A couple of years ago, I did what all moms do. I made up a story to comfort my daughter after she got hurt. She questioned why it took so long for her cut to heal and while the nerd in me wanted to talk about the process of cell regeneration, I knew that my three year old would not take that as an answer.
Instead, I told her of a group of fairies. These fairies were not magical but they were hard workers and they would come when she was sleeping to help fix her cut. These fairies soon became a part of our household conversations. Both Evelyn and her brother, Alexander would talk about the progress the fairies made the night before, and for once, they were excited about healing, instead of painful aware of the long process it took. Evelyn’s addiction to Bandaids even subsided as she realized it would make the fairies work even more difficult if they had to crawl under the Bandaids in the middle of the night.
About a year ago, my husband told me that the Fix-It Fairies needed to be shared with the world. So, one day, I sat down and wrote out the story I had been telling the kids. I didn’t think too much about it, but instead of stressing, I sent out the first draft to a publisher. Within a week, there was a response: it was being sent to the editors. Then a month later, I was sent a contract. Now, here we are and this little story, made up out of desperation to calm a hurt child, is about to be released.
May 15, 2018.
I am shocked. I am excited, but mostly, I am thrilled that this story that helped my own children can be used to help children everywhere. It is about hope and hard work. It is fun and is something I hope to read to my grandchildren when they are young. It is something that I hope my children will always treasure and look back at, knowing that they inspired these fairies to come to life and helped me create the book.
Writing a children’s book was a fun adventure for me. The process of getting the book from random thoughts in your head to being on paper to getting published for the world to see is a lot more stress than I had originally thought it would be. However, it is worth it. I also had a lot of help from my wonderful husband and my awesome kids, especially when it came to the illustrations. If I had to do it all over again, I would in a heartbeat. In fact, the kids and I have already started thinking of other books that we should write. We shall see.
If you do want to check out the book, It is on Amazon:
A Gray(t) Adventure 