Richard Rieman's journey as a children's book author is an inspiring testament to the idea that it is never too late to pursue one's passions. In this podcast episode, we engage in a profound discussion regarding his two children's books, with particular emphasis on "The Day the Clouds Went Away."

Richard elucidates the significance of crafting narratives that resonate with children while also addressing essential themes, such as the importance of clouds in our ecosystem.

He shares insights into his creative process, which is deeply influenced by his experiences and desire to create accessible literature for all children, particularly those with visual impairments.

Through this dialogue, we explore the intersection of storytelling, education, and advocacy, underscoring the vital role of children's literature in fostering understanding and compassion among young readers.

He shares an evocative narrative of his childhood, wherein the allure of books was ignited during visits to a grand library alongside his elder sister. This formative experience not only cultivated his fervent love for literature but also set him on a trajectory toward becoming a storyteller, initially as a journalist and later as an audiobook narrator.

Rieman's foray into children's literature was inspired by his volunteer endeavors with blind children, illuminating a significant gap in accessible stories for visually impaired youth. His creative vision birthed a nonprofit initiative, Imagination Storybooks, which aims to augment illustrated narratives with audio descriptions, ensuring inclusivity for all children.

Through this lens, Richard aspires to craft characters that resonate without emphasizing their disabilities, such as the blind protagonist of his series, Princess Claudia.

The discussion further delves into Richard's motivations and the intricate process behind developing characters like Fumbledore, the fumbling wizard, highlighting his unique approach to storytelling that intertwines humor with valuable life lessons.

Takeaways:

• Richard Rieman emphasizes the importance of making children's books accessible to all, including blind children, through innovative audio descriptions.
• His journey into children's literature began later in life, proving it is never too late to pursue one's passion for writing.
• The character of Princess Claudia is based on the author's experiences and aims to represent children with visual impairments in a positive light.
• Rieman advocates for the integration of environmental themes into children's stories, subtly educating readers about the significance of nature.
• The podcast highlights the role of effective marketing and personal branding in the success of a children's book author.
• Richard's experience illustrates the necessity of building a supportive network and learning the business side of publishing while writing.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Learning Ally
• Amazon
• IngramSpark
• IAPC
• Jay Maletsky
• Barbara Ausurek
• Aflac
• Kickstarter

Richard Riemann, the Day the Clouds Went Away and the Day the Bees Went Away.

Thanks, Richard, for appearing on children's book authors podcast, Adventures in the Heart.

Richard has written two children's books, and today we're going to be discussing both books with a focus on the Day the Clouds Went Away.

And I look forward to our conversation.

Richard, before we get into the details of your books, can you tell us what being a children's book author means to you?

I have been into books since I was a little child, going to the library with my big sister, and we would go into the library, which was huge, and open these huge doors.

And then I walked in and I saw thousands of books.

And my sister turned to me and she said, and you can have any of them to take home for free.

And I was hooked.

That's how my adventure with books began.

How old would you have been, approximately?

Oh, probably five.

Okay.

Yeah.

And I love to read and I love to write.

I wanted to be Superman, but I couldn't fly.

So I decided to be Clark Kent and became a journalist, actually.

And that set me on the path in radio news in Chicago and Washington D.C. and New York.

And that set me on the path as a storyteller, basically, that I was sitting in front of a microphone telling stories.

That was my job.

And I've continued to do that as an audiobook narrator.

But I got into children's books, especially when I realized I was a Guide for Blind Skiers and Volunteer for Learning Ally, which is Books for the Blind.

And they said there's this huge gap in the audiobook world where the stories are not available to blind children.

And that's how I got into creating my own nonprofit imagination storybooks, where we add audio description to to the illustrated books to make them available to blind children and all children.

So I was reading hundreds of children's illustrated books and I said, I want to be a writer, too, so I'm going to write books.

Terrific.

What was inspiration behind.

Because your books have a certain theme to them and we'll get more into depth about your books and your characters.

But what was the inspiration behind your books?

I wanted to do books with a blind character without focusing on the fact that she was blind.

She just happened to be blind.

And I'm known as the audiobook wizard.

I make school appearances, reading my books in full wizard regalia.

The hat, the long white beard and everything.

And I use my wizard voice when I talk to the children.

And I said, okay, I need to write a series of books, and I call Them the tales from the princes Dumb.

Terrific.

Just so our audience knows, usually at this point in the podcast interview, I talked to our children's book authors about their book business.

However Richard's done, and he's already given us glimpses into what he's done, is he has actually built a business.

And we're going to get more into that, but we're going to save that for another podcast episode because we want to focus on, like Richard said, he decided he should become a children's book author.

So for this podcast show, we won't be talking much about Richard's audiobook business.

We'll save that for another podcast.

But we will.

And by the way, It'll be episode 101 for those listening in.

We'll talk about Richard's audiobook business, but in this case, we're going to talk about Richard's two books that he mentioned at the beginning of the show.

So, Richard, I'm curious if you can tell us a little bit about.

You talk about this character and you actually transform yourself into Fumbledore.

Yes, Fumbledore, the wizard.

No relation to Dumbledore at all, but just a fumbling wizard.

That's the idea.

That is fantastic.

I don't want to get too much into the audio side of it, but because like you said, you were in broadcasting for years and you actually have a wizard's voice that you.

When you go and do voice book readings, I'm curious, did the idea of Fumbledore come to you through your voice first and then you put it to words, or did you write the words and then come up with the voice?

Oh, I had the voice for a while.

In fact, I played a wizard in a couple of video games, actually.

And so I declared I was the audiobook wizard and it stuck.

That's my marketing identity.

But I wanted to put that character, the wizard, in my books, too.

So that was.

That was a lot of fun for me.

And I have to tell you, and I don't think I've talked about this before on the show, but my mother, later in life, she was diabetic and eventually, because of a side effect of diabetes, became blind.

She relied heavily on audiobooks.

And my mother was a ferocious reader.

She read the thousands of books in her lifetime.

She just loved reading.

And when she lost the ability for sight, she turned to audiobooks.

And what you're doing is absolutely outstanding.

I wanted to let you know there's a real connection for me and in what you've done.

And I'm sure there's other people out there that, that have this connection.

And of course, my mom was an adult when she went blind, so she never experienced childhood blindness.

And that takes us on a different journey.

You have your books in both hardcover, paperback, and of course, as you're aware, I purchased your ebook on Amazon.

So talk to us about the different formats and how you're using them.

I wanted to make sure that my books were available in all formats.

So, yes, I do the KDP way for my paperback because that's the easiest thing to do.

But for the hardcovers, I worked with Jay Maletsky at IAPC and he prints the hardcovers printed in China and handles all the shipments and fulfillment.

And so that made it easy for me to do the hardcover also, because I've heard a lot about IngramSpark and basically mixed reviews, shall we say.

Yes, but I love having the copies in the hardcover of my books also.

They're so beautiful.

You have the ebook on Amazon, which I purchased, and the color, the vibrant colors that show up on the ebook are just terrific.

So thank you.

I think it came out great.

My illustrator, Barbara Ausurek, is from England.

I found her just by.

In a Facebook group, seeing the kind of work that she does, and she's a wonderful old style illustrator.

I really think that's very important in these days of AI that we keep the best illustrators employed out there.

And it makes a difference so much in the beauty of the book.

No question.

And the nice thing about the folks from the UK is they tend to have such deep roots that go back in history to when there was castles, because in North America there was no castles.

And I know sometimes people try and pretend we did build castles, but for the most part, there is no castles in North America.

The Day the Clouds Went Away is my first children's illustrated book.

I wrote it.

I'm turning 75 and I wrote these books when I was 70.

Okay, so it tells you that it's never too late in life.

Absolutely.

And you know what?

I just interviewed a Dr. Peter Cotton.

He has a book series.

He actually has 10 books in the series called Fred the Snake.

He lives in South Carolina.

He's originally a Brit and of course came over in the 80s and became an American citizen.

But he retired at 77 and then he started his children's book authorship.

And when I interviewed him a few weeks ago, episode 86, he had just turned 85 and had just.

Yes, and had just written his 10th book in his series.

So there you go.

You're a young man by comparison.

Your authorship Journey.

Talk to us about the publishing aspect of it, because I always talk about.

There's primarily three ways that you can publish as a children's book author.

You can become an independent children's book author, which means that you do everything.

You become the general manager or the project manager of your children's book, or you can be self published, or what some people refer to as hybrid published, where you hire someone to be the general manager for your book.

You get to keep all the rights and you have a lot of say in the direction of your book.

And then the last one is traditionally published.

At some point you lose much of the control and you hand over your book and they bring it to market.

So tell us about your publishing journey.

I knew enough about books from having worked with illustrated book authors on over 200 books that we turned into audiobooks.

And I had written the Author's Guide to audiobook creation 10 years ago and self published it.

So I knew the journey and I was a little more experienced than most.

And getting traditionally published, you have to get an agent, really.

It's.

We have to show, especially if you've already published a book, that selling thousands to books, that type of thing.

But I wanted the ability to control the journey myself.

You say sell myself, you set up your own independent publishing company.

I did.

It's the Imagination Storybook, says the publisher.

I found the illustrator on my own.

I wrote the books.

I hired an editor, Laura Bingham, who's actually excellent editor, and she's the one who did the whole editing process for me, the content editing, as well as just finding the spelling mistakes.

And she.

And we worked as a team with the illustrator to bring the books together.

And it was just.

Just a very nice process.

Fantastic.

I'm gonna have to take you back 10 years and I want you to think back about when you first published.

And I know it wasn't a children's book, but what would have been when you started to think about becoming an independent publisher?

What would have been your biggest challenge or frustration when you first started on that journey?

Yes, it was very challenging going from really not knowing anything about the author side to going through the whole experience of having to learn what KDP is at Amazon, having to learn about IngramSpark, having to learn about distribution and whether you should pay the money to have the physical books created rather than just reselling them, having them printed for you by an Amazon.

All of those things I had to find out the answers to.

And this was before ChatGPT was around to ask about these things, even KDP.

Has changed so much over the years.

10 Years ago ago was pretty much in its infancy.

I guess.

Any aspiring children's book author listening in on Richard but myself, the path forward to actually becoming an independently published children's book author has certainly gotten easier.

Yes, it really has.

Now there are just so many ways, so many good coaches out there that teach authors not only how to write their books, but also how to market them.

Because as I learned very early on, it's a business.

Nobody will know about your book unless you tell them about it.

They have a way of finding out about it.

And that's so true, because all of us, when you think about it, we choose names that most people would not search nowadays.

The simplest thing is people search for certain things.

And our book is called the Adventures of Caboose the Rocky Mountain Bear.

Unless we publicize it, nobody is going to SEO and searching for caboose or fumbledore or so on and so forth.

And that's why I asked the question, how are you building your children's book business?

Because to Richard's point, it's not as easy as one might think.

It is a whole different world out there.

One of the things I started with was I joined bookandauthor.com and that is a relatively new website to help authors of children's books get into schools, make school appearances.

And so I started that way, and that gives me the pictures of me as the wizard talking to the children about my book.

And I love these appearances at schools because I have my phone.

The ringtone is the theme from Harry Potter.

Okay.

And when I make these school appearances, I make sure that somebody calls me.

So I'm able to answer the phone and say, hattie, so good to hear from you, Hattie.

How funny.

Watch the faces of the children and their eyes get big.

That's terrific.

That's one of the adventures that I have in marketing my books because that makes it available, but also getting out there, making sure my book is available widely, not just on Amazon.

I made that decision early on to go wide distribution and to have the ability, through IngramSpark actually, to get my book into the catalogs.

Right.

Don't get it into the book stores necessarily.

You get it into the catalog, and that's.

That's where those really came from.

It's interesting you should say this, Richard, because a lot of my guests are retired or currently active school teachers.

And what I've been finding is a lot of them because they know how to build curriculum, and they're being finding because they want to get into schools.

A lot of schools now have this expectation that there should be a curriculum or a lesson plan that goes with your children's book.

And the beautiful thing about your book is that you have really great content to create a curriculum to support your book.

So that I'm just throwing that out at you, but that might be something to consider.

I have already done a lesson plan for the Day the clouds went away.

Oh, terrific.

There you go.

Yeah, because.

Exactly.

The teachers want that.

They want just an easy way for them not just to read the book out loud, but to really involve the students in the project.

When you say the book is the Day the clouds went away, obviously it's all about clouds, and why are clouds important and what are clouds, and why are there so many different kinds of clouds?

And so it just naturally leads you into a lesson.

Fantastic.

Before we jump into your books, I don't want to move away from your illustrator because like they say, a picture tells a thousand words, and especially when you write a children's book, it's generally between 500 and 1,000 words.

So you need a good supporting cast, and that supporting cast is your illustrations.

So you've used the same illustrator for your first two books.

And I'm not sure if there's a third book in your future, but if there is, are you going to use the same illustrator?

Oh, Abs.

Absolutely.

Okay.

And that relationship developed.

I found Barbara on one of the Facebook author groups and saw the examples of the books that she had created in a classic children's book style, and I just fell in love with her style.

She's not the least expensive illustrator, but she's worth it.

And it's made such a difference, because if you have a beautiful cover, if you have beautiful illustrations inside, and a series of books, you're building a following for those books and an expectation that the clouds, the Tales from the Princesdom series, will look the same as we continue.

And it's so nice to work as a team, having an illustrator, having an.

Editor to work with, and having that continuity.

Yes.

The continuity is so important, and they know the characters, and so it.

It makes it easier to bring my stories to life.

Terrific.

And that leads me to your website.

The first thing is, it's like the chicken and the egg.

Did your website come first and then your children's book, or did your children's books come first and then your website?

In this case, my website came first because I've been in the audiobook business, and we'll talk about that side of it the next time that really was.

I call it my audiobook Wizard Shop at audiobookwizard Shop.

And so it really is a place where I'm doing promotions for children's books and music videos and trailers and all those kinds of things.

I always had it in my mind to write books.

That was one of my big things that I wanted to do as a legacy to write these books myself.

And so I really have just focused more on the writing and publishing and marketing part of the books recently.

I want to take you back a bit.

What year would you have created your website?

How long ago?

Oh, it's been a series of websites.

I got into a website when the web was a baby.

Okay.

I'm a techie.

You can call me a nerd, I don't know.

But I was one who believed in the Internet before people really talked about it.

Back when we, we had the phone, the connection and all that.

Yes, only.

And so I've been doing this for a while now.

You started with your first website.

So when did you get to your website?

Now is the audiobook wizard dot com.

Oh, dot shop.

Sorry.

So when you actually created that, how long ago did you create that?

Oh, we're talking just a couple of years now.

So that was before your books or after your books?

Right before my books came out.

The reason I asked this question because people always think, okay, why is Rick so being so detailed about this?

And the reason I ask is because when we first started our children's book authorship journey, what I did is I actually created a website called Caboose, the Rocky Mountain bear dot com.

And we spell Caboose with a K because my granddaughter is co author and her first name is Kira.

That's what we did.

We substituted the C for the K to represent Kira.

And so I set up this website and I went to godaddy and got it registered.

And then I thought, okay, now what do I do with this thing?

So I had been working with someone and they said, okay, what we can do is when you launch your book on Amazon, when they go to your website, it'll take them right to the Amazon link into your book.

And I thought, oh genius, I'm going to sell thousands of books and that's all I need for as a website.

And then so that's what we did.

Now of course, I love how you.

They will come.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah.

Thank you, Richard.

I love how you're laughing, being naive.

I thought, okay, this is the path to fame and fortune.

Which it wasn't then what happened was we realized we had to have a website, like a real website, not just a link to the Amazon book page.

And the beautiful thing about it, and the reason I tell this to everyone, is if you look at Richard's website or our website, we've used some of the content, our illustration material from our books.

At least if you start in mind that you can use part of your content from your children's books to build out your website and you're going to build a book series like Richard has, then you just get lucky.

And so would you say that's in your case, you got lucky because you launched both around the same time?

Yeah.

I mean, it.

Luck is something that you make sometimes a lot of hard work.

Absolutely.

Marketing things.

One thing I wanted to mention, though, that we haven't gotten into, is how do you raise the money to pay for all this stuff?

Yes, I did a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign.

Okay.

For my book with selling the idea that I was also going to make a version that was accessible to blind and deaf children because we actually added a video with ASL of my book.

And I was able to raise over $6,000.

Terrific.

To pay for my illustrations, to pay for the printing of the books, so that I didn't have to do everything myself.

When you started your Kickstarter campaign, did you at least have a few illustrations to support the Kickstarter campaign?

Yes, I'd gotten the early illustrations and of course, the story was already done.

So I was able to talk about the story and about the clouds and about the fact that I was going to do a School Assisted Project 2 and all of those things.

And my advantage, of course, being an audiobook narrator, is I was able to read excerpts from the book and bring it to life and describe the picture.

And that was part of your Kickstarter campaign?

Yes, yes.

And really, there are a lot of books that want to be crowdfunded out there, so you have to make yours a little special.

What's different about your book?

And you need some illustrations to show that you're bringing this to life.

You need the backstory of why you wrote it and the things that we're talking about, all of those things.

But with Kickstarter, you set a goal and you have to reach that goal or you get nothing.

So you don't set your goal too high.

Now, GoFundMe is the other crowdfunding effort, but that's more toward people who need money for medical bills and things like that much more than money for publishing a book.

Kickstarter is what I have found the best way to go.

And I've used it for my other projects too.

The accessible Winnie the Pooh that, that we did.

I'm able to use other people's money.

Richard, it's interesting, as you say, that I've actually got two more books in development in our book series, the Adventures of the Rocky Mountain Bear.

And what's interesting is I'm.

Because I'm trying to help educate people through our podcasting show.

What I'm looking at doing is I have one idea to support a Kickstarter campaign.

And another idea I have on our next week's episode, I have children's book author Sheri Fink coming on and she's talking about her latest book called Beyond Words.

And the reason I mention that is she did it a little differently.

She actually got from a major insurance company named Aflac, and Aflac sponsored her to write and publish it.

And the book supports childhood cancer.

So, you know, if you can find a cause, and that's why I say to children's book authors, if you've got a cause that's close to your heart that affects people, then perhaps you work together with, as Sherry did with an insurance company or you find a pharmaceutical company.

Sometimes people aren't real happy about pharmaceutical companies, but there are a lot of pharmaceutical companies doing good work that are saving children's lives.

And if you've got something that there's a cause, I want to pick up on what Richard's talking about, whether it's Kickstarter or find a cause and then go out and find sponsorship.

You can find ways to find your book without taking, you know, it out of all of your retirement funds.

And then you've got nothing left to to eat.

But your children's books, they don't taste very good either.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

That's fantastic.

And so it sounds like you've become, I don't want to say an expert, but well versed in the Kickstarter campaign.

Yes, yes, I have.

And you can't keep going back to the same family and friends, so you have to get beyond that.

And like you said, your book needs to have some sort of message or something different that where it stands out.

Mine has a blind princess, so I was able to go to the American Council of the Blind, and I've been working with them on the other projects too.

But to say here is a book, an audiobook, a video version for low vision kids, a video version that includes the audio description of the pictures.

So I was Able to go to them and talk to them on their podcast about my book and build those connections to what you've written.

And before we move on from your website, because you've got a great website, we'll talk more about that in podcast interview about your whole audiobook business.

But one thing I noticed and when I went to your website, you have a Facebook page, you have LinkedIn, you have YouTube.

But I noticed that there you didn't have any social media links on your website to those social media sites.

Is there a reason for that?

Just overlooking.

I was just curious if there was a strategy or.

No, I, I'm my Facebook sites.

I don't have a Facebook site dedicated to my book, which I think is a good idea for authors or at least to have a separate author Facebook site from your personal site.

Yes, I think that's always a great idea and it's a work in progress for me.

Yeah.

Just so you know, it's the same with us.

I set one up not probably a year and a half ago or something and being slowly getting some traction from it.

Trying to be all things to all people sometimes is a tough thing.

But I just throw this out at you that the next time you talk to whoever helps you with your website support.

Because every children's book author, except for a couple have actually had their links to their social media sites right on their website.

So I just offer that as some advice.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

No problem.

And has your social media helped you build book sales?

It has.

I'm not shy about talking about my books, especially when anything is in the news about clouds or for my second book, bees.

The environment is both books.

Environmental messages, but not messages that are there to hit you over the head.

They're just kind of part of the story in the background about how important clouds are, how important bees are.

But I take the opportunities to promote on all my social media and that has definitely helped my book sales.

Terrific.

Terrific.

So now I want to touch on your book because I want to get into character development.

And you have three main characters.

Princess Claudia, her wizard Fumbledore and her, I don't want to say pet owl, but Iris the owl, her guide owl.

Guide owl.

Guide owl.

Just like a guide dog, she has a guide owl.

I love that.

So take us through this whole character development because I know in your first book Princess Claudia is coming up on her eighth birthday and take us through that whole character development and these core characters in your first story.

Yes, I decided to do an 8 year old princess because my target age is 6 to 10, so it's right in the middle.

And I wanted her to have a challenge.

And in her case, it's the fact that she's nearly blind.

She's not totally blind.

Because 90% of blind children are not totally blind.

They have some sight.

And that's why I wanted to see them reflected.

When I talked about my mother, she was 90% blind.

She had some sight.

You can tell shapes for sure.

And that's typical.

So I wanted to have a character.

Because usually they're totally blind.

They're blind, they can't see anything.

But in Princess Claudia's case, she can see some shapes and things like that.

But I wanted.

She has very little eyesight, but she's strongly independent.

Is Princess Claudia based on someone in your life?

The name Claudia is the name of my fiance.

So I guess I could say yes.

But later in the book, they call her Princess Claudia because of the clouds.

So that kind of fit, too.

Okay, fantastic.

So that's a way to sneak in family members and people.

Their names into books.

That's what I did with Princess Claudia.

I love what you said here.

It's a guide owl.

So talk to us about Iris and that relationship.

My eye doctor thought it was hysterical that I named the owl Iris.

The guide owl portion of your eye.

And see Iris.

He caught that right away.

But the having a guide owl just came to me.

Because, of course, Harry Potter had owls and stuff.

And I was like.

Princess Claudia wouldn't really have a guide dog.

So why not create an owl that guides her?

Because she could hear the flapping of the wings to guide her.

And it made sense that this could be the kind of guide animal.

So that's how Iris, the guide owl, was born.

Terrific.

The unique relationship with her wizard friend, Fumbledore.

Yes.

Princess Claudia is.

As I said, she's independent.

Her parents are gone.

As you learn later in the book.

They're not dead.

Princess Fumbledore, the wizard, accidentally cast a spell.

That put them somewhere else in time.

Because he's not a very good wizard.

Just so everyone understands, he's not a bad wizard.

He's just not a good wizard.

Yeah, he fumbles a lot when he does spells.

And they don't always come out.

The first spell he ever cast was.

He turned his father's hat into a chicken.

So the.

I think that he's just not the typical experienced wizard.

But what's important is that this is Tales from the Princessdom.

And not the Kingdom.

It's the Princessdom.

Because Claudia runs the princessdom.

She's eight years old.

But she has Dumbledore as a guide for her to.

And she is in charge of things.

The castle and the grounds and things like that.

So she has a lot of responsibility too for an 8 year old.

Take us through the central teaching or lesson in the book.

Okay.

The story is that the princess is afraid it's going to rain on her eighth birthday party.

And so she orders Fumbledore to make all the clouds go away.

He's not sure that's a great idea.

He tries.

And of course being Fumbledore, he drops his wand mid spell.

So not all the clouds go away.

Some of them start coming back to tell Princess Claudia and Fumbledore why they're so important.

What happens if you don't have clouds but you don't have rain?

So things start to dry up.

Things are dying.

Fires can start.

The clouds are very important.

And she learns from the different clouds that come to visit what kind of clouds they are.

That fog is a cloud that happens to be on the ground.

That the big cumulonimbus clouds are the ones that cause all the thunderstorms and things like that gale.

The whale is a big cloud that causes rain.

And so through the story she has these cloud characters come and say why clouds are so important.

As things start to turn bad in a prince's den.

And she decides that the clouds are good.

And as Dumbledore bring them back in time for her party.

And the children are dancing through the rain at her party and she discovers that dancing in the rain is nice too.

Maybe clouds aren't so bad after all.

I want to delve a bit into your writing process.

Because the nice thing about it, you've shared your journey.

And you came to writing children's books a little later in life and you told us about that.

I'm curious.

Can you share some insights into how that all developed and what your writing process looks like now?

Because you've given us a peek that you are writing another children's book.

So talk to us about this whole writing process.

The process like for the next book is going to be the day the dragons went away.

So we're.

And I have the idea in my mind I haven't really written anything but the outline yet that there's a reason for the dragons to be in the Prince system.

They keep the fire burning in the hearths with their.

With the dragon fire and they go away because what's the reason why dragons would go away where their caves are.

The water has gotten polluted, the trees have started to die.

And it's just not a friendly enough environment for them anymore to have their dinosaur eggs.

And so they're moving away from the princess themselves.

So have you created a draft?

Yes.

Okay.

I call it an outline, you call it a draft, but yes.

What the characters names might be and the always puns on names.

How is the story going to run?

How is it going to end?

I'm going to have it end with the children of the Princess Dun.

The princess leading them to clean up the water, plant new trees and bring the dragons back.

This is the art of the story.

And you have a theme going on with your three books and carrying of the earth.

I'm paraphrasing.

That's big picture.

Now, as you wrote your first two books and now you're developing your third book, are you drawing from personal experience or are you doing some research also?

Oh, I'm doing the research.

Yeah.

Okay.

The reason, especially the bees book.

I did a lot of research about what happens really if you don't have bees.

Okay.

The flowers don't get pollinated.

What happens if that doesn't happen?

And what about other crops?

What about apples?

What about the other kinds of fruit and stuff that require some pollination too?

And I did the research on it and so I could be accurate in the kind of bees that we're talking about and what they would look like and all of that.

So, yes, research is very important.

Terrific.

I want to take you back just a few years to when you first started publishing your children's books.

And I'm curious about when you wrote your first book and you were thinking about success.

What did that look like to you back then?

And now that you're moving into your third book, what does success look like to you now in terms of your children's book business?

Yeah.

With my business, it really is making the schools aware of the book.

And as we talked about, I do more than just the printed books and the E books.

I do the audiobooks and add audio description and all of those things.

So I'm trying to reach a wider audience and let authors know that they can create these books with.

With the illustrations described.

I. I'm using my books as a launching pad for the other stuff that I do.

Okay.

Related to my business.

I'm the book sales.

I love it when I get my royalty checks.

But it's not the only thing that I'm doing.

I've made the book into a business of its own.

Getting beyond what's on the written page.

Like a supporting cast.

Yes.

And the Fact that I'm a narrator doesn't hurt because of course, I. I'm able to narrate the books.

And my daughter Erin is also a narrator, and she.

She's the voice of the princess.

It's a family business.

That is fantastic.

When it comes to the role of writing in the grand scheme of things, how much time are you devoting to that?

And then how do you separate that out to focus in on it versus all the other things that you've got going on?

Which is tremendous.

Yeah.

There's not enough time to do it all, as we all know, to do everything we want to be doing.

But the writing has to become a very important thing.

And I try to schedule some downtime, not just.

I'm not a couple hours a day devoted to a type of person I need to go.

And what I do is I take train rides.

I took a train ride through Canada from all the way across from Vancouver, all the way across Canada, and I wrote my book.

I find that getting away from things for me gives me the ability to really focus on the writing part.

Great strategy.

That's how I.

And I took train rides through Colorado, where I lived for the Day of the Beast.

Went away and just sat in the train.

I'd look out now and then to the nice view, but I was really focused on writing.

Wow.

That leads me to advice for aspiring children's book authors.

What kind of advice would you give one who's just starting out?

Learn the business.

It doesn't hurt at all to have a writing coach whose experience in your genre, it may not be children's books.

It may be mysteries or horror.

And I've done a lot of audiobooks in all genres.

And I did have a coach here in Denver, Judith Briles, who is the book shepherd.

And she helped me shepherd my first book to into the marketplace.

And that really helped me a lot.

It's hard to do it all alone if you can build a team of supporters for your book and then invite them to the debut of your book.

The launch.

That's helpful too.

There's a lot to learn about the business side after you've written the book, but it's best to learn about the business side while you're writing your book.

Great advice.

Don't necessarily put it off until your book is you think ready to go to market and then you're scrambling to figure out what you're supposed to do.

You try to do it while you're actually in the process of creating your book.

Thank you.

What keeps you Going as a children's.

Book author, appearances at schools, seeing the kids react to me reading the book out loud.

And the whole me dressed as a wizard while I'm doing it dressed as Fumbledore.

And there are so few moments in life that can give you pure joy.

And that's one of them.

Just having my book out there, having the kids react to it while I read to them.

And if not schools, you can do bookstores.

They always have events where children's book authors can read, even at the Barnes and Nobles of the world.

And don't just print your book and say, okay, people are going to buy it.

Get out there and hustle it to life and hustle it.

Yeah, bring your book to life.

Encouragement for readers.

Why should children's book readers purchase your books?

Because mine are the kind of books, as I mentioned before, that don't hammer you over the head with a message.

I'm not saying don't let the bees die.

Don't let the bees die.

It's a story about how important they are to us.

You keep it a little bit more subtle.

And the fact that I wanted to create books that could be read out loud to children because that is such a critical thing.

Read to your kids.

My mother read books to me.

That's what got me into the books.

Got me to go to the library, got me to enjoy books for all of my life and later audiobook that I wanted to write.

Books that felt really good when you read them aloud.

Nice.

So, final thoughts.

Richard, is there anything you'd like to share before we conclude this podcast interview?

Yes, I would like to read just a minute or so of my book.

Terrific.

You're going to read from your first.

Book, the Day the Clowns Went Away.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a princess dome far away, lived a bold, independent and self assured princess named Claudia.

She had very little eyesight, so she had a guide owl named Iris.

Princess Claudia had a glorious party planned soon for her eighth birthday.

She loved the brightness of blue skies.

But when a huge black cloud blocked out the sun, she worried that rain might come and ruin her carefully planned party.

Princess Claudia turned to a wizard.

Bumbledoo Dumbledore.

She commanded, I've never seen clouds, but they make loud thunder and that hurts my ears and they bring rain.

So I order you to make them go away.

Fumbledore didn't think it was a good idea, but he loudly cast the spell.

Clodius disappears, not being the most graceful of wizards.

He stumbled and dropped his wand mid spell.

Oh dear.

I don't think I did that.

He was correct.

Down goes the story.

Oh, Richard, thank you so much for being a guest on children's MacArthur's PODC podcast, Adventures of the Heart.

Your generosity of time, your insights.

Oh, we got some great insights.

Will significantly benefit aspiring authors and readers.

We promise to provide our audience with links to Richard's social media, his website and his books.

And if you've enjoyed this episode, please hit the subscribe button to listen to our future episodes.

And feel free to share this episode with anyone inspired by or who enjoys hearing about Richard in his children's book series, Tales from the Princess Dom.

Thank you, Richard.

Thank you, Rick, so much.

Appreciate it.