The Story of our Story...

I always enjoyed writing while I was in school, but I never had planned to become an author. The Chronicles of the Unicorn Kingdom series was created through the inspiration from my family and love for my children.

14 Days to Flatten the Curve

It was around February of 2020 while my wife and I were watching the news about COVID-19 which was sweeping the globe and putting the entire planet into a pandemic panic that we haven't seen the likes of in over a century. I was nervous myself while watching the news about how were were going to lock down the country for two weeks to flatten the curve and reduce the spread of the virus.

While we were watching that press conference, my oldest daughter walked up and asked me if I could make up a bedtime story for them that evening instead of reading one to them. I always read to them every night, and they had never asked me to make up a story for them before.

I had no idea what to do. So I asked her if I could have one night to think about it, and that I'd have a fun bedtime story to share with her the next night.

What am I going to do?!

I loved reading to my kids at night, but I hadn't written a story since I was in high school. So I just started brainstorming things that my kids enjoy. I asked myself, what do my kids love?

Here was the list I came up with:

1. Puppies

2. Unicorns

3. Humor

4. Family

5. Adventure

I immediately started making some bullet points for the bedtime story I was going to start making up the next evening at bedtime. My goal was to have a long story that I would tell in nightly sections to get us all through those 14 days to flatten the curve.

Bringing the story to life

I was on night two or three of our new bedtime story routine when I had a great idea. I have an aunt that I call Antie Linda and she happens to be a very talented artist. I called her up and told her about the bedtime story I was making up for the girls. I asked her to draw a few characters for me. I saved those drawings to my phone and used them to help tell the story illustrating what some of the unicorn characters looked like.

Linda knocked it out of the park, and she had fun doing it. Since we were locked down I kept asking her for more illustrations and she kept drawing them for me to aid in telling the most epic bedtime story I could come up with.

The moment I decided to write our bedtime story down

I remember being about 80% of the way through our 14 days to flatten the curve, and about 80% of the way done making up my nightly bedtime story. Every evening the girls couldn't wait to hear what was going to happen next, which was fun for me because a lot of the time during the day when they'd ask me about it, I didn't even know where the story was going myself.

I had printed out a few of the illustrations that my faithful artist, Antie Linda, had drawn up for the girls to color. I happened to walk by their bedroom after lunch one day and saw my three daughters holding the illustrations my aunt had made in their room, using them as toys to play 'Chronicles of the Unicorn Kingdom'.

Admittedly, this isn't the best picture, but it was at the moment I decided I was going to try to write the story down for them. At that time I hoped to print and bind it to give them as a Christmas gift.

After all, I already had an outline and several illustrations. I also had always enjoyed writing... and it turned out that whole 14-days to flatten the curve thing didn't work out. I wasn't going to be doing much other than working and sitting around at home for the foreseeable future. The timing for me to write it down and give them as a gift was perfect.

An annoyingly persistent Father

I started writing the story down and each time I finished writing a chapter, I sent it to my family to read for fun... after all, they were locked up in their house because of COVID too and had nothing better to do. Everyone immediately told me I needed to publish it, which was never my plan. I was just trying to do something fun for my kids.

Everyone respected that. Except for my Dad. He kept on pushing me to publish it to which I told him I had no interest in doing. He had a friend from church named Barbara who was a professional editor. He shared the story with her and she told my Dad that it was good enough to publish, and suggested that I try submitting it to Lucid, a publishing company out of Houston, Texas.

I told my Dad that I would submit it to be published one time if it would get him off my back about it, and he agreed. All I had to do was submit our family bedtime story to the publishing company that his friend Barbara suggested, and he would forever leave me alone about it.

So, I sent it in fully expecting to never hear anything back from them, but at least I could get back to editing my children's Christmas present with peace of mind knowing my father wasn't going to be bothering me about publishing it any more. Within a week, I was shocked to receive an e-mail from Meg with Lucid. She told me the company had more than one label, and our story would be a good fit to publish under their Clay Bridges Press label.

And the rest is history! I worked with them for several months to get our first book out. Our bedtime story was titled Saving the King, and was officially published on June 1st, 2021. I had continued making up the family bedtime story all the while, and I kept writing for fun, and Clay Bridges Press kept picking up my books to publish.

I had a great experience working with Clay Bridges Press on publishing 4 total books - and I will get more into that on another blog post for anyone who is interested in publishing some of their own work.

The path to mind blowing experiences

This opened up so many doors for my family and I that I had never even dreamed of, mainly because writing books was something that was never planned. I know our story has gotten kids that didn't enjoy reading hooked and help improve their skills as a reader. I've received this feedback numerous times from parents and teachers who have reached out over the years. It is a really special feeling to know a project I worked on had a part in helping improve children's reading levels!

I've gotten to visit countless schools and talk about reading and writing to classrooms full of kids who are no different than I was at their age, which has inspired children to write us stories of their own. We've even been on the news... twice!!!

It's been an unexpected, but wonderful journey. Whether you're reading to your kids, or they're starting to read chapter books themselves - I'm thrilled you're hear learning more about our books, and I hope my family bedtime story can inspire your child to find their own passion for reading and writing!