Li & Lu and the Secret of Kite Hill

We did it! Our book is available today on Amazon!

Do you know who lives under your neighborhood?

Five or so weeks ago my two boys and I made a pact to get our book published on April 1 to arrive on the exact 10-year anniversary of my first book. The boys were going to help me and we’d have it live up on Amazon, available to the world to purchase.

We had no plot, no plans, no publishing experience, and no idea. But we got started. We created chapter after chapter, read them aloud at night, and reviewed what would happen next. We even took quite a twist of plot (and dubious parenting skill) and listened to my 8-year old’s 3-chapter plan to let each character describe what happened to them in their own words. We’ll see how that goes over, but let’s just say the 8-year old crowd think it’s the best chapter of the whole book (we’ve read it over and over … and over). Hey, that’s a good sign, right?

My 10-year old was going to illustrate the chapters, then just the cover, but the deadline was looming and it wasn’t delivered. Hmm. It didn’t arrive in time, so it didn’t make it into this first edition. He still wanted to be listed in the credits as the illustrator (so I added him), but he still has to come through. That was an interesting reality of check of (1) work done and (2) credit wanted for work … not done.

Yesterday, I had to arrange the chapters all together, figure out how to do a Table of Contents on the Mac that would work on the Kindle platform (turns out, it’s pretty automated and you don’t have to create it), quickly “design” a cover, credits page, dedication page, and page breaks for chapters. Whew! That was during dinner with a glass (or two) of wine. But it had to be done by April 1.

I think I can re-upload the file if there are changes (or, ahem, illustrations), so I’ll look into that. Kindle Publishing has all kinds of interesting ways to promote the book that will be fun to look into as well. There was also a checkbox for, “Is this book part of a series?” and I boldly checked the box and called it, “The Adventures of Li & Lu.” Let’s see what comes of that. Guess we’ll just have to get back to that blank page, no plot, and no plan. But now we have characters, momentum, and a book under our belts. That’s enough to go on for me.

Available as of today (April 1, 2014) on Amazon, “Li & Lu and the Secret of Kite Hill.”