This month’s Story Behind The Story is about John’s Camping Adventures

This month’s “Story Behind The Story” is about John’s Camping Adventures. Most of you may have purchased this rhyming book during my Kickstarter Campaign earlier in the year or recently read it online as a free eBook.

The first edition I Love To Go Camping was written back in 2016. Then in 2021, while creating my self-published author business, I rewrote the story, had it properly metered, and re-published the story through my own publishing company, Two Sweet Peas Publishing. I had the book illustrated by a local client/friend of mine, Keith Mitchell, who is an award-winning, art director and he did a beautiful job bringing the story to life with his illustrations.

The story is about John, my four-year-old grandson’s first experiences while camping with his family. I remember John sharing his new camping experiences with me and I just loved watching has face light up when he shared is stories about catching his first fish, hiking and seeing wild animals, and sitting by the campfire eating smores.

I enjoyed that special time with him so much that I thought it would be great to write a story for him to keep his first memories alive. At the time, I never thought it would lead me to a love of writing children’s books.

As a young author, I didn’t know much about publishing a children’s book or how to begin the process. So, I began researching publisher and found Dorrance Publishing, online. I chose them to publish my first book because they had some great reviews and had been in business for nearly 100 years. At the time, I wasn’t aware of social media author groups and the entire self-publishing world that existed.

To make a long story short, I hired Dorrance Publishing to edit, design, print, and publish my children’s book which turned out to be an OK experience. However, now that I am familiar with the publishing process it was overpriced and minimalistic work with too many hands in the pot.

To start with, the editor had no experience in metering a rhyming manuscript the way Robin Katz knows metering and he had very few suggestions about the wording or restructuring of the story. He simply put the punctuations where they were needed and suggested I move away from a rhyming story because it limits the storytelling. The last suggestion, I agree with rhyming does limit an author’s storytelling, but I love the rhythm of rhyming children’s books.

In the last year, I have written and published four rhyming books and recently I wrote my first book without rhyme, Who’s New At Lou’s Zoo. It was hard to pull away from rhyme but I did have much more freedom to write the story.

As a self-published author, we have many choices to choose from without the restriction of using a company’s subcontractors or employees. We have the ability to make all of our own decisions for our books, interviewing and choosing who we would like to work with to bring our stories to print.

Another aspect of this business we have the opportunity to meet many talented people that are willing to help us with some of those decisions such as the design or title of a book cover, and illustration critique groups before publishing.

I truly love writing children’s books as a self-publisher and enjoy sharing my stories with you and your family.

I hope you enjoyed this month’s “Story Behind The Story”, and if you would like to sign up to receive my monthly newsletter you can go to www.JoAnnMDickinsonAuthor/newsletter/ and you will receive this article and up to date news, new book launches and more each month.

You can also email me at www.joann@joannmdickinsonauthor.com