making room

I started writing stories for children in 2000. I finished my first adult novel in 1999 but after months of promising responses from agents and editors, I accepted the fact that a six-figure advance wasn’t in my future. I started writing for kids and my earliest stories reflect where I was emotionally and professionally at that point in my life. I was trying to build healthier relationships with my family members and so I wrote “Room in My Heart,” a story about two sisters trying to adjust to the new woman in their father’s life. I showed it to my father and he threw it down, enraged. I made an illustrated version and showed it to the kids in the after-school program where I taught—they loved it! So I kept on writing and soon I had half a dozen stories. “The Phoenix on Barkley Street” about a group of kids who find a magical bird in the overgrown yard of an abandoned brownstone. “The Magic Mirror” about a girl who finds a mirror that shows her scenes of Black women’s heroism throughout history. I submitted them to numerous publishers and an editor at Lee & Low wrote me back, asking to meet for lunch. That’s how my friendship with Laura Atkins began, and she taught me a lot in those early days about how to format a story for the standard 32-page picture book. My stories were 6-8 thousand words long and so I learned how to tell a story in just 1500 words. Now I’m revisiting those long stories—they’re chapter books, really, and with some illustrations I think they’d really appeal to 7-10 year olds. I never thought I could self-publish an illustrated book because professional artists are very expensive. But my cousin suggested I look at Elance.com and now I’ve got FOUR books “in production.” Three will have black and white illustrations and one will be printed in full color. My goal is to keep prices low—$5 per book—but printing in color is pricey. That book will likely cost $10. I’ve been invited to participate in the Reginald F. Lewis Museum’s African American Children’s Book Fair in May and hope to have these books ready by then. Stay tuned…