Tag: picture book

Laundromat 101 Hints

Although “At the Laundromat” is a picture book, many adults would benefit reading it too. This slender volume is a short course in Laundromat 101 or laundromat basics.

It’s amazing what people leave in their pockets when they toss the clothes into the washing machine. Many times these are left behind in the laundromat machines.

Hint 1: Empty Your Pockets

One of the first things I do when I clean the machines in the laundromat is to check inside them. Since all of the washing machines are front loaders, this means turning the drums so anything left behind falls down making them easy to find.

This doesn’t always work as carpenters of DIY builders sometimes leave nails and screws in their pockets. These get caught in the holes in the drum and must be pulled out.

More commonly pocket contents such as keys, rings, earrings, money, lighters fall down. Then there are the socks. The machines really do eat your missing socks, but only because you didn’t look for them.

cover for "At the Laundromat" by Karen GoatKeeper — Request your free eBook copy at Smashwords using coupon code 4XU7N.

Writing Character Motivations

When I look at these various lost items, I reflect about what their loss can mean. Most items are things the owner would find annoying, but not a problem. What about house keys? Car keys? Engagement rings? The week’s budget money?

Would the character panic? How did the character drive home without their car keys? Maybe the character never locks the front door so losing the front door key isn’t important? Perhaps the character makes enough money so losing shat to others is a lot of money isn’t to them.

It’s so easy writing to write as though every character reacts the way we do. For a good writer, that is not true. Every character has their own motivation, their own reaction to events in the novel.

This is one of the big challenges in writing. The author must set aside their own reactions and become, in a small measure, the character so their reactions and actions ring true. They are not clones, but independent characters.

Laundromat 101 Hints

First, check your pockets before tossing those clothes into the washer. Second, turn the drum after you take the clothes out. That last goes for the dryer too. You never know what might show up.

Tags how to wash at a laundromat, picture book

GKP Writing News

Laundromat Repairs

Many people come into the laundromat because their home washer or dryer broke down. But the washers in the laundromat break down too needing laundromat repairs.

Simple Repairs

The easiest laundromat repairs aren’t really break downs. Sometimes people put in quarters too fast and they get stuck. Once these are taken out, the washer is fine.

Screws and nails caught in the drum or inside of the washer are another problem. Once these are pulled out, the washers are fine.

Drain Problems

When a washer won’t drain, clothes are wet, really wet, drippy wet. Most of the time the problem is an underwire bra wire caught across the drain and covered with lint. This requires opening up the drain and removing the wire.

One washer stopped draining. It wasn’t a wire. A repairman had to come. He found someone had washed a rubber backed rug in the machine. The rug must have been old so the rubber came apart into little balls.

The balls formed a big, solid clog in the drain. It required breaking the clog up and removing it piece by piece.

Old dog beds with broken seams will do much the same thing as the stuffing comes out in the wash. One time it stopped the biggest washer completely as the space between the washer drum and the drain drum filled completely up. It took a long time to pull all of the stuffing out.

Lots of people use the washers at the laundromat. As the machines get older, parts wear out and need repair. This is from “At the Laundromat”.

Wearing Out

Even the expensive laundromat washers wear out. The repairman checked out a washer that wouldn’t work and found it needed new parts.

When the washer drums spin, they move. Just like in a car, these drums have shock absorbers. There are four attached to the washer drum and two had worn out.

The washer must be taken out, opened up and the absorbers replaced. Then the washer is put back into place. Once the drain is reattached, the washer is ready for the next customer.

Laundromat repairs are needed often to keep all of the washers and dryers working properly. Usually the repairs are simple. The more complex ones are interesting to watch as the machine is opened up showing how the machine works.

Tags Business behind the scenes, picture book

GKP Writing News

Laundromats

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date December 7, 2024

Laundromats are familiar places to me and have been much of my life. I’m surprised, although I shouldn’t be, at how many people come into the laundromat for the first time in their lives.

Remembering

My family went camping a lot. We had a big, canvas tent and went to lots of places in California.

We would pick up food at the grocery store. Then we ate lunch in a laundromat while our clothes washed and dried. If it was raining, we would linger for a time.

Time Savers

Laundromats are great time savers. All the clothes get washed at once, dried and folded, ready to put away.

One place had laundry service. The woman was an expert at getting clothes clean, much better than I will ever be. We were working full time and having her do our laundry was so convenient.

Practical

With only two of us, the laundry doesn’t pile up that much in a week. When I had a washer, it took longer to put all the items left on top of it all week away than it took to wash the clothes. Laundromats are easier.

There are several sizes of washers for regular clothes or for big items like comforters. The same is true for dryers.

I estimate it would take me over two years to spend as much at the laundromat as to buy a washer. And the laundromat owner fixes any problems, not an expensive repairman.

Work

When the local laundromat opened, I became a regular. I would take a book and relax while the machines cleaned my clothes.

Then I was offered a chance to clean the laundromat when I was there. This paid for my wash.

Cleaning usually isn’t hard. Check inside all the machines, Clean off the lint traps of the dryers. Wash spilled soap off the washers. Sweep the floor. Take out the trash.

The owners are great people. My picture book “At the Laundromat” was written especially for them.

Get a free eBook copy from Smashwords using coupon code 4XU7N.

Tags picture book

GKP Writing News

Picture Book Writing

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date November 22, 2024

Picture book writing has been on my mind for several reasons. One is the suggestion I teach a homeschool class on writing picture books. These lesson plans seem easy to modify into teaching units for my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Another is the Opal and Agate picture book series I now have three rough texts for.

Picture Book Creation Steps

Picture book writing seems so easy, so straight forward. Step one is the idea. Step two is a rough draft laid out to cover all the necessary pages. Creating the illustrations is Step three. Step four is editing and matching the text to the illustrations. Finally, Step five is to assemble and publish the picture book.

It’s not easy to create a picture book. Ideas are easy, true. But taking an idea into a rough draft is not.

Nubian doe High Reaches Drucilla was so proud of her little doe kid Opal. The two remain devoted to each other. Opal is the only kid I have kept for many years and one reason was for her to star in the picture book series.

Opal and Agate

The idea of this series came when Opal was only a day or two old. After all, kids are kids. And I had lots of tales about goat kids. Plus goat kids are cute.

Right off I had a book planned with the beginnings of a rough draft. Except it was not the first book in the series. Where should the series start?

Since Opal and Agate are Nubian dairy goats, perhaps I should first do a book about Nubians. Most people won’t know what they are. To many people goats are the caricatures of hairy, horned, bearded cantankerous creatures.

Now, this picture isn’t totally false. I’ve seen old brush goats that would fit this. But Nubian dairy goats definitely don’t fit this picture.

I worked on this idea. After two or three attempts, I gave up. It was a good idea, but wouldn’t fit into the series.

Now I have two books, one for Agate and one for Opal. These are when they are born. Agate was a bottle baby. Opal was raised by her mother.

My real Nubian doe Agate is older than Opal. For some reason she ended up being a bottle baby and my special pet.

Teaching Picture Book Creation

The steps are right. They work. However, they are not simple or easy. Somehow this needs to be part of teaching picture book writing too.

Tags illustrating picture books, picture book, writing picture books

GKP Writing News

Publishing Your Picture Book

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date November 15, 2024

You have worked hard writing and illustrating your picture book. There are a few things left to do before publishing your picture book.

First is a decision as to whether what you have is really a picture book or should be an illustrated short story or easy reader. There is an excellent article about this in the November/December issue of Writer’s Digest.

Proofread Your Book

This is not a hasty scan. Yes, you know what each and every page should be. That’s the problem. You see what you expect to see, not what’s there.

Go over every word on every page. Go over every illustration. It’s a good idea to have someone else look over these too. Beta readers aren’t just for novels.

Make sure the illustrations are on the correct page. Right side pages have odd numbers. Left side pages have even numbers.

This is why I urged you to save every illustration and the covers in the original layers as well as the final illustration. If you want to make changes, you can do so on the layered image and not have to start over again.

Back Up Your Book

Although you should do this regularly, it’s easy to let things slide. And I have a special key devoted to my books.

Each book has a folder with the original final draft, the formatted drafts for the different places I publish it, all illustrations in both layered and final forms. For my science activity books this includes all of the puzzles with answers, the stories with illustrations and trivia lists.

This picture book was published by IngramSpark. It is hardcover. I think the color richness is superior to that of Kindle.

Publishing Your Picture Book

Decide if you want a hardcover or paper cover or both. It’s a good idea to purchase your own ISBN numbers from Bowkers at myidentifiers.com. That way you can move to a different publisher, if you decide to, without major changes to your book.

Don’t skimp on the paper weight. Use the heavier paper so images don’t bleed through and the pages are easier to handle for young people.

There are many publishers out there. Check them out. I’ve used both Kindle and IngramSpark. I prefer IngramSpark for the color quality, but must maintain a seller account on Amazon for them. Kindle makes it easier to list on Amazon.

Once this book is published, start another one.

Tags picture book

GKP Writing News

Picture Book Covers

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date November 2, 2024

Just as for regular books, picture book covers do more than hold the book together. A good cover attracts interest so a potential reader will stop and look. It showcases the title and author of the book.

eBook and Print differences

An eBook has only the front cover. This is the same size as the interior pages. It needs to be bold, easy to see as many people look at it on their phones.

A print cover has three parts. One is the front with the title, author, illustrator and image on it.

The back of a picture book varies. It can have text to create interest in the book. Or it can be an image that is either new or a continuation of the front image.

Between the front and back is the spine. Picture books are thin. The spine must be a quarter of an inch or bigger before the title and author can be printed on it. Only hardback books have a spine.

Creating Picture Book Covers

Although there are templates and places to purchase a cover, I prefer to create my own. I use paint shop to do this.

The size is important. Whoever is going to print your picture book will tell you the size for the cover plus bleed or small margin around the cover. Sizes for front, back and spine are given too.

The front, back and spine are created separately. Each is saved separately.

This isn’t the real back cover for “Waiting for Fairies”. It has been cropped on both sides to fit into a good web image. This highlights the need to have wide margins around your front and back covers so they can be cropped as needed to suit different formats.

My Method

I create a blank page 300 dpi – 600 dpi the right size for the front and add a background color. This may or may not show very much, but, unless your cover will have lots of white, you want to make sure the page is not white.

The selected front image is resized, same dpi, to fit on the page. Copy and paste as a new layer. Position it. Save it so the layers are left intact, not merged.

Add the title. Experiment with fonts, size, colors, orientation until it’s what you want. Position and save this.

Add the author’s name. This is much the same as for the title. Save this.

Creating the back cover starts with a new page. Add the images and text and save this so the layers are left intact.

The spine is tricky because it is so narrow. I create a page so the spine is horizontal to work with. Put the title and author on it making sure the text is smaller than the spine. Save.

The Final cover

Create a page the size of the full cover including bleed margin. Add the background color.

Go to the front page and merge the layers. Copy and paste it as a new layer on the final cover. Move it into position. (If you save the merged image, do it as a new image.

Repeat to put the back page on the final cover. Rotate the spine to vertical, copy and paste as a new layer. It must be positioned in the exact center of the cover.

I save the final cover with the layers. Then I merge the layers and save it as a merged version. Printing the picture book is the next step.

Tags creating cover images, picture book

GKP Writing News

Formatting Your Picture Book

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date October 25, 2024

The illustrations are done. Text is on the illustrations. Everything is ready for formatting your picture book, you hope.

Front Pages

Just like in a regular book, picture books have title pages. There is a copyright page as well.

(Although I am focusing on a printed book, if you are doing an eBook version, you can ignore the page count. An eBook requires a Table of Contents page added right after the copyright page which should be right after the title page in this format. Don’t forget to resize your images to 8” by 11”. Put them on that size pages using the 0.01” margins using In Line with Text.)

Title pages usually have some cute image taken from the book. If your book is about rabbits, the title page should have a rabbit image along with the title and author.

Copyright pages aren’t always in the front of picture books. Sometimes this information is put on the last page. If it is in the front, often the image on the page makes a two page spread with the first page. Other times it is an introductory image for the book.

Back Pages

In some picture books about animals or history, there is a last page or pages giving more information. I did this in “Waiting For Fairies” with a Nature’s Cast about the night creatures appearing in the book. In “Redcoats and Petticoats” the last page is about the spy network in New England during the Revolutionary War.

formatting your picture book starts with the pictures — This is one of two pages at the end of “Waiting for Fairies” telling about the creatures appearing in the story. I did have to crop the edges to get the right fit for the website. That brings up another issue with picture books. The edge of a page descends into the spine on one side. When you create your images, be sure you keep the main images a good half inch from the edges of the page.

Counting Pages

Traditionally printed picture books have a number of pages evenly divisible by four, usually 32. The reason goes back to how the books are printed. Each print page sheet has four book pages on it. You can see how this works if you take a calendar apart.

Count your pages. Is the number a multiple of four? If not, perhaps you can add or delete a page. Or you can add a blank page. Another way is to use a page for cute images related to your book as is done “For Love of Goats” or “Diary of a Spider”.

Remember your title and first page have an odd number to put them on the right side.

Creating the Pages

I work in Word so my pages must have a margin. If you also work in Word, formatting your picture book needs the margins set at 0.01”.

Resize your images to fit the page size you are using using your paint shop. Do not resize or crop them after putting them on the book pages.

Each image is placed on a page using In Line With Text to lock it into position. Even if your title page has lots of blank space on it, create an image of it the same size as your other images. All of these images should be JPEGs so all layers are merged.

Once all the images are on your pages, you have finished formatting your picture book interior. Now you need a cover.

Tags book assembly, book illustrations, picture book

GKP Writing News

Adding Picture Book Text

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date October 18, 2024

Adding picture book text is part of the illustrating. The text must fit into the illustrations, be a part of them, yet be separate.

How much text will be included depends on the book. Those for older readers often have lots of text telling a story. Examples include “Redcoats and Petticoats” and “The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship”.

Those for younger readers have none to only a few lines. An example would be “Wolf in the Snow” where the text is only names of sounds like howl. “Waiting For Fairies” has a couple of lines of text on each page.

cover for "Waiting For Fairies" by Karen GoatKeeper — In this picture book the text usually fit in two lines along the bottom of the page. When doing the illustrations, I left enough room to fit in the text.

Choosing a Font

There are lots of fonts to choose from. In picture books the aim is to be simple and easy to read.

My preference is Georgia as I find it easy to read and pretty with the serifs. Since I use it on my website and for writing, it was a natural choice for my picture books.

Another aspect is the color of the font. Black is the most common.

Picture book text doesn’t have to be in straight lines. It can be curved or in a column. In this book it is tiered up and down.

Placing the Text

Adding picture book text is part of doing the illustrations. The illustration must leave space for the text. It is often placed at the bottom of the pages.

When I did “The Little Spider” the text became part of the illustrations. This spider is trying to get to a high perch. When the spider goes up, the text goes up. When the spider goes down, so does the text.

Making Text Readable

Black is popular as it shows up well against most backgrounds. There are times when black does not show up well.

On a few pages of “The Little Spider”, this was the case. The text was against brown and disappeared into the background. I created a light yellow oblong and used brown text preserving the ground effect, but making the text readable.

Adding picture book text takes time and thought. The font must reflect the purpose of the book and be readable. The text must fit into the illustrations. Then the picture book becomes a picture book.

Tags create text, illustrating, picture book

GKP Writing News

Formatting Picture Book Illustrations

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date October 11, 2024

Formatting picture book illustrations is the last step. The illustrations must be finished first.

“For Love of Goats” taught me a lot about doing illustrations. Watercolor may be beautiful, but mistakes are forever. Or are they?

Creating the Pictures

Each drawing takes hours. The sketch is drawn, redrawn, corrected. Watercolor is put on after that.

Pencil lines show through watercolor, so they must be very light. If they are too light, you can’t see them.

formatting picture book illustrations example — This picture book image from “For Love of Goats” was created using watercolor and the computer. The kidding pen with the straw was one watercolor picture. Each of the three goats was done separately in watercolor. The goats were placed in the pen using a computer.

Computer ‘Magic’

Formatting picture book illustrations requires scanning them into a computer as JPEG images. My paint shop creates and works with these images. It let me trim down lines that were too thick with paint.

In “For Love of Goats” I have a series of short fiction much of which is set in a stall created with bales of hay. Painting identical stalls for each picture was beyond my skill. I painted one stall.

Then I drew and painted the goats to go into the stall. Duplicating the stall, I had it for all of my drawings. Using my paint shop, I placed the goats into the stall. This worked so well, I used the same method for several of the illustrations.

Doing these things does mean using multiple layers. The first time or two, using layers can be intimidating. Practice helps.

One important practice is to save all of your original drawings in their original form. When I work on one, I save this one as a duplicate in case I have to start over. This is a good habit to have for any illustration work: drawings, paintings, photographs. It is also a good idea with the text for a picture book or a novel.

Final Images

Many picture books are done in letter size. That is the size I create my drawings in.

However, eBooks are usually sized for 6” by 9” ratios. That distorts the letter size image. When formatting picture book illustrations for a digital version, it’s important to crop and resize them for this so they look right in digital format. That is 8” by 11” instead of 8 ½” by 11”.

“Waiting For Fairies”

Although I created many of the images using layers for some picture books, this picture book was done with all complete pictures. That bush was a challenge and, if each image is looked over carefully, it isn’t exactly the same in all of them.

As I look over different picture books, my painting and computer method is not the norm. However, each book is different and each illustrator uses a method they are comfortable with.

Tags computer illustrations, picture book

GKP Writing News

Picture Book Illustrations

Post author By Karen GoatKeeper
Post date October 4, 2024

Traditional publishing companies often control picture book illustrations assigning the text to an artist. Indie picture book authors have two choices: 1) Find and hire an illustrator; or 2) Do their own illustrations.

I am an indie author. That leaves me with the two choices.

cover of "For Love of Goats" by Karen GoatKeeper — What I found out doing this book was to start with illustrating something you are familiar with and enjoy drawing. After that, other projects aren’t so intimidating.

Hiring an Illustrator

For years I did try to find an illustrator. Good ones are expensive. The amount of work that must be put into the illustrations makes them worth their cost.

My first illustrated book was “For Love of Goats” which presented several problems. Goats are not easy to draw. The book includes several breeds of goats and each one is different.

Additionally, goats have attitudes and behaviors. Someone unfamiliar with goats, working only from photographs, will miss these. And these were reflected in the text.

Goats have been an important part of my life for fifty years. I’ve watched them. That didn’t mean I could draw them. I wanted to finish this book I’d worked so hard on, so I learned.

Picture Book Illustrations

If you’ve been looking at picture books, you know illustrations are done in many mediums. They are done in many styles.

Once the decision is made to illustrate a book, the medium is chosen. It must be one the illustrator is comfortable with.

My medium is watercolor. Why? Because I like the way it looks, the way it is done and the challenge of it. Watercolor is a most unforgiving medium as mistakes never go away.

Waiting for Fairies

After completing “For Love of Goats”, I had the confidence to illustrate the two picture books I had written text for. The next one I tackled was “Waiting for Fairies”.

People are incredibly hard for me to draw. Even now, I look at my illustrations and wish I had done better.

The fun part of doing these illustrations was the opportunity it gave me to add an additional layer to the story told in the text. Since the child was waiting for fairies, there should be fairies somewhere.

Doing picture book illustrations isn’t for every author. I’ve found it is for me.

“Waiting for Fairies” eBook version is free through Smashwords for the month of November. The coupon code is LXLLT.

Tags creating picture book illustrations, picture book