Writer's resources

The Institute of Children's Literature provides correspondence courses for people who want to learn to write for children. I was fortunate to take courses through them with wonderful instructors.  The original Snowmallows manuscript was written during one of these courses. 

Children's Book Insider is a family owned company that provides a host of resources for writers both experienced and new.  They very graciously shared the news of the publication of Snowmallows on their first Kidlit Distancing Social on April 3, 2020.

Children's Book Insider also provides a product called Writing Blueprints.  I used information on their Self-Publishing Blueprint to help me produce Snowmallows.  This Blueprint consists of short video sessions packed with great info.

Highlights Foundation has many great workshops and resources for writers, including many for self-publishing.  Their Indie Author Workshop taught by Darcy Pattison was the course that gave me the confidence to self-publish.  And their Sharing Our Hope Workshop was where I met several great writing friends.

These pre-set templates layout the interior book design for your self-published book.  If you are proficient in Microsoft Word, these templates are easy to use.  I used the Affection Style for Snowmallows.

Calibre is a free download that can be used to convert your written manuscript into an E-Book.  I used it for Snowmallows and it worked great for upload to Amazon.  There was some technical tweeking needed for IngramSpark, but in the end, it worked well.

 Vijaya is a prolific writer who I am happy to call my friend.  She has a beautiful blog.  It covers writing, faith, science, and many other things of interest to her.  I'm grateful that she's featured me on it twice.  Below is a link to our Snowmallows interview. 

Kristi has written a range of books for children and adults.  She's written many christian themed books, including mysteries, for children and several writing instruction books for adults. She was my instructor at the Sharing Our Hope Workshop at Highlights Foundation.

Darcy Pattison is a writer and independent publisher.  Her Mim's House website provides fantastic information on books for children.  Darcy was my teacher at the Indie or Self-Publishing Workshop at Highlights Foundation - the course that led me here. 

Darcy Pattison also has a wonderful archive of blog posts on independent publishing.  She no longer posts new blogs, but has kept the archive available for reference.

Barbara Mariconda has written multiple books for children including the Lucy P. Simmons series. She's also an educator.  I'm happy to be included as one of her students from her very early teaching days.

Patricia Reilly Giff was an educator and writer with scores of books and multiple awards to her credit.  I was fortunate to be able to take a few writing workshops under her direction where she helped with critiques of Snowmallows.  The writing world lost a friend when she passed away in June 2021.