August 31, 2009

Whoo Hoo Again!

Coming through once again, Guardian Angel Publishing has accepted my picture book manuscript, My Brother, the Frog. There’s no release date yet, but my publisher already has an illustrator in mind. I’ll post more info on this, if the illustrator accepts the project.

In other news, I’ve still been working on online games and have reached a decent sized inventory of games and activities. I plan to launch my site in the fall when my first book, If I Could Be Anything, is released. Right now, I’ve been loading and testing games, but it’s not a working website yet. The following game isn’t going to be on my kid-friendly site, but I couldn’t resist making it once I found out that I could switch the target pretty easily. I figure that adults might get a kick out of this so I’m posting this here. It’s based on whack-a-mole and you have to click the mouse to register hits.

http://www.kevschildrensbooks.com/whack/whackanauthor.html

Also, I wound up winning the contest that Gayle Krause, hosted on her blog

http://thestorytellersscroll.blogspot.com/

The grand prize was an autographed copy of her picture book, Rock Star Santa. Gayle autographed it for my daughter, who was thrilled to see that the book was personalized for her. Rock Star Santa is a modern day “Night Before Christmas. The verse and the illustrations are great, and this would make a fine addition to any child’s library. It’s published by Scholastic for anyone who would like to put a copy under the Christmas tree this year.

August 17, 2009

More Tech Stuff

I must have spent the past two months up to my eyeballs in technology, while I tried to piece together some online games. I managed to get a working matching game, puzzle and online coloring book. I also reserved the domains kevschildrensbooks.com and kevinschildrensbooks.com, that I’ll be using to host these games. I’m not quite sure which domain I’ll eventually use, but I figured that I should probably reserve both.

Most of the games I came up with are based on The Sister Exchange, illustrated by Kit Grady. But now I’m waiting on some graphics from Marina Movshina who illustrated If I Could Be Anything. After, I see what I can do with the new graphics, I think I’ll be close to finishing the new website. Because, then it will just be a matter of creating the main page, along with any links. That should be a piece of cake compared to what I’ve been trying to teach myself lately. I’m planning on officially launching this site in the Fall to coincide with my first book’s release. I’ll be posting more information when I have a firm date.

On to other things, I actually wrote something new. It seems like forever since I’ve actually written anything and it felt terrific to exercise the creative portion of my noggin again. But Gayle Krause, a member of my poetry critique group, came up with a contest that was too much fun to resist. It was about creating a poem blending characters from two different fairytales. My entry is called “The Date”, and you can see that and others on her blog at,

http://thestorytellersscroll.blogspot.com/

And you can always post one of your own if you like. The grand prize is an autographed copy of her picture book, Rock Star Santa.