1. Tell me about yourself.
As a retired military lawyer-turned songwriter, and now first-time children’s book author, I’d describe myself as “a fairly average guy, blessed by an extraordinary family, leading a blissfully ordinary life.” After 35 years of the Monday through Friday grind, I started losing focus on the things that make all our lives wondrous and beautiful. As someone still fairly unaccustomed to referring to myself as an “artist,” my passion is using music and words to encourage listeners, and now readers, to smell the roses every chance they get, to mindfully savor life’s very best moments, and to resist at every turn the inevitable pressures imposed by adulthood to live on what I call the “differed enjoyment plan.”
2.What are your favorite books to read?
At this point in my life, I spend almost every working day doing lots and lots of reading as a requirement of my job. As a result, I find myself doing less and less reading for pleasure. When I do, I like John Grisham, David Baldacci, James Patterson, to name a few.
3. When did you decide you were going to write a book?
It’s sort of ironic, really. For most of my life, my storytelling has been primarily musical insofar as I’ve written quite a few songs. A little over a year and a half ago, I decided to turn a song I’d written about my daughter’s fourth Christmas into a children’s book. My initial motivation was to create sort of a marketing tool intended to draw people to my music, but over time, as I got more and more involved in the project, it really became a much more creative labor of love than any sort of commercial undertaking.
4. How did you come up with the name of your book?
The title of the book, Little Pink Kitty Christmas is the title of the song on which the story is based, which tells the tale of a dad’s desperate, last-minute Christmas Eve search for a stuffed pink kitty cat for his little girl. The story describes how just when all seems lost, dad finds exactly what he’s looking for… and how the next morning he realizes the lesson we’re all meant to share: It’s not about things you give and receive because if you have friends and family you love and who love you, you’re already rich beyond compare.
5. What are you working on for 2021
I always seem to be working on at least a couple of songs at varying stages of completion, and one of the ones I’m currently noodling around with definitely has a theme and a story I think would make for a great children’s book.
6. How long have you been writing?
Little pink kitty Christmas with my first venture into fiction writing, but having practiced law for the better part of 30 years, I have been writing most of my adult life. I’ve written quite a few published legal and academic articles, as well as a chapter in a think tank book on cybersecurity. I also have a fairly developed outline of a murder mystery novel I’d like to write, but I haven’t been able to sit down and start turning the outline into a written story. The outline has definitely improved, and I think I’ve got a very compelling story arc, but the prospect of churning out a 50,000-word narrative a little daunting.
7.What advice would you give other authors?
I have two pieces of advice. First, understand the importance of adhering to accepted conventions if you want to make money. Second, pay attention to the details.
First, though I can’t claim any “expertise” as a fiction “author,” I think the experience I’ve had getting publishers interested in academic pieces I’ve written is equally applicable to the children’s book genre. And that is simply this: If the genre in which you are writing has excepted conventions and standards, things like page numbers, number of words per page, font size, word usage, and vocabulary, pay attention to that. Quite often, artists of all types, whether painters, poets, musicians, or children’s book writers, undertake the works they create motivated purely by artistic instinct. Because that’s the case, the impulse is to go wherever your artistic urge leads you and not to try and conform creativity to some preestablished cookie-cutter-like template. To be perfectly clear, if you have absolutely no interest in the commercial viability of the artistic work you create, that sort of approach is just fine.
But if you’d like to at least keep open the possibility of breaking even on your investment of time and other resources, you stand a much better chance of doing so if you are well-informed about the excepted standards and conventions, and then adhere to them. Granted, from time to time they are “breakout” unconventional works that find their way into the marketplace and enjoy wonderful commercial success, but those cases are rare. Over 4 million new books are published every year. That’s roughly 450 books an hour, or about 1 new book every ten seconds! There are between 100 and 1000 titles competing for every single spot on bookstore shelves, and most of those spots are filled by books from established authors whose works are produced and managed by large publishing houses, not independent authors. Bottom line: Although researching all the conventions applicable to the genre in which you are writing seems a bit tedious and not particularly creative, it’s time well spent.
Second, pay attention to the details. Things like spelling and punctuation are important. If these things aren’t your strengths, enlist a friend or relative—(or hire someone) with those strengths to help you. There is simply no replacement for a good editor to proofread or otherwise review your project. Here’s an example from my own experience. Just as I was about ready to upload my book to Amazon KDP, I thought, “I wonder if I should try to get some fresh eyes to review what I’ve done to see if they catch any mistakes.” So I solicited reviewers on a couple of different Facebook user groups. Right off the bat, one commentator pointed out that a scene of a family holiday party had what appeared to be a bottle of wine and glasses on a table in the background. In my mind that seemed fine—and to accurately depict many of my family’s holiday parties. The problem is, it’s a fairly bright line “no-no” to have alcohol depicted in children’s books. Thankfully, my amazing illustrator was quickly able to turn the bottle into a soft drink container. Another reviewer noted that I used the incorrect word in the following sentence. See if it jumps out at you: “Then across the street, peeking through the trees, twinkling lights just as pretty as you please, caught my eye, and I felt my spirit soar.” Spell-checker didn’t catch anything. However, the word “peaking” means “to submit” or “hit the highest point,” not “peering, peeping, stealing a look,” which is what I meant to say. I’ve published a dozen academic articles and edited many, many more, but I didn’t catch a simple spelling error. What’s the point? Ask a good proofreader to review your project before you go final.
8. Where can people find you online?
You can find “little pink kitty Christmas“ and a free downloadable version of the song on which the book is based at www.littlepinkkittychristmas.com, you can review sort of chronological account of my entire children’s book writing experience on the blog of my website at Blog | Mysite 1 thisislifesong.com)
9. What is your favorite coffee drink?
This one I’m almost embarrassed to answer because it’s just so darn boring. On a daily basis, I’m strictly a decaf with sugar-free Irish cream. During the holidays, however, I will grab something hot and pepperminty (yep, I know that’s not a real word) every chance I get!
10. What is your favorite coffee shop? There’s a little mom and pop deli right next to the office building in which I work but I’ve been going to for years, and it is my coffee then your choice.
11. Do you plan on making a new book in the future?
Absolutely! I’m convinced the time commitment and singular extended focus required to write an internally consistent, coherent crime novel is probably something I won’t have insufficient supply until after I retire from my current “day job.“ There just don’t seem to be enough hours in the day. But, as I noted above, I spend a little bit of time--maybe 20 minutes to 45 minutes or so, several times a week in a quiet corner of my basement with my guitar. So if I’m fortunate enough to crank out another tune that looks like it might work well as a children’s book, I might write a second one before I retire.
12. How many books have you written? Just the one at this juncture.
13. Did you go to college to be a writer?
Nope. I didn’t go to school to become a writer. I got my undergraduate degree in criminology on an Air Force ROTC scholarship and hoped to do something law enforcement-related in the military. That didn’t work out, but a few years into my military services, I was very fortunate to be selected to attend a military-sponsored legal education program. It’s funny; when I was in college all I wanted was to be done with school. But then after I graduated, I kept finding ways to go back, ultimately earning a law degree from Florida State, a master's degree in aeronautical science from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, and an LL.M. from Georgetown. All of those programs, to varying degrees, imposed substantial writing requirements, which I think ultimately trained me in the technical use of the written word, but I also realize that’s not the same thing as being a “skilled writer” as that term would probably be understood in the context of this discussion.
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