Welcome Merc Boyan! Can you tell us a little about yourself?
My name is Merc Boyan and
I am a new children’s book author and illustrator. I work as the Visual
Storyteller for The Planetary Society during the day and have been writing
kid’s books at night. My wife and I recently completed and selfpublished our
first book, Alonzo’s Emotions. In 2017 we were honored to work with the National Park Service
and The Planetary Society to create a Junior Ranger book and badge about the
Total Solar Eclipse. The book was distributed in National Parks nationwide and
was a great success! You can still download the pdf of the book for free here: https://www.nps.gov/home/homestead-eclipse-junior-ranger.htm
We have several other books coming out soon as we are using this as a hobby while we await out first foster child placement!
We have several other books coming out soon as we are using this as a hobby while we await out first foster child placement!
Congrats on the book and for fostering. I think its wonderful when couples open their homes to children who have lost theirs. What
brought about the idea for this book?
I wrote Alonzo’s Emotions some time ago. I wanted to help kids
better understand their complex emotions by giving them more vocabulary about
them. I often see children’s books with “happy, sad, mad, etc...” but I wanted
to teach them about annoyance, melancholy, and irate. There are subtle
differences, but just knowing more words will help them realize that it’s okay
when they feel is way. Showing them that emotions are complex validates their
feelings.
After writing it I kind of put it on the backburner for a while. I
wasn’t sure how to do the artwork! It took a little dreaming and a lot of
inspiration from my wife to figure out how to make it work right. We are quite
pleased with the outcome!
I think that's a great idea. There are so many emotions kids feel and it's a fantastic idea to help them learn about the more complex emotions they feel and the differences between them. Currently, what are you working on?
When we published Alonzo’s Emotions, We created a mini-publishing
team called Camp Heartwood Books. This was really just going to be a name for
the website where we would post links to all of the books we made. Now some
other friends of mine have expressed an interest in writing kid’s books, so I
am going to help them create their books through Camp Heartwood. It’s exciting!
So I am working on a book called “What if the Cows are Really Saying Mooooon?”
and my wife is working on a few other book ideas and there will be a very fun
book from a freiend that’s all about Pineapples coming out soon.
Merc, what has
been the most difficult thing you have struggled with since you began a career
in writing?
Getting people to look at
your book is the hardset thing. The second hardest thing is when you come up
with a brilliant idea! ...but then need to figure out how to accomplish it.
Taking that wild dream out of your head and getting it onto the paper can be a
great challenge, but I think sometimes it’s best to just give it a shot. You
can always change things later, so I just like to get started as soon as I have
the idea. Play with art ideas and word placements on the page. Just making
little demo pages in Photoshop with random photos collaged helps me visualizewhat
the artwork will end up like.
That can be a struggle. With so many books being published each year it is difficult getting readers to notice your book no matter how good it is. That's one reason I like to do author interviews. I love helping readers find new books. Merc, Can you tell us what your favorite scene was to write?
On one page Alonzo finds himself at a taco trunk that has run out of tacos. He’s very bummed about being handed some tamales instead of tacos and he runs home before the emotions overtake him and paints some delicious looking tacos. It was a fun scene to play out and I think it is suprising realistic. What seems like a simple event of not getting the food we want can really spiral us down if we let it. I hope this let’s kids know that it’s okay to be upset and that it is natural and offer them a suggestion of how to creatively reset their mood once they are ready.
What kind of research do
you do before you start a new story?
With kid’s books, I will check around a little to make
sure the exact book I am thinking of doesn’t already exist, but I won’t spend
too much time hunting down other examples of things that are close to the idea.
I don’t like to be over influenced by things like “the book market” or
“publishing trends.” I just want to make the best book I can for my own kids,
then hope that the rest of the world enjoys it a little as well.
I think that sounds like wise advice. How do you handle criticism when it comes to your
writing?
The secret to handling criticism is to love your own work so much
that it doesn’t bother you when others don’t. I haven’t had too much negativity on this book yet, but I’ve had it on LOTS of stuff in the past. Use the good
criticism to grow and make your next project better. Let the mean criticism go.
The hardest critic will be our own future children. Now that’s going to be
harder to take! I hope they love the books we are making for them.
That's great advice. Writing a book takes so much work. How many times do you think you read your book before
going to print?
So so many times! Since this is a kid’s book and is very short, I
read it again and again and again. I still read it now to check it even though
it’s done.
facebook.com/campheartwood
twitter @campheartwood
Thanks so much for sharing with us. Happy Reading!!
No comments:
Post a Comment