Writing a book with my daughter

My daughter loves telling stories.

I love listening to her tell me all of the ideas that pop in her mind. She is 8 years old and boy does she have an imagination. I'll admit that I even listen to all of her stories about ponies and unicorns.

I have to.... There is always a quiz after haha.

One day I got the idea to start writing her stories down. Little did I know that this would be an expensive and stressful adventure for me and pure fun and excitement for her.

So, here is what I did. I kept having her retell me stories. Then, I would jot down the ideas and the main events. Then the fun part started. I took her ideas and stories and started making a book. Really! And she loved the idea. Her stories started getting longer and more involved. The characters became real characters. Well as far as an 8-year-old can craft a character haha. I definitely helped her when there were issues.

The storyteller is set up like real life for her. Micaela (Mikay) is the storyteller in the book. She starts out like she always does, by telling her toys a story before bed. ( I love watching her do this). The first chapter is her getting ready to tell the story. The following chapters are the story she tells and the final chapter is her going to sleep. (That was my idea) I really wanted it to be just like it is in real life. She tells the story to her toys and goes to bed.

After a few weeks, I had her first big story in a real book. Now what? I am no author. I just wanted to encourage her imagination. So, I started researching publishing.
Wow, is that expensive. I had no idea.

What to do? Well, I decided to self-publish through Amazon. I was going to use CreateSpace but they merged with Amazon so I went with it. Ok. Now that the story was written, I sent it out to my first critics. My mother and my brother. They both were really surprised how it turned out.

Now that I was encouraged to keep going, I set out to find an artist. It took almost a month of looking before finding one that my daughter and I both liked. I scraped up the cash (hey I'm a simple teacher) and got all of the artwork and rights. Then, I started putting the book together. That part was actually the easiest. Said no one ever. haha

I managed to get an editor off of Fiverr. Ex-military and she did a fantastic job in under a day. Now, we had it. A complete book with photos, a cute story, and editing to remove my fat finger typing.

I published the book just as my daughter was turning 8. She was so excited. It took almost a month for us to get our author copies and her to see it. So exciting.
Now, it is live on Amazon (https://amzn.to/2YfFezw) with the paperback, ebook and even the audible!
I should probably explain the audible. That came out of nowhere. I was surfing Fiverr and saw an ad for a narrator. I played it and it was horrible haha. But that started the idea. So, I spent a few weeks searching through the narrators until finally stumbling on the perfect voice. She made the cutest rendition of the book ever. Micaela loved it!
So, I scraped up the money again and the few sales Amazon had achieved by this point and got the book narrated. So happy I did.

Get yours here because it is super cute and we are very proud of it. https://www.audible.com/pd/B07T7KFB7S/?source_code=AUDFPWS0223189MWT-BK-ACX0-155248&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_155248_rh_us

Fast forward a few months and here we are again with her second story.

Dad. I want to write a scary story.

Um ok.

It needs a witch and a storm.

Okkk.

That's how it started. We followed the same process again for writing it. This story was even longer than the first. I couldn't believe that she was enjoying it so much and we were both getting better at it. This story got even better reviews from my mom and my brother so I bit the bullet and scrapped the cash again for the same artist and the same editor and the same narrator.

Like magic, The Storyteller: Nightmare Island has come to reality. It is so fresh off the presses that our author copies just shipped haha. The ebook hasn't even merged with the paperback version yet.
Get your copy of the paperback here: https://amzn.to/2LgIZ46

The audible version will be finishing soon and I am sitting here just proud as can be.

You might think that I am proud that we have published 2 books as a father-daughter team. While true, it is not really the case. I am most proud of the fact that my daughter, at 8 years old, doesn't see something like this as special or difficult. She sees it as fun and something she can do. She doesn't see the reasons why it is hard to do or why it is crazy she is already a published author. She sees it as normal. I want her to see all things like this. All things are achievable if you just go for it and try.
This is the thing that I am most proud of.

(I really love spending time with her and watching her imagination run wild. That is one of the best parts of this all)

#chris hintsala #Micaela Hintsala #the storyteller the king #the storyteller nightmare island