SPEAKER_00 0:04

Now, now Boa Press is hybrid self-publishing because you do have to go through content evaluation with them. And so what you do is I did one book with them, my first book called My Name is Mountain in the spring. Because I needed a test drive. Well, first of all, I didn't know I was gonna have 31 books. I thought I was having an only child. I thought my name was Mountain was an only child. Because at first I wrote one, then came another. Then came another.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Hi friends, this is Read and Write with Natasha Podcast. My name is Natasha Tines, and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel, I talk about the writing life, review books, and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journey. Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha. I have with me today Kelly Ann Manuel, who's a children's book author who released an astonishing 31 books. Wow, that's a lot of books. One for each day of the month, to give kids an array of positive messages. She's an eternal optimist who has been called the good kind of contagious. Manuel has a unique voice that children respond to because of her own actively vibrant inner child. Her books are available in four series: The Essential series, the Rainbows End series, The Classic, and My Name is series. Oh wow. So Kelly, thank you for joining me today. And I love children's books. I have three children's of my own. So first, Kelly, why children's book? Why did you try children's books?

Hearing Poems And Writing Fast

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Well, first, let me say thank you for having me on your podcast. I'm a fan, so this is great to be here today. So, as far as what I did, it's ironic. I only started writing very late in life. I started writing in late March, early April of 2022. Okay. So not very long ago in the scheme of things. And what happened was, you know, I did a lot of work on myself. I had immersed in some therapy and some healing programs. The next thing you know, I'm hearing poetry. Okay. I'm hearing it. I'm hearing it in my heart, in my head, and it's coming like crazy. I'm writing like crazy. Okay. And I start to realize that the many of the poems are meant to be converted into a nursery rhyme format. So some of the poems that come are poetry that I'm putting in a contemporary collection for grown-ups, right? But some of them I just knew were meant to be children's books, were meant to be nursery rhymes, modern day nursery rhymes, along the lines of a Hans Christian Andersen, even a Dr. Seuss. Modern day infusion. That's what I'm doing. So I wrote, I had 27 books in 14 days. And I had the rest of the 31 within the next week. I curated all the illustrations in that time. This was very, very fast. And I just knew that it was important because of how quickly everything came. So I wrote all the 31 books and I published them within six months of writing them. Oh, wow. To get them out in the world. And it just, it was an incredible thing. It's still incredible. I have plenty more that I want to publish, but I did hybrid self-publishing, which is not inexpensive. That takes revenue on my end and an investment. Chose to do it absolutely fine. I knew it was the right call. I didn't want to keep beyond, say, 31 books. I decided I needed a stopping point. The reason I did 31 is the longest month has 31 days. And that would be a book a day from me for a child. So I kind of just came up with my own way of making decisions about what this was going to look like, but it was all really in the moment. It was instantaneous. Not a lot of planning, just a lot of trusting and having some faith and taking that leap into a world that I was completely unfamiliar with.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Well, so I want to go back to the idea of you hearing poems. How did they come exactly? Where did you hear them? In the shower while walking the dogs. And what kind of poems? Like I I want to hear more about that sort of like spiritual creative experience.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Oh, darling, it was amazing. First of all, they came when I was walking the dog. So one of my books is called The Boots Rain. It instead I flipped titles, right? I'm trying to have things look a little different. I'm trying to get a little bit of a getting the mind to look at the world differently for the children and for whoever's interacting with the children. So the the boots rain is a flip on rain boots, right? Going to walk my dog, Teddy Roosevelt, in the rain. I like the name.

unknown 5:41

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Yeah, Teddy Roosevelt, isn't it great? Okay. I'm putting on my rain boots. And I start getting this idea and these thoughts about what if instead of having my the boots on my feet for the rain, what if the boots were the rain? And what if each boot was an individual and a magical color? And even though it's a rain, the boots are surprisingly dry. And it's so I'm walking the dog, I get the inspiration, I I key, I'm walking the dog and I'm typing in my phone. You know, one of the poems came at night. I have a book called The Night Quiet instead of Quiet Night. I was having trouble sleeping myself, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:23

Okay.

Background And Child Development Lens

SPEAKER_00 6:23

And all of a sudden I hear in my head, I hear, come to me, night quiet. I've courted you all day. Surely you won't hide away from me now. Fluff up your pillow and stay. The idea was that when I was permitted to sleep, I could not. So what would what would lull me? The poetry lulled me into sleep. And I thought, well, then why could it not lull a child into sleep? So that's like they came, but they came really for me in many ways and from me, from my experiences. I say they rose up from my true self when I did a lot of the work and I removed a lot of the layers that were covering them up. I talk about a DIY home where you're going into a home and you're hoping for wood floors under the shag carpet, and you take away a corner of the shag carpet and the linoleum, and the wood floors are there and it's a celebration. The poems were always in me, but I had to get rid of the shag carpet from the 70s. I had to get rid of the linoleum from the 80s to get to the wood floors. So it's a combination and it was a flow. So when I released and got rid of so many layers of things that were covering my true self, this world opened up to me.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

What's your background, like education or professional background? Like, did you like study literature because the poems are pretty good?

SPEAKER_00 7:56

From you know, so thank you, darling. No, I did not. I studied telecommunications at Indiana University. I did study marketing, so I was always a bit of a creative. And then I went into customer service with General Electric. You know, I was at a call center for five years. Now, when my son was born, I did go into preschool teaching and I did move up into administration. Now, what's fascinating about that is it did inform me about early childhood development. Because to be an assistant director, you have to have a lot of knowledge because you have to keep the teachers up to date on coursework. And that really helped when I had to write my synopsises. Okay, the poems came as easy as breathing. Oh, if I had 27 books in 14 days, you know, they're 21, 20, 22 pages per book. You the flow is there. But to when you publish, you have to submit synopsises. You have to explain what the book can do, even though I intuitively know what they can do. I have to get that in writing and get that to the prospective buyer or the librarian or the teacher or the parent or the grandma or the grandpa, whoever. Now, that took, I believe, my my uh time in early childhood development really informed my synopsis because I learned about how the child's brain develops and what's important and how the pathways are created. So in July of 2022, within three weeks, I submitted synopsises for 30 of the books. That was the most difficult part of the process, but the poems came like breath, as easy as it is to breathe.

Writing Process And Book Themes

SPEAKER_01 9:51

So, what is your writing process for? So you have all these ideas, like so what you write a book a day and then you move on. Like how how did the whole process work for you?

SPEAKER_00 10:02

It literally is very spontaneous. Okay. And and in the moment, like exact like the nighttime book came when I couldn't sleep. The boots rain came when I was walking the dog with rain boots. They all somehow tie to an experience. They're all experiential, and they're all tied to some experience that I have had on the planet. And I believe that I was meant to take those experiences and turn them into stories that could give a child a layer of support. So the books range and the poetry ranges from encouraging block play. So I have a book called The Scape Free instead of FreeScape. That encourages a child to find something with wheels and take it out of a door. Simple, a simple concept, yet an encouragement for outdoor play, an encouragement to find something with wheels. The blocks building instead of building blocks. Block play. Sprawl out the blocks on the floor, sit there and let go and have your imagination run wild, right? That's an experience, and it also block play has so much developmental skill going on behind the scenes in that play. Now, I go from that all the way to coping, grief, endings, loss. With 31 books, I cover a spectrum of experiences. So somehow the experience ties back to me and my life journey. What I'm able to do is convert that experience into an entertaining nursery rhyme that is multi-layered, but most of all entertaining. What we want our children to love, to read. And if it's not entertaining, I won't even hold their attention.

Hybrid Publishing With Balboa Press

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. And how was your submission process to the publishers? And how was their action? And how did you end up with your work? Do you have one publisher for all the 31 books?

SPEAKER_00 12:08

I do. You know, a lot of a lot of this experience for me was intuitive. I would do a little bit of research, I would end up back in the same place over and over, and I would know that's what I'm meant to do. I really listened internally. I kind of shut down the mind and I went with my gut and I went with my heart. So in doing so, I found a company called Balboa Press. Okay. Now, Balboa Press is hybrid self-publishing because you do have to go through content evaluation with them. And so what you do is I did one book with them, my first book called My Name is Mountain in the spring because I needed a test drive. Well, first of all, I didn't know I was gonna have 31 books. I thought I was having an only child. I thought my name was Mountain was an only child. Okay. Because at first I wrote one, then came another, then came another. It didn't, when you talk about it in retrospect, it sounds like that was always the plan. That was not the case. This was a flow situation where I went from one book to two books to three books to four books. It was happening in real time. So I did the test run with My Name is Mountain, and it went very well. And so I went back to Balboa Press and said, I have 30 more. Oh wow. And I don't know if they even believed me. Okay. But so I ended up doing a contract for the next 30 with the same company. Okay. And they were fantastic. Their production team was incredible. They would, I would, I would submit all my information for a manuscript, all the illustrations, and the synopsis, and they'd say, okay, we're ready for the next one. We're ready for the next one. As fast as I could get them to them, they they produced them. So really, I turned everything in by the end of July, and September and August, everything was published. Oh wow. So the speed was incredible.

Trusting Intuition Over Overplanning

SPEAKER_01 14:12

And you know, traditional publishers would usually take years for them to publish a book. So why did you go with uh a hybrid publisher rather than self-publish? I'm just curious, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

You know, it just was where I felt I was drawn to.

SPEAKER_01 14:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:29

As I explored, this is I was really doing a trust exercise with myself. You know, I talk about the movie Field of Dreams and how Kevin Costner's character, I don't know back in the day when I saw that movie that I would call those intuitive hits. So I believe his character was getting intuitive hits. Plow your field, you know, build a baseball stadium, and something will happen. We don't know, we're not gonna tell you what will happen. And that's a little bit how this went. I was getting intuitive hits, I trusted them and I followed them. I knew Balboa Press and Hay House were for me. Louise Hay, I find her fascinating. The company is based out of Bloomington, Indiana. I went to Indiana University in Bloomington. So I start looking for synchronicities. And once they enough synchronicities show up, I go for it. If I Hem and Haw, I wouldn't be sitting with you here today. If I would delay and do uh so much due diligence that I would turn myself into a bundled mess of nerves, I would never have taken that leap of faith to get these books out there.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

So a lot of it is just intuitive and trusting that my intuition is spot on. And I am doing that at 55 years old, trusting myself.

Audiobooks And Finding Readers

SPEAKER_01 15:56

So, okay, and how are the books setting? Do you do you have an idea?

SPEAKER_00 16:01

Well, you know, that's not really measurable yet. I I would love to be able to say that they're selling like hotcakes. I wrote them in 2022, and I only started PR in 2023 as an unknown author. So it for me, I have to have realistic expectations about sales. Right now, I'm an unknown, I'm an uncommon author. I'm getting my name out there. Now, one of the biggest things I did was I turned the books into audio and video. What I'm finding is digital libraries across the world are picking up the audio. So my thought and my hope is that that will actually lead to more physical books being in libraries. And then families find the library books and then they want to buy them. So it's a little bit backwards there. And I here's what I say is look, I answered the call. I knew these books were important. Now it's up to the universe. Now it's up to the consumer to find me. I'm doing everything I can to put this vibration out there, to put these stories and layers of support out there for children. I've done my part, and now it's a little bit up to the universe and the consumer to find me.

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Okay.

Narration Choices And Audio Production

SPEAKER_00 17:19

How how did you record the books? Oh, I hired a company called Pro Audio Voices out of Oregon and fantastic. The owner of the company, she was key in recording books for the blind, for the for the government, for the national Becky. Becky? Yes! Becky Parker Geist! Yes!

SPEAKER_01 17:40

She came on my podcast. Oh she's good.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

So that was that was uh my PR company led me to her. I found my PR company with my intuition. See, see how that happens? They told me about Becky, and I said, Oh, she's the one to do my audio. By the way, we had the audio done within months for 31 books.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Yeah, yeah. You should listen to the my interview with her. She's great, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Isn't she fantastic?

SPEAKER_01 18:10

She is, yeah, yeah. Uh wow. So you did it with Bro Audio Voice is great. And you did the 31 with all 31. And Becky narrated that the 31 books.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

We actually had auditions, and I chose a narrator. His name is Phil Shane, and he just has this voice that kind of made me think of when with the Winnie the Pooh books got put on tape. The person who did the Winnie the Pooh books had a vibration to his voice that I kind of recognized in Phil's voice. And for me, that was very comforting. And so his voice was a natural selection, and he got the books. I did not have to coach him on how to when to to what to emphasize, when to be soft and when to be more, you know, energetic. He knew intuitively how to read my poetry, which is really gigantic, since I'm just coming out of the just entering the world of literature.

PR Strategy And Building Visibility

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Oh, wow. Okay, so you said that you've been kind of doing the marketing and the PR for a year almost. So what have you been doing the most? And what do you think worked and what didn't work?

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Just even hiring a PR firm because the the number of interviews like meeting you today would never have occurred without my PR team. Okay. You know, it's an investment, but I know it's worthwhile because what they've done for me is they've created a presence for me online. So when you Google Kelly and Manuel, you're gonna see me doing a ton of interviews, also written QA's, also events. I've been to the LA Festival of Books twice because of my PR company. I went to an amazing event called the Pre-Golden Globes DPA gifting suites. I got to go to, I got to meet people at the top of their game that were nominated for Golden Globes in this gifting suite by DPA. I had to pick one of the 31 to gift. And I was signing my books for people that have been nominated, producers, actors, behind the scenes folks from uh the Golden Globes. They were congratulating me on what I'd done. And a hundred books I gave out that weekend and signed for people at the top of their game in Los Angeles. So you see, like it's it's sort of like I just the PR company gives me the opportunities. I say yes, yes, yes, I show up, and then something else will come and I say yes to that. So it's it's unfolding, is what I would tell you. It's unfolding, but it's fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

And how how did you land on your PR company?

SPEAKER_00 21:04

I did the searching. Black Chateau Enterprises kept coming up time and time again. And they are also willing to put their prices online. Okay. Hardly any PR firms that I researched were willing to do that. That was a yes for me because as an unknown author, I'm financing everything on my own. And the feeling of, well, what do they charge? You know, it's almost you're almost afraid to reach out. And with them putting their costs and their prices online, I told them never stop doing that because it gave me the confidence to reach out to them. And I knew for a certain amount of time I could afford a certain package with them. And I think, well, and it's worth every penny. They're worth every penny.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

Yeah, well. So what do you think worked? For selling the books in all the, let's say, things that you did in terms of marketing? You know, it's honestly the entire snowball.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

Okay. I can't point to one thing or the other because each thing gets you to the next place. And each thing is a launch pad, but but they're all combining together to get my name out there and get the books out there. One of the things the PR company did was have me create a YouTube channel where I read some of the books to the children. I say try before you buy. So the children can actually see me reading my stories and the decision maker can see the reaction. And that was my PR company. I think that's one of the biggest things that we've done in working together is creating that channel. So they cover all the bases. You know, they got me on Goodreads, where I'm reviewing books, and then that's a way for me to interact with people that are following me. So I don't know that there's one particular thing. It feels to me like it's it's all the ingredients that are are gonna get the cake baked. All the ingredients.

Feedback From Kids And Families

SPEAKER_01 23:16

You're busy. So have you heard from the readers directly? Are are they reaching out to you?

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Yeah, and they they comment, and and there's something called NetGalley that has reviews, and you know, you get a little nervous about that, but so much of the feedback is so excellent. I had I had one reviewer say, Kelly Ann Manual does it again. Because when you read many of the books, you realize that I've done this 31 times.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:44

And it somehow uh makes it a bit different. It's not a one-hit situation, it's 31. It's a collection. And it's it's a sense that these books should have been there all along, all through time. And I know they're gonna stand the test of time. I just know.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Oh wow. I I really like your positive energy. It's contagious. Well, you're you're the contagious nearby. So I I can feel it, like I sense the energy. And all right, so have you heard from the children themselves who read the book?

Creative Routines And Adult Poetry Next

SPEAKER_00 25:11

I interact with with children on a regular basis, and I get to see I got to see an eight-month-old child crawl to get to my book. Okay. Because my books are in a four to eight age group, but many children uh as young as eight months old will respond to my books. Now, not every book is for the for the eight-month-old, but say the morning good. The more instead of good morning, it's the morning good. It's about greeting the morning with optimism. And, you know, nature is doing it for us. So we are we're gonna thank nature right back and say, you know, thank you for giving us the morning. And that book has the northern lights and polar bears. And that's the book the eight-month-old was crawling to get to. And also another book, my my I have a book called The Catcher Dream. That's the one I took to the DPA gifting suite pre-Golden Globes. And that's about it's it's a play on dream catcher. The catcher dream is about boundaries and creating a feeling about when would I even need one? What is a boundary? Even what is it at age four? Right? I create the feeling of does something feel uncomfortable? And I encourage the child to make that decision. And if it feels uncomfortable, you tell the catch your dream to get away, that they're not welcome in your space. So the catch or dream is not for the younger child, but it is for a child that's older. And I've saw a child tuck it under his arm and carry it around the room and ask any adult in the f in the room to read it to him. So that's the kind of validation that lights me up. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

So when you wrote the 31 books, you okay, how many hours did you spend a day like? So now I want to know what is your day like in terms of writing? What is your your routine?

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Well, here's the thing. I almost so with the nursery rhymes, they it was so fast. You know, I had, like I said, I had the 31 books within three. I had 27 and 14 days. So when I'm in that flow, that's kind of all I'm doing. Doing the basics, I have to take care of the dog and I have to do the laundry, but I'm literally kind of an open vessel and I'm writing like crazy. Then I'll go through a period of time where I kind of recover and I kind of regroup and I'll paint. I also paint. And painting for me is also an outlet for my creativity. So what I'll do is I'll go in and out of my creative projects. Recently, I've really been intent on my contemporary poetry, which is my so you grow up with me and then you age up with me. I'm not gonna abandon you once you're not a child anymore. I'm I'm doing this, I have over 70 poems that I'm curating for a contemporary collection to be a layer of support for an adult, you know, age up with me. So that, so I'm working on that. So I go in and out of what is my current goal? What do I feel led to work on, whether it's the painting, a nursery rhyme, or a contemporary poem? I kind of go in and out of which theme is important to me. I mean during a week almost or a given day. So I just do uh what I feel comfortable with when it comes. And then I put the chores aside and I have fun with it. And because I know the chores will wait. I know they'll be there when I'm done with whatever I'm creating. So for me, it's very spontaneous.

SPEAKER_01 28:58

So you're you're currently working on a collection of poems. Is that your next project? That's what you're working on. That's what I'm working on. So not children's book. Now you're you're more focused on adults, books, books, books for adults.

Best Advice For New Authors

SPEAKER_00 29:12

Yeah, I still have a ton of nursery rhymes that I wrote that I have not published yet that I hope to be able to publish. Uh I need to get some revenue to come back in, and then I can put that towards more nursery rhymes. But the uh yeah, I'm curating the the contemporary collection right now, and it is, whoo, I think it's really phenomenal. It gets into the some of the grit and some of the resilience that I've needed to survive on the planet. And then it gets into some of the fun things. You know, I have a poem that's called The Ship Court instead of courtship. And it's all about, you know, the ship court, you know, coming safely to port. And so my my contemporary poetry ranges as well. And oftentimes I get an idea from a circumstance. So one time I was traveling by myself, it was July 4th weekend, and there was an incredible flagpole, and I saw that flag, and I wrote a poem called The Pole Flag. I flipped it, and I hoped to get it to the military community. So it I'll get inspired. I wrote a poem. I was in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I wrote a poem called The Ridge Blue instead of Blue Ridge, and it's all about the being in the mountains and how the mountains were calling to me. So they like the nursery rhymes run a spectrum of experiences, so do the contemporary poems. And they're just often I get an idea based on a circumstance, and I hear it and I just write it.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Fascinating. So what is your, let's say one tip, uh one like best tip you would give for aspiring authors, especially I guess if someone wants to start with children's books.

Where To Find Kelly And Closing

SPEAKER_00 31:11

Well, the main the main tip I give is that you've got to silence the inner critic. That voice, by the way, my books are written so that the child develops a positive voice that talks to them. Yeah. Yeah. That's part of what I'm doing. We want positive self-talk, don't we? So, but if if you didn't grow up with that, you may have an inner critic that can be super hard on you. And I say, send that send the inner critic on a coffee break. Go go get a Starbucks inner critic. We'll chat later. When you do that, you are able to access your true self, those wood floors that were under that shag carpet and linoleum. You access that true self. That is where your creativity lives and breathes and is dying to break through. So my biggest tip silence the inner critic, send it on that coffee break, create after you've done that, and then follow your intuition for the next steps. Because likely the roadmap is already there. You just can't see it with everything piled on top.

SPEAKER_01 32:22

Oh, yeah. Or maybe you can just fire the inner critic. Yeah, you know what? Better than sending that. How about go on a permanent coffee break in the critic? Never come back.

unknown 32:37

That's great.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

All right. So how can people reach you? You know, for anyone who's who's listening or or watching?

SPEAKER_00 32:45

The best thing to do is just Google me. Google Kelly and Manuel. And I say just find your way to me any way that feels comfortable. And but Goodreads, you know, follow me on Goodreads. There I'm reading books that I enjoy and I'm giving you my insights. And that's a way to get to know me just on a broader, a broader scale of how I see the world and how literature is so important for me as a layer of support as well. So that's that's how I recommend people to find me.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Oh wow. So thank you, Kelly. This has been uh fascinating and inspiring, and your optimism is contagious. And for anyone who's watching or listening, uh make sure to check out Kelly and Manuel's 31 books, and there's more to come. And thank you for joining us for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha and until we meet again. Thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, Natasha Time. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time.