Co-Writing with Cat Michaels Archives

What a different start to spring we’ve had, right? I hope you all are well and enjoying the great out doors.

Bleeding hearts from Pixabay. — “Bleeding Hearts” from Pixabay

Topics you will see in this First Friday GR8Blog post:

*Happy 6 Years to Books by Rose

*Mother’s Day

*Honoring Our Mother and Crafts to Make

*Fun Crafting Things for Our Little Free Library

*Update on Book With Cat Michaels

Happy 6 Years to Books by Rose

It’s hard to believe 6 years ago I started Books by Rose.

I have learned so much along the way. I’m so thankful to all those that have supported my journey. With nine titles published, I’m looking forward to more to come.

Mother’s Day

A salute to all the mother’s out there. Mother’s Day can mean a lot of different things to different people. On this day, you may celebrate with your own children, your mother, your mother-in-law, aunts, grandmothers, or the mother figures in your life.

Our sons make me forever grateful to be called their mom. I hope this Mother’s Day I will be able to spend time with them and our Littles. We miss them so much!

Our sons at Field of Dreams. — Me with our sons

Honoring Our Mom and Crafts to Make

With our own mother, we honor her in many ways, remembering her in everything she was.

Our mom's trio in the 1930's. — Margaret, Irene, and Mary

One way I keep her memory alive, I include her in some of my stories. For those that have followed along, you know the story about how she was a singer in her younger days. Her trio was called, “Margret, Irene, and Mary.” Sound a tiny bit familiar? Yes, my triplet books and the“name of their titles” were fashioned as close to the name of her group as I could get. “Merrie” in the story is after our mom. Our niece spells her name the same way. I thought it was a perfect fit.

Last fall, I release the triplet’s final book of my, “Maggie, Millie, and Merrie” series. The art project in the story has been a huge hit. Our mom would have loved this one, as she was big into crafts of every kind.

Maggie, Millie, and Merrie's Mystery Mail — Maggie, Millie, and Merrie’s Mystery Mail

I recently made the art project for our neighbor for Easter. Here’s a sneak peek of part of it. It was fun to make. The possibilities for this project are endless.

Project made from, "Maggie, Millie, and Merrie's Mystery Mail." — Card made from, “Maggie, Millie, and Merrie’s Mystery Mail.”

If you are interested in a copy of this story, check it out on Amazon.

Fun Crafting Things for Our Little Free Library

Two years ago, my husband surprised me with the plans to make a “Little Free Library.” He’d work on it in the garage as weather permitted. He finished it a month ago around the time the world shut down. We plan to put it out soon, but want to do a weather proof run before adding books. We’ll have to wait to see how things go in the news so everyone is safe.

I had the pleasure of decorating the top part. Since I love dollhouses, this was a perfect time for me to play! Solar Lights were added to the little living room so it will be lit at night. (Fingers crossed.)

I spent very little money on the items for the room and used recycled materials. See photo below.

We are so excited to put it out and share books with our community.

The living room in the Little Free Library. — Living Room for our Little Free Library

This past few months have been trying for many. Keeping busy has saved me. I made sure to take part in a few free classes offered online. I hope you all found some great things to enjoy, as well.

Update on Book With Cat Michaels

I’m also looking forward to finishing up the book Cat Michaels and I have written. It’s finished! We are going through the revision process. (Thank you, Cat for all you’re doing with that!) We are so excited to share our story with all of you this coming year.

In case you missed it, our story is about:

Horse with book description. — Image Credit: Pixabay

How are you doing? How have you occupied your time these past few months? We’d love to hear from you in the comment section below.

Keep watching this coming week, as I will share my other author friend’s, “First Friday GR8Blog” posts. Have a great week, everyone!

Stay safe and stay well.

As always, Happy Reading!

~Rosie

*If you want to see more updates, sign up to subscribe to my page. We’d love to have you on board.*

If you are a writer, what big project have you been working in 2019? Have you faced any challenges? What obstacles have you had to jump? Has your writing road in 2019 been a smooth one?

I’ve had an exciting year and I can’t wait to tell you all about it.

This past year, I worked on writing and illustrating my latest book, “Maggie, Millie, and Merrie’s Mystery Mail.” It was a fun book to make and I hope readers are enjoying the art project in this story.

In October, I released my ninth book! I had a book launch in November, giving away lots of fun prizes.

“Maggie, Millie, and Merrie’s Mystery Mail”

If you are thinking of gifting this book, you can read the Kindle Version for the low price of $1.99. (Limited Time Only.)

***The art project will keep your reader busy for hours and hours on those snowy days, or anytime.***

Setting Up and Co-Writing with Cat Michaels – Writer

The first few months of this year were spent setting up and writing a story with Cat Michaels for a MG chapter book released next year.

Of course, we wanted to get right to the story, but, we had to decide on some business issues first. We plugged right in, getting started and paved the way to how this was going to work out.

Writing with a Co-Writer

Here are just a few things we had to consider. We had to decide on the technical issues. How were we going to write a book together living so far away from each other? What responsibilities did each one carry? How often would we touch base to discuss updates?

Technical Issues Credit: Pixabay — Technical Issues

(Cat and I will hopefully explain this better for you down the road. For now, here are a few critical things we had to discuss before starting.)

Objective
Target Audience
Desired Results
Roles (How to divide the work.)
Budget
Royalties (How will they be managed and split?)

And so much more.

Building Timelines and Character Boards

Timeline and Character Boads — Timeline and Character Boards

For the writing part, we built a timeline and character boards. These were not made all in one day. After our characters evolved over time and more ideas kept popping up, we changed things many times. It was interesting when a situation took a whole new route and one we weren’t expecting. Writing is funny that way.

Research

Many times in our story, we run across things that need to be researched. This takes time away from our writing, but it’s been worth its weight in gold.

Horses

There has been so much that we didn’t know about horses. Luckily, we have found some great people and resources on where to get our answers. Thanks to all that contributed to this. Cat even took this research to the next level on her travels.

Check out one of her trips here.

Food

Another research item you may all remember, was a dinner meal the characters eat in the story. Our story is set in the Midwest and this well-known food is popular in this area. It’s Country Fried Steak. Or, is it Chicken Fried Steak? Since Cat was not familiar with this food, we thought we’d run a survey to our followers. Country Fried Steak won! That post made us all hungry.

Psssst. There will be a recipe at the back of this book for you all to try out. Yum!

Life Happens

Cat and I both have many things we do in our personal lives. She went on a few trips. I had a few times where family situations came up and had to put writing on the back burner. Knowing these busy times were going to happen, I planned accordingly and wrote as much as I could. I was lucky for the most part. When I’d sit down to write a chapter or two, the ideas flowed like magic most days. A few times though, I’d find myself stuck and have to take a break.

***Taking breaks is highly recommended, by the way.***

Now to the Story

The story we started is very different than the one we originally wrote.

Here’s the image that started it all back in a story prompt Cat posted on February 27, 2015. Wow, that was almost 5 years ago!

Cat's post from 2015 — Cat’s Post from 2015

Our older version did involve a horse, but the situation was much different. Also, a mysterious older lady befriended our main character. I won’t tell you too much, because someday, I think the story can actually work in another genre. After looking it over and discussing it, the topic in the main plot was not one a MG reader would enjoy or find interesting. That would not work, right? We have to entertain the reader.

We did keep the setting, the family, and the horse. That was about it.

A best friend was developed for our main character. (I happen to love this character and I can’t wait for you all to meet her.)

Another character we added, is a “mean girl.” It’s probably been the hardest part of the story for me to write.

How We Pulled this All Together

We decided, I would write the chapters and Cat would go in and do her magic. If you have not seen Cat’s work yet, you will see what I mean. She can take a boring ole’ sentence and make it fly off the page.

Cat has a wonderful critique group in her hometown to look it over and add their awesome advice. So far, this system has worked well for us. (Thank you N.C. Critique Group!)

My Dream for December and the New Year

Finishing our story and getting it out into the world to all of you! We still have a long way to go, but I feel we are on track to where we want to be.

I’m also going to work on gathering image ideas for a new Picture Book for Early Readers. That will hopefully come out late next year.