Show Notes:
Today is part two of two where we are talking to Sheryl Bass about her novels. After today you will have heard about writing as a kid, using rhyme to help tell your story, setting your story aside while making plans, using your family as a focus group for your illustrations, promoting your books at children’s conferences, taking classes to learn how to promote your books, using your background in PR to help you promote your book, writing stories based on your pets, and her advice to take your time.
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Sheryl Bass holds a master’s degree in Social Work and has studied child development. She uses these insights to inform her picture book writing. Sheryl also holds a master’s degree in Journalism and is currently working in public relations. Her goal in creating Be-Kind Publishing is to produce lighthearted rhyming stories with gentle themes of teamwork and friendship. Sheryl resides just outside of Chicago, IL with her husband and two terriers.
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Transcript:
Speaker A: Welcome to Freya’s Fairy Tales, where you believe fairy tales are both stories we enjoyed as children and something that we can achieve ourselves.
Speaker A: Each week we will talk to authors about their favorite fairy tales when they were kids and their adventure to holding their very own fairy tale in their hands.
Speaker A: At the end of each episode, we will finish off with a fairy tale or short story read as close to the original author’s version as possible.
Speaker A: I am your host.
Speaker A: Freya victoria I’m an audiobook narrator that loves reading fairy tales, novels and bringing stories to life through narration.
Speaker A: I’m also fascinated by talking to authors and learning about their why and how for creating their stories.
Speaker A: We have included all of the links for today’s author and our show in the show Notes.
Speaker B: Be sure to check out our website.
Speaker A: And sign up for our newsletter for the latest on the podcast.
Speaker A: Today is part two of Two where we are talking to Cheryl Bass about her novels.
Speaker A: After today, you will have heard about writing as a kid using rhyme to help tell your story, setting your story aside while making plans using your family as a focus group for your illustrations promoting your books at Children’s conferences taking classes to learn how to promote your books using your background in PR to help you promote your book writing stories based on your pets and her advice to take your time baby Dragon’s Big Sneeze A sick baby dragon feels terrible when his fiery sneeze causes problems for a neighboring village.
Speaker A: Can they forgive and find it in their hearts to help the giant young dragon follow one brave little girl who enters his cave and confronts the dragon?
Speaker A: After learning about his plight, she advocates for him with the town’s people.
Speaker A: It will take problem solving at its best to prevent further destruction and heal the ailing dragon.
Speaker B: So have you already written book two, I assume?
Speaker C: Yeah, well, I already wrote the rough draft and so my first editor is going to she does three edits on it.
Speaker C: The first one is the developmental edits for any gaps in the story and then I add some paragraphs or whatever needs to be added to explain things that are left unexplained in the story so there’s no holes in the story.
Speaker C: And then she comes back with some other edits.
Speaker C: And then I have a different editor that I use for the rhyme and the meter to make sure no matter what accent you have or where you’re from in the country, if you’re reading it out loud, everything is going to flow.
Speaker C: The meter is going to flow consistently.
Speaker B: So what are kind of your tips and tricks that you use for writing these rhyming stories?
Speaker C: Definitely read out loud as you are writing it, read a couple of lines and it’ll also get you into the rhythm for the next line.
Speaker C: For the next couple of lines.
Speaker C: So first think about what you well, my process.
Speaker C: Everyone’s different.
Speaker B: My process.
Speaker C: I think about what I want to happen in the story first, and I kind of write it out to myself.
Speaker C: Okay, the dragon does this, and then the dragon does that, and the girl comes along and she says this, and then I try to write it in a way that’s going to rhyme.
Speaker C: So I usually have two things open on my computer while I’m typing.
Speaker C: One of them is rhyme zone, and the other one is thesaurus.com I’ve got this couplet I’m working on, and I’m trying to think, okay, the dragon is doing this.
Speaker C: He goes into his cave, and she asks him, why won’t you behave?
Speaker C: Okay, cave and behave.
Speaker C: That rhymes.
Speaker C: Or what’s another word for cave?
Speaker C: If I can’t find a word that rhymes with it.
Speaker C: Okay.
Speaker C: His cavern, whatever.
Speaker C: So I’m toggling constantly back and forth between thesaurus.com and rhyme zone and working on it that way.
Speaker B: I use thesaurus for pretty much anything I have to come up with a name for.
Speaker B: I don’t want to use this word.
Speaker B: I want to use a word that sounds fancier.
Speaker B: So not rhyming necessarily, but just like coming up with words that are like, what other words are for that?
Speaker B: What else can you call a car?
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: Yeah, because you don’t want to keep using the same words over and over again in a story.
Speaker B: It’s repetitive.
Speaker B: Now I imagine a cave.
Speaker B: You want to always stay a cave.
Speaker B: I wouldn’t suddenly switch to cavern.
Speaker B: That’s a little bit different, at least in my brain.
Speaker B: Those are two different things.
Speaker B: Okay, so you write out what you want to happen.
Speaker B: You get all the rhyming stuff to happen.
Speaker B: You send it off to your developmental editor, get it all cleaned up, and then by the time that it gets to that second editor that’s checking the rhyming and the accents and all of that, is there typically a whole lot of editing that comes back from that person?
Speaker C: Well, it’s only been the one story so far, and there’s been some edits that come back, and then I take some of them and I leave some of them.
Speaker C: And that’s another thing that’s important, too.
Speaker C: Just because an editor has an idea doesn’t mean you have to accept their idea.
Speaker C: I accept about 90% of what both of the editors have said, but there’s some things where I’ve dug my heels in and I’ve said, no, I’ll just leave it this way.
Speaker C: I like it this way.
Speaker B: Like the parent thing, that’s a pretty big where his parents at?
Speaker B: That’s a pretty big thing, right?
Speaker C: Exactly.
Speaker B: I mean, you could have just said, I want it to be a mystery.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: Yeah, but no, then people would have been like that this doesn’t make sense.
Speaker C: Whatever.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: I’m good at being edited because I used to be a journalist before I went into PR, so I don’t really take edits personally.
Speaker C: And I get excited about them when they’re really good edits.
Speaker C: But then after I’m done with the edits from both editors, then the next thing is I forget what it’s called, but where you write out what you want to happen on each page.
Speaker C: So you have a couplet or four little phrases or something, two couplets or something that you want on a page.
Speaker C: And then you write out you type out what’s going to happen on that page with those words, and then what’s going to happen on the next page with those words, and what’s going to be a two page spread and things like that.
Speaker C: And then you get the first draft back from the editor with all those things in black.
Speaker C: And I mean, not editor from the illustrator in black and white.
Speaker C: And then you discuss color choices.
Speaker C: And that’s been very exciting.
Speaker C: Whenever I would get things back from the illustrator, it was always like Christmas opening the attachments and seeing and seeing my dragon come to life and my little girl come to life.
Speaker B: Especially if they’re, like, nailing it, because if they were, I imagine it’d be a totally different feeling if you open those up.
Speaker B: And it was totally not what you wanted at all.
Speaker B: That’s why you audition, essentially, the illustrators you have a general idea of.
Speaker B: I mean, I imagine you said you tried out several different ones.
Speaker B: I imagine each one had a different way that they drew the dragons and stuff like that.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: And I wanted the images to look very glowy.
Speaker C: I had sort of this well, you’ve seen this, which the people you can’t.
Speaker B: Really see it, but your background is eating it.
Speaker C: Yeah, my background is eating it, but the images on the COVID and inside it are all they sort of have this glow.
Speaker C: And I found some things from other illustrators online that had that same kind of style that I liked.
Speaker C: So, for example, the little girl is holding a torch for light when she goes into the dragon’s cave, and you can see this warm glow of the fire of the torch that she’s holding.
Speaker C: So that was very important to me.
Speaker C: So even in the black and whites, I said, just, can you give me a little bit of color for the torch?
Speaker C: I want to make sure that you’re doing that kind of glowy type of image that I’m looking for.
Speaker B: You want the lights to be reflecting like it would be in real life.
Speaker B: If you’re holding a torch, it’s not going to be the only light you’re going to see is the fire itself.
Speaker B: It’s going to reflect off of surfaces.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: And I wanted it to have sort of this magical kind of quality.
Speaker C: So that was very important to me with the illustrations.
Speaker B: Okay, so you have another book coming out towards the end of the year.
Speaker B: You said, what stage is that book at right now?
Speaker C: So the storyline, it’s already written in rhyme, but it’s waiting on its first set of edits.
Speaker C: So it hasn’t had any of the edits yet.
Speaker C: But really from the time it gets the first set of edits until it publishes, last year was only about six months or less.
Speaker B: Okay, so end of the year, pending anything not taking way longer than last time.
Speaker C: Right?
Speaker C: And I don’t think it would take longer necessarily than last time because I’m using all the same vendors.
Speaker C: They all know me.
Speaker C: They’ve all worked with me before.
Speaker C: The illustrator is using all the same characters as last time.
Speaker C: He can just look at the first book and replicate whatever he drew for the first one and have the characters doing different things and whatever.
Speaker C: There are some new characters that are going to appear in the new one in the sequel, but it’s not creating from scratch the way the first one was.
Speaker C: So it’s going to take less time, I imagine.
Speaker B: So is this going to be like an ongoing series or is it just going to be the two books?
Speaker B: Do you have any idea how many.
Speaker C: I would like to have more things happen with this dragon?
Speaker C: Okay, so I’m envisioning him getting into all kinds of adventures.
Speaker B: So he’s burned down villages accidentally with his sneezes.
Speaker B: There’s so many cool stories that you can do with dragons because they fly and they fire.
Speaker B: My daughter watches stuff where the dragons can like she’s really big into how to train your dragon and stuff like that.
Speaker B: Those dragons all do all kinds of different tricks and stuff, right?
Speaker C: And you’re just bound by your imagination.
Speaker C: When it’s a mythical creature like this, you can have them doing all kinds.
Speaker B: Of stuff within reason.
Speaker B: Yeah, I’ve had some narrations where it’s like but would that really happen?
Speaker B: I mean, I guess it’s your fantasy world, so if you want to happen that way, that’s up to you.
Speaker B: But yeah, I don’t know.
Speaker B: I haven’t had anything crazy, crazy happen in any books I’ve narrated.
Speaker B: But I imagine that could happen where something is so far out of the realm of possibility.
Speaker B: So are there going to be any more dragons introduced or is he going to stay by himself?
Speaker C: I can’t tell you that’s the big question in the second book, actually.
Speaker B: Okay, I’m so sorry.
Speaker B: No spoilers.
Speaker C: I don’t want to spoil it.
Speaker C: But that’s his goal in the second book is to find, remember, because his.
Speaker B: Parents so he’s got to have someone like him.
Speaker B: That seems like a reasonable thing to happen in a book.
Speaker C: So that’s what the second book is going to deal with.
Speaker C: Your birth family versus your found family, those sorts of questions.
Speaker B: Okay, so you seem to have stumbled into the good group of advice and stuff like that.
Speaker B: Have you had any just terrible advice that you’ve maybe not even given to you but seen in any of these Facebook groups and stuff that you’ve been.
Speaker C: In I haven’t seen any terrible advice.
Speaker C: No, actually, a lot of people seem to be sincere and really trying to help others.
Speaker C: And some things that work for one person may not work for somebody else.
Speaker C: Like, for example, one of the things that really works for me is there’s a website called Pubby.
Speaker C: Co puby.
Speaker C: Co.
Speaker C: I don’t know why it’s not, but it’s co anyway.
Speaker C: It helps new authors get good reviews or any kind of review or even a bad review.
Speaker C: Basically you pay a fee for a year and a nominal fee for what it is.
Speaker C: It’s maybe $200 for the year.
Speaker C: And you get this currency unique to that site called Snaps.
Speaker C: It’s their own made up currency.
Speaker C: And you read other people’s books and you review them on Amazon and you earn snaps that way.
Speaker C: And then you trade in those snaps for other people to review your book.
Speaker C: So it’s not a quid pro quo.
Speaker C: It’s not like I read your book and then review it, and then you read my book back.
Speaker C: It’s I read yours.
Speaker C: You read somebody else’s.
Speaker C: Somebody reads somebody else’s.
Speaker C: So it doesn’t ruin the terms of service.
Speaker C: It doesn’t go against the terms of service of Amazon or anything like that.
Speaker B: Yeah, it’s basically just a group of people that you’re there for the purpose of reviewing books.
Speaker C: Yes.
Speaker C: And it tells you how many pages these books are too, or not pages, but how many words.
Speaker C: So if I don’t want to be spending too much time reviewing other people’s books, I can just look for other children’s books, which is good for me anyway.
Speaker C: I need to know what else is out there and what the competition is and so on.
Speaker C: So I read these others and then I earn the Snaps and I’ve gotten something like 90.
Speaker C: Something of the reviews that I’ve gotten on Amazon have come from Pubby reviewers that are other people that are interested in reviewing other people’s books.
Speaker B: There are similar things for all my experiences in audiobooks because I don’t have any books published yet.
Speaker B: But there are similar things for audiobooks as well, where they don’t let the narrators do it, though it has to be the person that is the rights holder for the book that does opens the thing.
Speaker B: At least the ones that are available now that I know about.
Speaker B: But similar thing, you pay a thing now that one is you pay a thing, you upload your free codes that you have to them and then it would be essentially like an Arc reader.
Speaker B: They get a free copy and they’re supposed to go review it afterwards.
Speaker C: NetGalley is another one that does that, that I’ve gotten some really great reviews from NetGalley and a lot of the people that go to NetGalley to review books are teachers, librarians, people in that realm.
Speaker C: So it’s really great to get reviews from people.
Speaker C: That’s their life.
Speaker C: They work with kids and they know what kids like.
Speaker B: Yeah, I’ve heard of quite a few newsletters and stuff that you can get your books into that get sent out to people that I don’t remember the names of them, but there was one where it was like, if you’re a romance author, they would put you in the romance newsletter.
Speaker B: If you were a children’s author, I don’t know if they do children’s, but they would put you in the children’s newsletter.
Speaker C: For example, there are several that I’ve done like that one of them is through written Word Media and they have several like bargain Booksie and freebooksie.com and things like that, redfeather something or other.
Speaker C: And that’s their romance for their romance.
Speaker C: And then they send everybody who wants to be on their e newsletter who are readers, get a listing of different books every week or every two weeks, something like that, that are on sale.
Speaker C: If you’re willing to put your book on sale for the ebook, then they’ll list it in this listing.
Speaker C: And it’s great to do that because then people maybe start out by buying your ebook and then decide to get either a hard copy or a paperback.
Speaker C: Hardcover.
Speaker C: Paperback.
Speaker B: So you’re saying ebooks.
Speaker B: So you have the print book, which is square.
Speaker B: Ebooks are typically like rectangular.
Speaker B: Did your illustrator do both versions or did he just cut off the edges for the rectangular versions?
Speaker B: I know, like, ebooks is like a smaller it’s not a square.
Speaker B: At least my Kindle is not a square.
Speaker C: I think my ebook looks pretty much like my regular book.
Speaker C: I don’t know how they did that.
Speaker C: I didn’t really get into the.
Speaker B: Ask the questions.
Speaker B: I imagine it’s similar to audiobook covers because like, the ebook cover is usually rectangular where the audiobook is square.
Speaker B: So they typically I don’t know, there’s two different ways.
Speaker B: Typically they just like cut off the bottom and the top a little bit and then move the words.
Speaker B: That’s typically what I see with audiobook covers, just kind of you get the ones that just take it and they just literally smush it in some photo software so the whole photo looks like it got squished.
Speaker C: Oh gosh, no, this looks actually really good.
Speaker C: The ebook is through Kindle and I have Kindle Unlimited, so I’m involved in that that’s the only place you can get my ebook right now is through Amazon.
Speaker C: But I do have the hardcovers and soft covers elsewhere.
Speaker B: Do you have plans for any other series in the future or are you on Dragons for a while?
Speaker C: I’ll stick with the Dragon for a while.
Speaker C: I have another story that is loosely based on a dog that I had about four years ago.
Speaker C: And he had some behavioral issues and some mental health issues and he was a difficult dog to raise.
Speaker C: He was a border collie mix, very smart, but he was almost completely deaf and he was fearful.
Speaker C: So very neurotic.
Speaker C: Was basically Woody Allen in a fur suit.
Speaker C: That was my dog Asher.
Speaker C: But this story that I’ve written about him that I’m hoping to publish someday, not necessarily right away, is about loosely based on him and how we got him involved in agility and that helped in real life, it did help him, but he was never completely a normal dog in the story.
Speaker C: It’s sort of a redemption story and the agility helps and he’s great and everything, but in real life he was better than he was, but he was never quite exactly like other dogs, which is fine.
Speaker C: He had his challenges, but that’s what that book would be about.
Speaker C: And I’m waiting on that one, though, because the dog genre of children’s picture books is so overloaded right now that I want to build a little bit of a reputation for myself before I launch into a story about a dog because otherwise they’ll all get lost in the shuffle.
Speaker C: I don’t think anyone would necessarily read it because just because there’s so many of them.
Speaker B: And now this would be another children’s yes.
Speaker C: Children’s picture book.
Speaker B: Okay, so the two that you said are published in anthologies, those ones are.
Speaker B: I assume they’re adult anthologies.
Speaker B: I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a kids anthology.
Speaker C: No, it’s a personal essay that’s in adult anthologies about different types of dogs and people’s experiences with dogs.
Speaker C: So I had a short story.
Speaker B: So it’s nonfiction.
Speaker C: Nonfiction, yeah.
Speaker C: And I may make that one into a picture book too, that story, because that was about my dog that starred as Toto in The Wizard of Oz.
Speaker C: She did dinner theater.
Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
Speaker B: That could be a fun picture book.
Speaker B: Yes.
Speaker C: She did seven shows a week for five months.
Speaker C: She got paid in prime rib because it was dinner theater, so she got that every night.
Speaker C: And I got paid $40 a show that she was in.
Speaker C: So she got paid more than the children that played the Lollipop Gill people or whatever.
Speaker C: So she was the only cast member without an understudy.
Speaker C: So I was very proud of her.
Speaker B: Did you have to train her to do anything for the show?
Speaker C: Yeah, so she had to learn how to answer the Toto as well as her real name, which is Lyric.
Speaker B: Anywhere close.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: And at the end of the show, I would come by into the main area and I would bring a little ink pad and I would have her sign potigraphs.
Speaker C: I would have her paw onto the ink pad.
Speaker B: That’s so cute.
Speaker C: That was really fun, being a doggy stage mom.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: I think all the creatures in my house respond to multiple names because you have their name name and then the nickname that you call them.
Speaker B: So you had to basically just give the dog a different nickname.
Speaker B: That it then knew.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker A: That’s cool.
Speaker B: Well, do you have any final advice, tips, tricks for any new authors or maybe authors that are looking to kind of revamp their process.
Speaker B: I know you’re still newer yourself, but you’ve learned more than someone who hasn’t done it yet.
Speaker B: So what have you got to help out someone?
Speaker C: Sure.
Speaker C: I have several things that I would say.
Speaker C: One, there’s no rush.
Speaker C: You’re on your own timeline.
Speaker C: So for me, part of the reason I decided to self publish when I did was I saw that video and it made me feel like it was possible with somebody’s help.
Speaker C: But it took me still 13 years from my actual sneeze, my own sneeze, into actually making this into a book.
Speaker C: So there’s no rush to that.
Speaker C: And jot your ideas down, record them into your phone, text yourself, send yourself notes if you come up with an idea.
Speaker C: And there are some books out there that talk about morning pages and things like that, and in the morning to write a certain number of pages.
Speaker C: My advice is to follow your own circadian rhythms.
Speaker C: If I feel like writing things at three in the morning, I can’t sleep, whatever.
Speaker C: Don’t fight that.
Speaker C: If your body’s able to you’re coming up with your creative ideas, then just follow that.
Speaker C: Also know that you’re not on your own.
Speaker C: You can join all these Facebook groups.
Speaker C: There’s Facebook groups for everything, any disease you think you might have or whatever.
Speaker C: You can find a Facebook group about it.
Speaker C: But there’s webinars.
Speaker C: There’s so much you can gain from other people.
Speaker C: And use your friends and family as a focus group too.
Speaker C: You’ve got people already in your life who can give you their opinions too.
Speaker C: Those are the pieces of advice that I would give.
Speaker B: I actually have my best friend is Alpha Reading as I’m writing mine.
Speaker B: Also, to add to that, there are authors that will do like seminars and stuff, and then they’ll put it up on YouTube.
Speaker B: So that’s another place that you might brandon Sanderson is one of the authors I know that does all his seminars are on his YouTube somewhere.
Speaker B: So that is also another resource for finding maybe you can’t afford a webinar that’s a paid one, but there’s anything you can find, anything on Google, like literally anything you can find.
Speaker C: Right.
Speaker C: And if you’re a children’s book author, join SCBWI and things like that.
Speaker C: These associations that give you some credibility.
Speaker C: And then they also have those videos and things that you can watch on their websites for free as a member.
Speaker B: Well, a lot of them too.
Speaker B: If you are getting into the publishing route, I know there’s a couple that’s not one that I’ve heard of, but there’s one for grown up books I know where they have lawyers there that will look through contracts and stuff to make sure you’re not being taken advantage of and stuff as well.
Speaker B: I don’t know if that one does that as well, but a lot of those organizations will have people on hand to use for that kind of thing as well.
Speaker B: If you’re looking into using people where you would need contracts like your Illustrator and stuff like that, but especially like when you’re getting into agents, if you had ended up going that route, you want to make sure that the contract is all good for you too.
Speaker C: Exactly.
Speaker B: Thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker C: Well, thank you so much.
Speaker B: Thank you.
Speaker B: Have a good Saturday.
Speaker C: Thanks.
Speaker C: You too.
Speaker C: Take care.
Speaker B: Bye bye.
Speaker A: As Cheryl got older, she liked Charlotte’s Web.
Speaker A: Charlotte’s Web is a book of children’s literature by American author E.
Speaker A: B.
Speaker A: White and illustrated by Garth Williams.
Speaker A: It was published on October 15, 1952, by Harper and brothers.
Speaker A: The novel tells the story of a livestock pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a barn spider named Charlotte.
Speaker A: When Wilbur’s in danger of being slaughtered by the farmer, charlotte writes messages praising Wilbur, such as some pig and humble inner web, in order to persuade the farmer to let him live.
Speaker A: Written in white’s, dry, lowkey manner, charlotte’s Web is considered a classic of children’s literature enjoyed by readers of all ages.
Speaker A: The description of the experience of swinging on a rope swing at the farm is an often cited example of rhythm in writing, as the pace of the sentences reflects the motion of the swing.
Speaker A: Since this story is not yet available in the public domain, today we’ll be reading the short ASOP fable The Pig and the Sheep.
Speaker A: Don’t forget we’re reading Lemore de Arthur, the story of King Arthur and of his noble Knights of the Roundtable on our Patreon.
Speaker A: You can find the link in the show notes, the Pig and the Sheep.
Speaker A: A pig found his way into a.
Speaker B: Meadow where a flock of sheep were grazing.
Speaker A: The shepherd caught him and was proceeding.
Speaker B: To carry him off to the butchers, when he set up a loud squealing and struggled to get free.
Speaker A: The sheep rebuked him for making such.
Speaker B: A to do, and said to him.
Speaker A: The shepherd catches us regularly and drags us off just like that, and we don’t make any fuss.
Speaker A: No, I dare say not, replied the pig, but my case and yours are altogether different.
Speaker A: He only wants you for wool, but he wants me for bacon.
Speaker A: Thank you for joining Freya’s fairy tales.
Speaker A: Be sure to come back next week for Stormy’s journey to holding her own fairy tale in her hands and to hear one of her favorite fairy tales.
