HAPPY RELEASE DAY!

IT'S HERE!! IT'S OFFICIAL! 

As of January 17th (TODAY) my book is available nationwide from Barnes and Nobles and Amazon! I am so excited to share this with all of you! 

So many of you have talked with me, supported me and given me amazing words of encouragement. Thank you so much for all you have done. It has been a joy to talk to each and every one of you, and I look forward to what the future holds! If you are interested in having me come read my book at your school or event please message me on facebook or to kelseymariewagner@yahoo.com. I would be happy to talk about allergy awareness with staff, students or just have a fun reading with your little kids. 

To celebrate this MOMENTOUS day I want to give everyone the chance to win something very cool. So, for everyone that leaves a review on B&N, Amazon or on your own blog I will enter you in a drawing for a $50 gift card! The gift card will be the winner's choice of B&N or Amazon. This contest will stay open until March 1, 2012. Please send me an email once you have left a review so I know to enter you! You get one chance for each review with a max of 3 chances. Good luck and thank you for being a part of this journey with me!

A little autograph can go a long way...

In The Rumble with Grumble, we find our hero, Turtle, facing down a huge monster, Grumble. What must turtle be feeling? Maybe fear, self-doubt, hopelessness. But thankfully, there is also friendship, courage and finally happiness. But these are not the things I want to talk about. What I want to address in this post plays only a small part in the book, and yet such a major part in the lives of so many. I want to talk about allergies.

For those of you who have read my book, you know what I'm talking about. For others, you will know once you read it. Allergies...anaphalaxia...eczema, night-coughs, food intolerance, inhalers and nebulizers, allergy injections, antihistamines...and the list goes on and on. If you have ever lived with anyone who suffers from asthma or allergies, you know too well what I am talking about. 

I am an allergy mother. No, I don't have allergies, but I am an expert. I have 5 years of in-depth, hands-on experience. My oldest son has severe allergies, eczema and asthma. You name it, and he is probably allergic to it. Wheat, soy, egg, milk, peanuts, dog, cat, grass, and yes, even cockroaches (this is not even all of them) Some of these are mild (comparatively anyway) while others are very severe.  He currently takes two daily medications to control his symptoms and we carry an EpiPen if we are ever faced with a severe reaction (anaphalactic shock). But he shouldn't need to worry about anything other than just being a kid.  

So, why am I telling you this? What is my point? Because this means so much to me, and because I want in the future for children to be able to play without wheezing or eat a snickers bar without a reaction or even just sleep through the night without coughing, because of THESE things I am donating all the money from autographing to The Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. When you buy an autographed copy, you will be helping to fund research, raise awareness and improve the quality of life for children and adults who suffer from asthma and allergies. 

For the mothers and fathers among you who have children that have been recently diagnosed with asthma or allergies this is to you:

You have felt or are going to feel exactly what Turtle felt; 

FEAR "what does this mean for my child? can he ever be normal?" 

SELF-DOUBT "how can I deal with this? how can I afford this? Am I strong enough to overcome this?" HOPELESSNESS "I give up, I don't know what else to do" 

You are not alone in your thinking, and yes, there is hope. You will need to find friendship, a support system, and you will need courage, especially for the many doctor appointments and invasive and endless testing. BUT you will be happy again and THAT is something that I promise. 

Please feel free to email me, kelseymariewagner@yahoo.com for questions or comments, or if you are interested in having me come speak at your school or event

Release Party!

For those of you who live in or around Ponca City, OK you are now officially invited to my release party! Hope to see you all there! 

'Sounds' like a good day!

If you have never been in a sound booth, or recorded an audio track I have now done it one more time than you.

This is me, on my way to OKC sans children. For those of you who have children, you know how awkward it is when you are 15 minutes into your kid-free trip, and you feel like you should be enjoying it, but you are not. It is deafeningly quiet first of all...and you finally realize how boring a car ride is without children to throw things at your head and ask you random questions like "why do leaves fall off of trees?" and "what kind of food does God eat?"

My trip to OKC to Tate publishing was fun and a bit nerve racking. I practiced how I would voice my book the whole way down. Should each animal have their own voice and dialect? Should I read the whole book with the same voice? How in the world do I read the song from the book??? While all these questions bumbled up my brain, I decided it was best to just read the book exactly like I read it to my kids.

I arrived at Tate publishing and met with my sound guy, Josh, who introduced me to the "sound booth", basically a small cubical surrounded on all sides by egg crate padding.

Josh explained to me that I would be in there by myself reading the book and would be continuously recorded. Should I make a mistake, I simply press ctrl, and start over at the beginning of the sentence. That place will be marked and edited out. I then asked if I could read from my book that I brought, to which he replied, no because the sound of the pages would be too loud as I turned them. Then I asked when it starts recording, to which he replied that it was already recording. So after my series of of seemingly useless questions with obvious answers, I started to record my audio book.

I think it went okay, but I did mess up quite a few times. It took me three tries to record the song from the book (no I did not "sing" it, I just voiced it melodically, lol) I think overall it will turn out well. Most importantly to me I had fun with it, and it will be a very personal and unique way for kids to hear the story, from the mind of the author.

After I was finished recording I asked if I could meet my illustrator, Jesse DeFriese. I was taken back to the illustrating department and got to meet her for the first time face-to-face! I told her how amazing her illustrations were and how everyone just loves the turtle!

After meeting Jesse, I decided to undertake one more mission. A former classmate of mine works at Tate. I didn't plan to find her, but I was curious if she was there. So I then went on a quest to find her (not so much of a quest, more like asking the receptionist) I was able to locate her, and had a nice chat with Jo Reese about what she does at Tate (writes radio shows! cool, right?) and was able to catch up about family and other things. My next goal was lunch.

So, you know when tell someone who lives far away that if you are ever in town you will look them up and have lunch? And then you are never in town? Well this was the case with Shari Yeager. Also an old classmate of mine, but I was actually in town and free and she was also free so we went to Olive Garden and had delicious wine and too much pasta (wait...strike that, reverse it).

All in all, it was an amazing fun day. It was exciting to record an audio book that millions of people will hear (okay maybe not "millions" maybe just one million, lol) and to see old friends from my younger days. I hope you enjoyed the detailed breakdown of my WHOLE DAY, because I enjoyed telling you. Love you all, and I will be sending out details and invited to my big release party party soon! Stay tuned for details!

A brief history...

Dear World, 

I wanted to share with you why I wrote The Rumble with Grumble: The Epic Adventures of a Turtle and some Bees. Though my oldest was only a year old when my first draft was written, he really was my inspiration. Here they are, my own little turtle and bee. God blessed me with two little boys, and I joke that he must have known I needed some lessons in patience and humility. These boys have taught me that and so much more. We've been through so much in our short time together, and they are the reason I get up every morning (cliche, I know, but true). Here they are being cute and ornery, as usual, at the new Oklahoma WONDERtorium. (btw, if you haven't taken your kids, you should!)
 So, back to my book...

It was around Christmas time, about 4 years ago. and I was watching a movie, "How the Grinch stole Christmas"  maybe you've heard of it? I had just begun watching the movie when the narrator began to speak,

"Inside of a snowflake, like the one on your sleeve...there happened a story you must see to believe" 

I had watched the movie a thousand times before that, but this time, those words fell on my ears differently. So few words...and yet they said so much, so eloquently. I have always been a huge Seuss fan. His books are stimulating, creative and yet so simple. I stopped watching the movie and began writing my book at exactly that moment. The book began to take shape like a story I had known my whole life, a story I had dreamed of but never really known. My book takes place in "The Land of Sweven", also known as "The Land of Dreams". I finished half the book that night, and never imagined it would ever actually be a book. I can only hope that my book is the first of many, and inspires other authors, just as Dr. Seuss's books have inspired me. 

Here's a little useless info you may or may not know. The book Green Eggs and Ham was actually written to win a $50 bet. Bennett Cerf, Dr. Seuss's publisher, wagered Seuss that he could not write a book using only fifty different words. Cat in the Hat, written directly before Green Eggs and Ham, was written using only 225. Suess won the bet using 49 one-syllable words and only one multi-syllable word, "anywhere"...and the rest is history. 

The Adventure begins!

Dear World,

I am very happy to announce that my children's book, The Rumble with Grumble: The Epic Adventures of a Turtle and some Bees, is finally here! The national release date has been set for January 17, 2012! My pre-release party will be the second week of December (details to follow soon) and I hope to see you all there!  Click on the link to the right to reserve your copy now! Special Edition Autographed Hardbacks available exclusively from me! A very limited number of books are available before my actual release date, so order today!!!

Yours truly, 

Kelsey Wagner, one very happy author