ends!”

How long of a presentation should you expect to do? What should you cover?

Usually, schools will expect a presentation between 40 minutes and an hour, depending on how long their class periods are and how flexible their schedule is. That’s something to work out ahead of time with your contact at the school. It’s good to be flexible, though, because some schools have kids in their seats at the dot of the appointed time, while at other schools, the classes may take ten minutes to straggle in, and then the principal gets up and spends another ten minutes introducing you and telling the kids how to behave.

I’ve actually never seen an author visit program where the author just read books. With my picture book The Busiest Street in Town, I do read the story aloud (with the pages projected on a screen so everyone can see), but I use big colorful props and let the kids help act it out, and then there is an art project for them to do. 

For the older kids, I don’t read aloud at all. Instead, I talk about the writing process, using funny slides, a costume, and lots of audience participation to keep it lively. Getting questions at the end is no problem—there are always more raised hands than I can call on. 

Should you bring books with you to sell? Or should you just let them be ordered?

The first thing to do is check your contract, or talk to your publisher, and find out whether you’re allowed to sell your books. If you are, you’ll need a sales tax license from your state, I think—and also any state where you do school visits? As you can see, I’m not an expert! I don’t sell my own books, partly because I don’t have time to deal with those complications, and also because I’d rather see schools support independent bookstores in their area. 

When a school asks me to visit, I let them know that I am more than happy to sign books while I am there. I also tell them that many schools and PTAs raise money to help cover the cost of an author visit by ordering books at a discount from a local bookstore (or directly from the publisher) and selling them to students at the cover price. 

The best way to do this is to send order forms home with students weeks before the visit; that way the school knows exactly how many books they’ll need. I have order forms available for download on my website and schools are welcome to adapt them however they please.

Do schools pay authors for their visits? How does an author negotiate a fee?

Absolutely! School visits take a lot of time and effort—not just the time an author spends at the school, but time spent arranging the visit (a typical school visit involves dozens of emails back and forth), planning a program, making props, rehearsing, creating materials such as a simple contract or book order forms, and traveling to and from the school. This is all time away from your real job: writing! 

Some authors list their fees on their websites or in their brochures. Others, like me, tell schools to contact them for fees. I’m not being coy; it’s just that my fees vary depending on how far away the school is, whether or not I’ll need to spend the night, and how many presentations they want me to do. 

I can often work with schools to make my visit more affordable. I give discounts for multiple days in the same district, for example. I also lower my fee for local schools and schools in low-income areas.

If you’re just starting out, ask around about the going rate in your area. Aim low at first, but not too low, unless you owe someone a favor. Unfortunately, new authors often find that if they charge schools too little (or nothing), they’re not treated well. You’d think that people would say, “What a nice author to come for free! How kind and generous!” But instead they tend to think that if they didn’t have to pay for it, your time and effort must not be worth anything.

Give me an example of something that surprised you in a good way in doing a school visit. Tell of something you learned the hard way to improve your school visits.

Every school visit has wonderful surprises, because you get to meet kids and hear the things they say about your books! Often the teachers are surprised as well. They’ll come up afterward and tell me that a child who spoke up is usually very shy, or that they thought I picked a “troublemaker” to participate and they couldn’t believe how nicely he behaved. 

One thing I’ve learned is that it’s NOT a good idea to pass out rewards (stickers, bookmarks, etc.) to kids for asking questions at the end. They go completely nuts and no one listens to your answers because all they want is to get called on next so they can have a sticker too. If you’re worried that no one will ask a question, have some questions ready to ask them. I like to ask kids about their favorite books

Also, never do Q&A sessions with little kids. A kindergartner’s idea of a question is, “I have a dog!”

If this hasn't answered all your questions or if you would like to buy some of Mara's books, here's a link to her website. 

Interview with Yona Zeldis McDonough author of biographies for children

In reading your biography I see you have always been an avid reader –because readers just have to read even if it is the cereal box in front of them at breakfast. All that reading didn’t get you thinking that maybe you could write something like that (stories not notes on cereal boxes. What changed for you to take up the goal to write what you love to do?
For a long time, I was intimidated by the thought of writing.  I had a friend in college, an English major, whose thesis was a collection of short stories. I was so impressed that he could produce this work but it seemed beyond me.  I went to graduate school in art history, which I found I hated.  But I was permitted to take other classes in the university, and on a whim, I signed up for a fiction writing class. That was my aha! moment.

You’ve written a number of children’s books about famous people who are an inspiration and role model to children. How did you get involved in writing those stories

Through my mother, who illustrated a number of them.

 Did you pitch the stories to the publishers or did they come to you with the ideas?
 Both.  For the picture books (w/my mom) we pitched the ideas.  For the Who Was? series, I    was  asked to write to the bios.
 

Since you are an avid reader, does doing research for your biographies come easy? 
Yes, I love reading about people whose work and lives I admire. 

 Is there any one story that really touched you in doing the research that you learned something unique about the person?
So many! Reading about Harriet Tubman’s childhood as a slave: when refused a blanket by the people who “owned” her, she buried her feet in the ashes by the fire to stay warm. She was seven. Or reading about how Helen Keller was so frustrated and angry as a child that she tore apart the cake her mother had baked for her birthday.  Mozart, Louis Armstrong, JFK...there were wonderful, touching, defining moments in each of their stories.  

Your book, Louisa: The Life of Louisa May Alcott, is ranked #16 for children’s literary biographies. Why do you think this book has such a strong appeal?
 It was, I think, a good combination of words and pictures.  I tried to tell Louisa’s story in a very forthright way, not sugarcoating its difficulties.  And the illustrations are exceptional—lush and dreamy. I love them.

I also see that a number of your children’s books were illustrated by your mother. What was that like? Did you have any conflict with what your vision for what the images should be as opposed to hers?

My mother, Malcah Zeldis, is a well-known folk artist.  We work very seamlessly together.  She has lots of ideas and we brainstorm to settle on one that we both feel passionately about.

You don’t limit yourself to biographies for children. You’ve also have two books on American icons namely Marilyn Monroe and Barbie. What intrigues you to write about them? 

I always loved Barbie as a child and wrote an essay about her that was published in the New York Times Magazine in 1998 or so.  The book grew out of that essay.   And the book did well, so I thought of another blonde bombshell who interested me: Marilyn Monroe.

 You seem to have a fascination for dolls as you have also written two children’s books that are about a young girl whose parents own a doll repair shop.
 Yes, I am a doll lover from way back.  Now I collect dolls.  Don’t ask me how many I have because I don’t know!  But it’s a lot.

You say that Brooklyn has been a fertile ground for your writing. Is there anything in this book that touches your earlier life?

I suppose I am drawing on my childhood love of dolls, but also my childhood love for literature that was written long ago.  Even then I had a fascination with the past and loved books set in earlier times: ANNE OF GREEN GABLES, A LITTLE PRINCESS, A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, UNDERSTOOD BETSY.

 Are you planning on this to be a continuing series?

 I’d love to do another if my publisher is interested.

 Did you have the idea for the second book as you wrote the first one? 
No. It was only because the first book did so well that I was able to write the second.





What advice would you give to other writers for encouragement?
 Keep reading, and keep writing, even if it’s only a page a day.  Share your work with someone you respect, be prepared to revise, revise, revise and send your work out as far and wide as you can.  When it gets rejected, send it right back out again—don’t wait!

That's it for today's interview. I hope it has inspired you to read some of her books. If you would like to learn more about Yona and her writing, go to her website at
 www.yonazeldismcdonough.com