Back in the Stone Age, well maybe not that far back...
When Linda Karimo was very young, she learned to read at the knee of her Irish immigrant grandmother. Nannie, as she was known to the family, was just learning English herself.
They read all the classic children’s stories together. There was one in particular that became the inspiration for Linda’s current series of children’s books.
Moving forward, Linda was always a ravenous reader. She would often read all the books by a given author and then go onto yet another great fiction author. Espionage, legal, medical, suspense, and some “who done it” were her game.
Her day job as a Copywriter paid the bills while she dreamed of writing an extraordinary series of children’s books.
So, what childhood story prompted Linda to write a series about those characters?
It was Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Linda’s nickname was always Goldilocks.
She transports her readers into the world of bears whose lives are not much different than humans, just bear style.
She has a conversational style of writing and wants her readers to feel a part of the action taking place, not just looking through the window watching it all going by.
A Lifetime full of love and compassion!
WEBSITE & SOCIAL LINKS:
Website: www.lindakarimo.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/KarimoLinda
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Linda-Karimo-Author-
106429491161549/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda-odubayo-thompson-56743445/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/accounts/onetap/?next=%2F
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/business/hub/
Title: Baby Bear’s Spaghetti MisadventuresAuthor: Linda Karimo
Publisher: Independent
Pages: 42
Genre: Children’s Picture Book
Meet Mama Bear and her sweet little bear child, Baby Bear.
Sometimes he doesn’t do what Mama Bear says, sound familiar?
This one particular day when Mama Bear was cooking spaghetti and meatballs, Baby
Bear bounced his ball against the cave wall.
Baby Bear knew it was on the forbidden list.
He did it anyway.
Mama Bear gave him the look.
He did it again.
Find out what happened to Mama Bear’s spaghetti dinner and naughty Baby Bear.
ORDER YOUR COPY
As a book bloggin' and book Luvin' Princess, I'm always curious to find out how authors got the ideas for their books. Can you tell us how you got the idea to write your book?
Back in the Stone Age, well, maybe not that far back…
When very young, I learned to read at the knee of my Irish immigrant grandmother. Nannie, as she was known to the family, was just learning English herself. We read all the classic children's stories together. There was one in particular that became the inspiration for my current series of children's books.
Can you guess which One?
In recent years, my day job as a Copywriter paid the bills while I dreamed of writing an extraordinary series of children's books.
So, what childhood story prompted me to write a series about those characters?
It was Goldilocks and the Three Bears. My nickname was always Goldilocks.
I transport my readers into the world of bears whose lives are not much different than humans, just bear style.
The Bear Family lives in a modest cave with a kitchen window and cave door like ours. The children will become immersed in the life of this family from book to book in the series.
This is very important to me because our young children are the most confused and anxious during this Pandemic. If you think that your day is complicated and uncertain, then what of your children?
Can you tell us a little about the main characters of your book?
In this first book in the series, the focus is on Baby Bear and Mama Bear.
Baby Bear is a pre-school child bear that is always underfoot, especially when Mama Bear is trying to cook. He is cute and loveable but he doesn't listen to Mama Bear when she says, "no."
He cries and laughs and the illustrator really shows his emotions. Next year he will go to Big Boy School. And, guess what, his first day at Bear Elementary School is the subject of the next book in the series.
Mama Bear is a kind and nurturing mother bear. She is stern when she needs to be and warm and considerate when Baby Bear is a good boy bear. She loves to cook and wears an apron that says, "Cooking with Mama Bear." This apron will be on sale before the holiday season. Mama Bear is also working on a cookbook with the same title as her apron.
If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would that be?
Good grief, where on earth do I begin!
The very best advice that I could extend to those first time would-be authors is to take it slow writing your book. You will be bombarded by several experts jamming your inbox, telling you that it should only take a long weekend or get published in a month. It can be daunting and make you feel, what's wrong with me, why can't I do what they say? It's very difficult to turn a deaf ear to all the noise.
When you have a manuscript that you feel is as good as it can be, it's time to reach out to a professional copyeditor who can put a second pair of eyes on your work and fix any grammar issues. This is a critical step, and it shouldn't be neglected.
Suppose you want to get people to look at your book cover on Amazon or other retailers. In that case, you definitely don't want to scrimp on this essential cash layout. Not a good idea to use one of the millions of templates out there, and believe me, reviewers can tell the difference. Again, seek out professionals who are well qualified to build you a stunning and engaging book cover.
You will also need a small website to start, just somewhere to talk about your book.
The best site building platform is WordPress. It’s the place where most authors hang their hat.
So, you have a website. How are you going to get people to come and visit?
Not to mention how will you market your baby?
The answer is to hire a mentor, someone who knows the ropes and who has recent publishing success in their own right.
The mentor that I would hire to help me further the project was giving a webinar on Amazon's score. Honestly, money was very tight as my husband and business partner Pedro and I were spending much more money than anticipated in keeping us safe from covid19. Still, we had to find the way forward in the publishing world. Lesson learned that you can't go it alone and still stay sane.
We hired Alinka Rutkowska, a USA Today Best Selling Author, to her credit and has mentored many authors to bestseller status on Amazon.
Here's how she helped…
The first item on our list was to go over the book interior with a fine tooth comb to make sure that the wording was precise and understood by a child's parent reading it.
The next step was writing the description for the book page on Amazon. Keywords and categories were discussed between Alinka and me. This was a critical step because if not selected correctly, nobody will ever find my book.
Now, I am a fish out of water when it comes to social media. So, once again I hired someone who could set up the profiles and help market to them.
The strategic posting on those sites has led to over 6000 likes and follows in a month. Pretty good for someone without a household name in this business!
While this was going on, my research for sites that would promote my book for a fee led me to a really great website, reedsy.com. After creating a spreadsheet and having chosen promo sites that work with my genre, I was ready to implement all of this once the book became live on Amazon.
Next, my research suggested that it would be a good idea to run a blog tour. Yes, I could do it myself, but there are so many moving pieces that the decision was made to hire an expert to do all the work, and the cost was surprisingly a lot less than I thought.
Moving forward to launch week, enter Alinka's expertise again on launching the book to bestseller status, which was the guarantee when hiring her earlier. So with a big dash of pixie dust and the promotions that I set up myself, my confidence is higher than when first publishing the memoir mentioned earlier. Of course, time would tell.
Bottom line: Potential new authors should take the time to write a really engaging manuscript. Stick to professionals when editing your work and designing your book cover. Don't forget to build a small website, even if it is only one page to start.
Create a team to help you make it all happen.
Good luck, author-to-be, and enjoy the publishing journey.
What would you say is one of your interesting writing quirks?
Many authors will spend oodles of time laboring over a draft of their books. Admittedly, children's picture books are short, under 1000 words.
My writing style is very conversational and infused with a lot of dialog. I want to help my readers feel a part of the action taking place, not just looking through the window watching it all go by.
So when I start to write, I just imagine what Mama Bear would say or do and what might be going on with Baby Bear. In the end, a scene is born.
Do you hear from your readers? What do they say?
Before writing the first book Baby Bear's Spaghetti Misadventure in the series, Very Short Misadventure Stories for Kids and Bears, K-1, I wrote a life story, I Know My Way Memoir: Always Remember to Color the Sky Blue, under my name Linda Odubayo Thompson and I received a load of reviews mostly off Amazon, unfortunately.
Still and all, their reviews were mostly very positive, and I realized that the core reason for writing the memoir was certainly represented in their thoughts.
As authors, we don't get to interact with most reviewers, especially on forums, because it is forbidden to do so. This time around, I have a social media presence, especially on Facebook, and have gathered over 6000 followers in a short time. Once the book is published, I will be reaching out to them directly, offering them a membership for FREE in a new virtual club that I am founding, "Bear Family Email Club."
It is also my aim to get involved in Goodreads, which will give me more direct access to potential buyers of my books.
It's all a learning process, and for someone who wasn't born into this fast-moving technology, it can be overwhelming.
What is the toughest criticism given to you as an author?
I really didn't have a clue what I was doing once the memoir was written a few years ago. Didn't have an idea about how to publish it or how to tell the world about it. I, like others, thought that I could go it alone and was rudely made aware that if I wanted to be successful, I needed help.
Did I have the money to hire a team? Heck no, but it was always my dream to be a Best Selling Author, and this was my chance to give it all I had to win that prize.
I want to thank you for permitting me to do this interview for your readers.
What has been your best accomplishment?
There are a few accomplishments that I want to discuss.
In late November 2018, when I published the book: I Know My Way Memoir: Always Remember to Color the Sky Blue, What a wonderful moment it was to hit the publish button on Amazon.com. But an even more thrilling event was to hold the book in my hand. For most of my life, being an avid reader of several genres, just the excitement of ruffling my fingers through the pages of this book and knowing that little old me had written every word.
For some reason, my excitement has been building with greater intensity waiting for my first children's picture book to be published on October 17. Luckily the manuscript was read by some very prolific authors in that genre. To my amazement, they gave it a thumbs up. How thrilling to hear this news.
Baby Bear's Spaghetti Misadventure is the first book in the series: Very Short Misadventure Stories for Kids and Bears, K-1.
What an incredible and totally exciting moment to learn that the book makes me a best-selling author. How unbelievably cool that would be to proudly place those precious words next to my name, website, and anywhere else on the internet!
I think that I'm on my way toward that very elusive accomplishment because after the Kindle format of my Baby Bear book was on preorder for a few days it gained the recognition of #1 New Release.
Do you Google yourself?
Yup, I'm sure that even if authors say, "no, I don't," they really do. I'm hiring a Media Monitoring Service that will crawl the internet and give me a spreadsheet daily when my name or the book itself gets noticed. From there, I can interact with contributors.
How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?
Let's see…
Series Very Short Misadventure Stories for Kids and Bears, K-1…
Published October 17,2020: Baby Bear Spaghetti Misadventure
Kindle, Paperback and companion Coloring Book.
Within the next several weeks, a Special Edition of the book in English/Spanish will be published with all formats mentioned above for the original book.
The second book in the above series: Baby Bear's Big Boy School Misadventure: The Unnerving First Day.
Publish timeline: Sometime in late November 2020.
This book has been entirely written and is in the hands of my prize illustrator Garry Vaux.
The next book in the same series…
Baby Bear Doesn't Share
This book is fully written and waiting for the full color/full-page illustrations to be completed by Garry.
And as you might expect, the next book will be…
Baby Bear Learns to Share
This One has been fully written but needs editing and some plot rearrangements.
There is a different series where children are taught about nouns using a very image-centric approach where the word in question is used in a sentence, similar to what children ask in a spelling contest.
Example:
Mama Bear asks, "Do you want an apple?"
"No, I want apple juice," says Baby Bear.
All words in bold are accompanied by the image of the word being taught.
Probable publish date, sometime in January or February 2020
Fun question – if you were Princess or prince, what's one thing you would do to make your kingdom a better place?
The one thing that can be learned from this Pandemic is that families had lost touch with each other prior to this COVID. I grew up in a family that sat down to dinner each night. Before this twisted world got out of hand when was the last time that your whole family shared a meal together, to say nothing of actually having a conversation?
So dear Princess, I think that the court should declare Sunday as a day to spend exclusively with family. Restaurants can be open, but no retail stores.
If the weather is fine, suggest that your subjects pack a picnic and spend time in the great outdoors. Maybe create some fun games for your subjects to share with their children.
Do you have anything specific that you would like to say to your readers?
Most of the topics have been discussed, but there is one aspect that I want to emphasize.
This Pandemic has had the power to make people sick, maybe feeling symptoms that keep rearing their heads even months after the initial infection.
You have some much stuff on your plate that you feel just totally overwhelmed.
Sometime should be set aside to read these Baby Bear books to your children. Both of you get lost in the world of bears that I have created. Just to escape this twisted world of ours for a few moments will help both of you to move forward together.
Stay safe and be well.
