For Odessa children’s author Rosie Talley, seeing her book published and on the shelves of stores has been indescribable.
Talley, who’s lived in Odessa for 17 years, published her first children’s book Linus the Troll early last year and has since been busy working to market the book. She’s also been working on her next Linus the Troll book and aims to make it into a series.
“It was indescribable,” Talley said when her book was published in February, 2021. “It was such a dream come true. I’ve dreamt about being a children’s author ever since I was a child myself. It was something that I always wanted to do.”
Linus the Troll is about a kind troll even though he appears a little rough on the outside.
Talley said she drew inspiration from the fairy tale the Three Billy Goats Gruff which she has read to her daughter Aine.
“I’ve been reading to my daughter for her whole life,” Talley said. “She was about four months old and I was reading to her the story about the Three Billy Goats.”
Soon, Talley came up with an idea, what if the troll wasn’t really a bad guy?
“He could just be misunderstood,” Talley said. “These goats were stomping around on the bridge where he lived. That could make anybody grumpy. That’s why I wrote the story. It’s been a lot of fun”
Since then, Talley’s been marketing the book through different events and story times.
She’ll be doing a story time event at 2 p.m. on Sept. 3 at Music City Mall.
Afterwards, Talley will be doing a Q and A session with CBS7’s Mary Kate Hampton.
“The children are going to receive the Linus the Troll activity pages,” Talley said of the event. “There’s a maze and a coloring page and finger puppets. It’s a free event but the book will be available for purchase. I’m going to do a book signing.”
Talley has been marketing her book through other events and story times.
“I’ve done story times for George W. Bush Childhood Home and the Museum of the Southwest and the Ellen Noël,” Talley said. “I’ve been trying to get out as much as possible.”
She self-published her book, a process in which she said didn’t take her a whole lot of time.
Talley, who is a stay-at-home-mom, began the process of writing her book in December, 2020.
“I had to do a story board which was the rough draft of the illustrations,” Talley said. “It was very rough. I’m not an artist so I was just drawing stick figures. They were caveman-like.”
The book was illustrated by Anna Benczedi in Romania.
“I sent my storyboard to my actual illustrator in Romania,” Talley said. “She really captured what I had envisioned. She did a great job.”
When doing the manuscript, she wanted to have a good, clear vision of Linus before she sent it to her illustrator.
She found her illustrator on the website IndieGoGo.
“Sometimes when authors are getting their books financed, they’ll put it on Craig’s List sites,” Talley said. “Whenever they list their books on the site, they usually list an illustrator too so I just went through a bunch of different campaigns and compiled a different list of illustrations that I liked. I went through their online portfolios. I double-checked their reviews and that’s how I selected my illustrator.”
After coming to an agreement to the terms of her contract, Talley sent Benczedi her manuscript and storyboard.
“She would send me back sketches and I would approve them,” Talley said. “After that, I was able to choose an offset printer which is where you print your book out in bulk and distribute it yourself. I also listed my book on barnesandnoble.com and Amazon. Then I just got it out there to the world. It was a very quick process and wasn’t very difficult at all.”
Talley talked about how she was inspired by her daughter to write the book.
“I didn’t think I would get to do it,” Talley said. “I was inspired by my daughter because how am I going to inspire my daughter and tell her to follow her dreams if I’ve never followed mine? That was the catalyst of what gave me the push to actually go for it. Seeing the book out there for the first time was the most amazing thing I could possibly imagine.”
When asked what advice she would give other children’s authors, Talley says to look on different Facebook groups that have authors that can help guide along the way.
“Just because you’re doing this alone doesn’t mean that you have to be lonely in the process,” Talley said. “There are other authors that are willing to support you and can guide you as well as give you advice. There’s a lot of different Facebook groups that are of self-published authors. There’s a lot of information online that some of which can be bad information. The biggest thing to be aware of is scams like vanity publishers. Join different writers groups. There are different groups that have a list of creditors to be aware of and illustrators that are known to be scammers. It’s a good idea to mind your Ps and Qs in that regard. The big thing is to go for it. There’s no need to sit on an idea for years and years like I did. Once you get into it, it’s not as hard as you imagine it to be.”
As for the next book, Talley talked a little bit about what she has planned.
“I’m going to do a full Linus the Troll series,” Talley said. “This book was an introduction to him. But through the Three Billy Goats Gruff, the second book is going to be a spin on that. It’s going to be Linus and the Grumpy Goats. It’ll be a book that’ll hopefully teach children how to share. My daughter’s an only child so that’s something that I need to always be aware of. I need to teach her that she needs to share when she’s playing with other children. I think that would be a good topic to dive into for my next story.”
If you go
- What: Book Signing.
- Where: Music City Mall.
- When: 2 p.m. Sept. 3.
- To purchase the book online: tinyurl.com/3aby29n3
