Picture book alert! Josh Funk, ATTACK OF THE SCONES: Volume 6
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[0:43]Josh Funk is the author of Attack of the Skones, Volume 6 Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast series.
[0:50]I had two special guest interiors for this and we have spent so much time with the kids in me reading these fabulous books and it was so much fun to talk to Josh Funk about it.
[1:00]Your kids might have read it or you should give this to kids you know.
[1:04]Josh Funk writes silly stories such as the Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast series, The How to Code with Pearl and Pascal series, Dear Unicorn, Dear Dragon, my pet feet, and it's not a fairy tale series.
[1:17]Also, the a story of patients in fortitude series in conjunction with the New York Public Library.
[1:22]Plus, I'll be newton, peer a source and I'll get the bookstore a barnsy and noble adventure and more coming soon.
[1:29]Josh grew up in New England and studied computer science in school. Today he still lives in New England and when not writing Java code or Python scripts, he drinks Java coffee and writes manuscripts.
[1:38]Since the fall of 2015, Josh is presented or virtually presented at over 800 schools, classrooms, and libraries.
[1:45]For more information, visit him at Josh FunkBooks.com.
[1:48]Welcome, Josh. Thank you so much for coming on mom's turn out time to read books to discuss your whole series of Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast, particularly attack of the scones.
[1:59]Dada. Thank you so much for having exciting to be here and there's not it's not just the two of us, right? They seem to have a special guest.
[2:07]We have a special guest today, who's supposed to be two, but looks like one one special guest, which is my son who is nine years old.
[2:16]Hey, nine-year-old, I'm Josh.
[2:19]Okay, nine-year-old is going to join in asking the questions as well.
[2:25]Okay, we read attack of the scones except we had a little cliffhanger because the Wi-Fi went out and the last three pages didn't load and so there was that we were left wanting more.
[2:37]Tell us about attack of the scones and for those who aren't familiar with the whole series, maybe just backtrack and how did this whole series come to be?
[2:44]Yeah, so Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast was the first book I ever had published.
[2:49]It was around, I don't know, I guess it's 12 or 13 years ago, I was starting to write for children and I've kids.
[2:56]They are now in high school and college, but when they were little I was reading a lot of books to them and I learned how to write picture books that took a long time.
[3:04]I kept writing some really, really terrible ones and then eventually they got better and Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast was sort of, I wrote that at the time where my writing kind of got to the point where it was almost publishable and all the other ideas and there were many and many stories and many drafts that I wrote before that were really just practice books.
[3:25]But ultimately this was the first book that I had published, it came out in 2015, it's illustrated by Brendan Kearney, all the books in the series are and it's about a pancake and a French toast.
[3:39]The whole series is about a pancake and a French toast who are friends, they live in a fridge and they have adventures and that's really all you need to know you can read them in order if you want, but you don't have to.
[3:50]There's some little things hinted at here and there throughout if you do read them in order, but really you can read them each as a standalone.
[3:57]And so the first one was they're racing for the last drop of syrup and it's just called Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast and for some reason that connected with readers and booksellers and librarians and the publisher was really excited.
[4:11]They're called Union Square now but they were called Sterling at the time and when they published this book they put a lot of publicity into it because they had a good feeling about it.
[4:19]They gave me a huge leg up because it exposed the series to a lot of schools, librarians and booksellers so that they were actually interested in another one.
[4:30]And so I wrote a second one and they were like let's see how sales do for the first one and but then they were pretty decent looking ahead to it.
[4:38]So they actually acquired the second one before the first one even came out and that's called the case of the Stinky Stunch which is a mystery.
[4:45]And I always tried to think of fridge problems that kids and humans could have.
[4:50]So when I'm writing these stories Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast was originally inspired by my kids.
[4:56]They were fighting over what to eat for breakfast pancake or French toast.
[5:00]And I thought oh that would make a fun idea pancake and a French toast arguing and they argue about the last drop of syrup and that's because that's what they would argue about.
[5:09]And so that one was a race but that's sort of a fridge problem that you or I might have.
[5:13]Have you ever opened the fridge and there was only one slice of pizza left or one piece of cake left and you had to argue with the sibling over you got to eat it or something like that.
[5:21]And so with the second book I always have a question a real world question like have you ever opened the fridge and smelled something kind of funny.
[5:28]And that's what happens in the case of the Stinky Stunch where Lady Pancake and Sir French toast have to help help inspect your croissant to try to figure out why the fridge smells so bad.
[5:39]And then the next idea I had I love Brendan Kearney's art so much I just wanted to write more stories so I thought as anyone ever opened the fridge and things were a little bit too cold or frozen.
[5:49]Like someone turned a thermostat down the little frostbite maybe your cream cheese turns into a block of ice and that's what happens in in mission defrostable which is another I change the genre with every book as well which is kind of fun.
[6:02]So the first was a race the second was a mystery the third one is an action adventure spy thriller mission defrostable and in that one they help Lady Pancake and Sir French toast help agent asparagus try to figure out why the fridge is freezing over.
[6:16]And then I would actually I was visiting a lot of schools and libraries and bookstores and the most common question I got was how are Lady Pancake and Sir French toast not stale yet and I thought ooh.
[6:27]And so the fridge problem for book number four is have you ever opened the fridge and you want to take something out you're excited to eat it but it was all moldy and spoiled and gross and disgusting.
[6:37]And yeah that that's happened before and that's what happens in short and sweet they do go stale.
[6:42]But they visit Professor Biscotti who has a de spoiling ray unfortunately her de spoiling ray works a little too well and shrinks them into tiny little kids.
[6:51]Now so that one the genre is a sci fi comedy like honey I shrunk the kids mix with a magical body swap of like freaky friday or big.
[6:59]And then I thought what else could happen in a fridge rather problems and the next idea I had was well a light bulb went off and and and I was like oh that's that's a fridge problem has anyone opened the fridge and light bulb was out and happened to me recently.
[7:13]I was staring at the wall and home depot for like half an hour trying to figure out which was the right light bulb anyway but so but yeah so that in that one is called the great caper caper which is obviously a heist.
[7:25]And it's basically oceans eleven and a fridge it's a loss veggies heist and the evil count caper which is a type of food he steals the light bulb and so Lady Pancake and Sir French toast have to steal it back.
[7:37]twice the great caper caper the great caper the food caper the robbery which is the second meaning of caper.
[7:44]And so we've had five genres and then the newest one that comes out the fall of 2024 so September 3rd I'm not sure when this comes out but so the fridge problem is have you ever accidentally left something in the fridge that didn't belong there.
[8:00]At that time I put my ice coffee down with my keys and I and I couldn't find them though weekend I got locked out of the houses terrible like to walk everywhere, but anyway so that's the fridge problem.
[8:10]Not sure you got to the end there not which we probably shouldn't spoil anyway, but I will say that that is attack of the scones which is the newest one and it is an alien invasion.
[8:20]based on who is actually writing the scones which I don't really want to spoil even though it's like a large part of the book like it's like a third of the book I mean if we have to because.
[8:32]Okay you got that far yeah so if there are hints I got actually got the idea for this book after the third book.
[8:42]But I kept having to push it off because I didn't have a good enough title or good enough reason to write it so after the third book I noticed something about the first three books.
[8:54]That there was an and I wanted to use that as those were the things that were going to be invading the fridge, but I noticed that they didn't exist except for one time in book number one there there was one in book number one.
[9:09]And so I thought will I have to make sure that like we don't accidentally put any of these things in the fridge in books numbers for and then five because what happened was I knew I needed to address the are they spoiled thing because that's what kids kept asking me so I had to bump this idea.
[9:27]It was going to be book for but then I had to bump it and then I had a great title for the great caper caper but I didn't have a title for this one yet.
[9:35]Because the things that are actually invading are not scones are just the spaceships that they're invading on and so.
[9:42]Attack of the school is a great parody title but I didn't have it yet and so I did the great caper caper next and then this is finally I got back around to doing the story I wanted to tell which should have been book four.
[9:56]But yeah, there's a lot of fun things about this series that you.
[10:00]don't really get to do in picture books a lot,
[10:02]which is especially if you do read them all
[10:05]and read them in order, like in mission defrostable.
[10:07]I'm spoiling things, but I mean,
[10:09]this book's been out since 2018.
[10:10]So if you haven't read it, that's on you.
[10:12]But so in mission defrostable,
[10:13]the villain is actually created by something that happens
[10:18]in the first book.
[10:19]There's a big bean avalanche in book number one.
[10:21]And the bean avalanche, I retconned in
[10:25]that the villain was created by this bean avalanche.
[10:27]Now, if you go back and look in book one,
[10:29]you just see the bean avalanche.
[10:31]You don't see the actual villain from book three.
[10:34]We didn't think that far ahead.
[10:36]But in book three, we said, oh, this is what happened.
[10:38]And we have little flashback scene where,
[10:40]you know, it's in a sepia tone.
[10:42]So Brendan, like it's, so we actually,
[10:44]they do connect in some ways,
[10:47]but it's kind of like you don't have to watch
[10:48]every mission and possible movie to see them,
[10:50]you know, to get what's going on
[10:51]or every fast in the furious movie,
[10:53]like you know what's going on.
[10:54]But if you've seen them all, then you're like,
[10:56]oh yeah, that was the big brother of this character
[10:58]and it makes sense why he wants revenge or whatever.
[11:01]But so yeah, so in this book,
[11:02]Attack of the Scones, it does tie back to something
[11:04]that is in book number one.
[11:06]And I've been looking forward to sharing this for a while.
[11:08]I know I just chatted for a long time,
[11:10]but that sort of the history of the series
[11:13]and it's been going on for over 10 years.
[11:15]And, well, I've been working on it for over 10 years.
[11:18]The first book came out about eight and a half years ago,
[11:20]but that is book number six comes out this fall
[11:24]and Attack of the Scones, it's a good one.
[11:28]And do you have another one after that?
[11:31]I do and I've written it
[11:34]and the editor just accepted the final final, final edits.
[11:37]Yay!
[11:38]If not, it's the title.
[11:40]I will tell you, well, you,
[11:42]I will tell you the fridge problem.
[11:44]Wait, I think I have a fridge problem.
[11:46]Wait, what was the fridge problem?
[11:47]Now I'm blanking on the fridge problem.
[11:48]I have so many things that I have to keep checking,
[11:50]but so I will tell you the genre that we are doing.
[11:52]It's, so we had a mystery in the case of the stinky stench,
[11:56]but that was, to be fair,
[11:58]was not really a very good mystery.
[12:00]That was actually supposed to be a holiday book,
[12:02]but the publisher liked it so much.
[12:03]They said, take out all the holidays.
[12:06]We want to sell it year round, which is great,
[12:08]but the actual stinky stench, again, spoiler alert,
[12:12]it's a fruitcake.
[12:13]There's no other holiday stuff in the book
[12:16]that makes you lead you to thinking it might be a fruitcake,
[12:19]because that's a holiday garbage.
[12:21]I mean, holiday food.
[12:22]And so I thought that so that it's not a very good mystery,
[12:26]as far as mysteries go, like with clues and things like that.
[12:29]They're just kind of like running around the fridge,
[12:30]like sniffing and saying, where does it smell?
[12:33]Oh, there it is.
[12:34]The funny stuff happens along the way,
[12:35]but it's actually probably has some of my favorite jokes in it.
[12:38]There's the part where Inspector Cossanne trips
[12:41]by mistake, mistake, get it.
[12:43]It's a stake who's a lady with French fry hair and stuff.
[12:45]But so anyway, this one is actually going to be another
[12:49]more specific type of mystery, a who done it.
[12:53]So I can tell you that that is,
[12:56]and I'm so focused on attacking the scones.
[12:58]I'm not really in like writing it,
[13:01]so I don't remember what the fridge problem was.
[13:03]It's okay, that's a bad one, yeah.
[13:05]Well, now whenever we open the fridge,
[13:07]we're gonna start thinking about different problems,
[13:08]or can we?
[13:09]And we'll just send you our ideas.
[13:11]Yeah, I'm down or write them yourself.
[13:13]I would love to see them if you write any of ideas.
[13:15]That'll be cool, man.
[13:16]I don't wanna take your ideas.
[13:17]I'm not good at picture books.
[13:19]I actually wrote a picture book.
[13:20]Thank you very much, but yeah.
[13:22]I was actually talking about you nine-year-old.
[13:24]Yeah, not me.
[13:25]You should write it, yeah.
[13:25]He wasn't recommending me.
[13:27]That would be like, oh, I mean, you know.
[13:28]That would be weird.
[13:30]So I did a podcast with this guy,
[13:31]and then I came out the exact same book.
[13:34]He'd be like, yeah, that was a mistake.
[13:37]How did Baron Van Waffle come to that?
[13:39]So, I mean, when I wrote the first book,
[13:42]I was, kids' books, you know,
[13:44]whether they have a message or not,
[13:46]my books all tend to be about friendship.
[13:49]Not just the pancake books,
[13:50]but I mean, the attack of the scones
[13:52]will be my 20th book and in the last eight and a half years.
[13:55]And I've been very, very fortunate.
[13:57]The next eight and a half years
[13:58]are not gonna have nearly as many books,
[14:00]but I will say that when you're starting out
[14:04]trying to become an author,
[14:05]you don't break too too many rules.
[14:07]You can break some rules.
[14:08]I mean, I write in rhyme, which is often frowned upon,
[14:10]at least in the industry,
[14:11]because it's really hard to write in rhyme,
[14:14]or it's easy to do badly.
[14:16]But I did that.
[14:17]I mean, there's, you break some rules.
[14:19]But to try to, I knew neither one of the characters
[14:23]could get it at the end,
[14:24]or they would have to work together to get it,
[14:26]but that didn't seem like it was the right idea,
[14:29]at least for me.
[14:30]But if my kids inspired Lady Pancake and Sir French toast,
[14:33]then, you know, if they were fighting over a food,
[14:36]the last drop of syrup, the last piece of pizza,
[14:38]I would just eat it.
[14:39]And that I am Baron von Waffle.
[14:42]I knew somebody else didn't do it to syrup,
[14:43]but they'd have to just be okay with that, you know?
[14:46]And it wasn't like the world was gonna end
[14:48]if they didn't get the syrup.
[14:49]And some of the future books,
[14:50]the world will end if they don't save the fridge.
[14:52]But yeah, so I think, you know,
[14:54]that's how Baron von Waffle, it came,
[14:57]I knew that somebody else had to get the syrup.
[14:59]And I think that the way,
[15:02]why is he Baron von Waffle?
[15:03]Honestly, because of the books are written in rhyme,
[15:05]and I need to find the right rhythm and rhyme
[15:07]of a word to go with it.
[15:08]And so that's kind of what it was.
[15:10]And I see you have a question.
[15:11]Let's jump to your book.
[15:12]So in a book one, you know how you said
[15:16]that beauty your kids fighting over pancakes
[15:19]and Waffle inspired you to do the book?
[15:22]What inspired you for them to like,
[15:25]go through like avalanches and like fall in lasagna?
[15:29]That's actually a great question.
[15:31]So originally, when I started writing the book,
[15:34]there wasn't very much action.
[15:37]And it was the two characters were sort of arguing
[15:41]about who deserved the syrup.
[15:43]Now to be fair, I started writing this book in 2012
[15:47]when it was sort of the height of the second Obama election.
[15:52]And so there was a lot of political stuff going on,
[15:55]him and Mitt Romney going back and forth.
[15:56]And so in my head, I was like a political rally.
[15:59]I don't know why are political debate.
[16:01]I was like each one of them was saying,
[16:02]why they got the syrup and why a French toast
[16:04]is better than a pancake and why a pancake
[16:06]is better than a French toast.
[16:07]And it started to get really ridiculous.
[16:09]And I thought it was funny.
[16:11]It was like, oh, well, I'm French toast.
[16:13]We were the first to the moon.
[16:14]And then the pancake was like,
[16:15]well, we got to Mars first and like,
[16:17]but they were just talking about it
[16:19]and saying who deserved it.
[16:21]And one of my critique partners actually said to me
[16:23]that there's not enough action in this book.
[16:26]You have to have some action and have them
[16:30]going to different places,
[16:31]have them different pictures on every page.
[16:33]You just can't have two characters.
[16:35]Even if it is a funny pancake and a French toast,
[16:37]you can't just have them standing there talking.
[16:39]You have to have some action.
[16:40]You have to have different scenes happening
[16:42]on all 16 spreads throughout the book.
[16:45]And I was like, that is a great idea.
[16:47]So it needed to turn in from,
[16:49]turn into both out of a political race
[16:52]and into an actual race.
[16:54]And so that's where I got the idea.
[16:55]I got the idea rather than,
[16:57]that is why they caused a giant mess along the way
[17:00]and caused culinary chaos as I like to say.
[17:03]That is, that is how I got the idea.
[17:05]It was a from a friend of mine who was a writer.
[17:07]They were the ones that suggested you need more action.
[17:10]And so that's how I took it.
[17:12]And another question.
[17:14]So in attack of the scones,
[17:16]you said that the scones are just their spaceship or their ship.
[17:22]But since every other food is alive,
[17:27]how come scones aren't?
[17:29]Yeah.
[17:30]So I don't know if every other food is alive
[17:32]because sometimes they sit on like a piece of cheese
[17:35]or something or stand on things.
[17:37]So that's a very good question that I'm just gonna say,
[17:39]I don't really have a good answer for.
[17:41]You kind of just have to,
[17:43]it might be, and maybe they are alive, who knows?
[17:45]I don't know, suspension of disbelief.
[17:48]Just kind of have to go with it.
[17:49]One of the regrets I have from this series
[17:52]and it's, is that I have them end with sharing the butter
[17:56]in book number one.
[17:58]I don't think they eat, once this book series
[18:01]kept going, I was like, I'm not sure that they eat
[18:03]or they don't eat food.
[18:04]So like, I don't know what they're doing with the butter.
[18:06]Why aren't they in the butter?
[18:08]The butter is like, it's like, hey,
[18:09]we can split up that butter right there.
[18:11]And then the butter smiling.
[18:13]And then you see on the next page,
[18:14]it's like a third of the butter is missing.
[18:17]And they're clearly holding pieces of butter.
[18:20]And the butter is still smiling.
[18:22]And so I was like, I don't know what I'm thinking.
[18:24]Like, if I could undo one thing,
[18:27]it would be something about that ending.
[18:30]Like, because I don't really know, they don't eat.
[18:33]Nor do they go to the bathroom.
[18:34]That actually was a problem
[18:35]in the most recent book.
[18:37]There was with my editor, one of the last edits
[18:40]that they had were, there was a scene
[18:42]where they were in the who done it.
[18:44]They were searching in a bathroom.
[18:45]Like some of the characters were going to the bathroom.
[18:48]And they looked at the closets and toilets
[18:50]and my editor was like, I really don't want to think
[18:52]about their toilets.
[18:53]Can we do that?
[18:55]And I was like, you know what?
[18:56]We're just going to say that they don't use bathrooms.
[18:59]So there's no bathrooms, but there's also no eating
[19:01]because they are food.
[19:03]Yeah.
[19:05]I think I know what your next question is going to be.
[19:07]I have a guess, but let's just see.
[19:09]I'll say it's not a question.
[19:12]It's at the end of the first book.
[19:16]I love the page like.
[19:18]Oh, the gatefold, the page that folds up.
[19:20]That was not what I thought you were going to ask was,
[19:23]are there ever going to be people in the fridge
[19:25]that end up eating?
[19:26]And the answer to that is no, there are no people in this world.
[19:29]So there aren't any people in this world.
[19:31]But as the gatefold though, that is a great,
[19:34]you know, I didn't even know that the book was going to have a page
[19:38]that folds out at the end.
[19:40]I mean, we all know what center folds are,
[19:41]but it's a gatefold, the blast page folds down.
[19:44]And that's what it's called.
[19:44]When I saw the digital versions of the book,
[19:47]I knew there was a vertical page.
[19:48]I thought it was going to be one of those
[19:50]that you just turned to book sideways.
[19:51]I didn't know it was going to fold out.
[19:53]And all of the books in the series have that page
[19:57]that folds out at the end afterward.
[20:00]And I think it's pretty cool.
[20:02]It's definitely super fun.
[20:03]And I think it adds a little bit of element of charm
[20:06]that sets these books apart from other books.
[20:09]Sometimes I will say I know that it does
[20:12]sometimes get damaged more easily because of that.
[20:15]But just means you have to buy a second copy.
[20:17]So I think that's why the sales are so good for it.
[20:20]And another thing too, and we didn't do this
[20:22]in the first book, but once we started doing more,
[20:25]every other book has a band at the end
[20:29]that Brendan has made up.
[20:30]Brendan Kearney, the illustrator,
[20:32]he makes up a fan name.
[20:34]Now the version I sent you of Attack of the Scones
[20:36]was missing it, the funny band name,
[20:37]and this one is a bread zeppelin, it was okay.
[20:41]But he's got the peach boys,
[20:43]somebody calling in the croquettes,
[20:46]Juice Springsteen, and a whole bunch more.
[20:48]What in the fourth book he had a whole festival
[20:50]where there was like Jimi Hendrix and Apple,
[20:53]and a whole bunch, but so that's another thing
[20:56]that he does at the end of every book.
[20:58]Starting in the second one, and in the first one,
[21:00]it just, once we had the first one down,
[21:04]we kind of knew we could just keep pushing it even farther
[21:07]and explore the world deeper and make everything
[21:09]a little bit more nonsense.
[21:11]It's essentially Toy Story in a Fridge.
[21:14]Mm-hmm.
[21:15]Have you ever thought about replicating your actual fridge?
[21:19]Like replicating the book in your fridge?
[21:22]I've seen some people take photos,
[21:24]one of the best April Fool's Day,
[21:26]and I know this is not gonna air anywhere near April,
[21:28]but one of the best April Fool's Day things
[21:30]that I've never done it, it was never done to me,
[21:33]but I've seen people do, and they always tag me
[21:35]is to put little googly eyes on the fridge.
[21:38]He's getting all you do is just get like a bag of a hundred
[21:41]googly eyes and just put them on all the foods.
[21:43]In fact, that's a good one for kids to do to their parents
[21:46]is to put some googly eyes on all the food.
[21:48]Mm-hmm.
[21:49]Not the actual actual food, like the containers I'm talking about,
[21:51]like don't actually stick it on, like, you know,
[21:54]every chicken nugget should not have it.
[21:57]So I haven't made my fridge like this.
[21:59]I will say, you know, I'm actually vegan.
[22:02]And so, but I still couldn't resist some of them,
[22:05]like the mistake joke, like we had to have that.
[22:07]I couldn't not do that one.
[22:10]So.
[22:10]What is your pick, French toast or pancakes or waffles?
[22:13]So yeah, I always ask kids, who's on Team Lady pancake,
[22:16]who's on Team, Sir French toast?
[22:18]I'm baroned on waffle.
[22:19]Man, I already told you, I, if my kids were fighting over
[22:22]something, I would just eat, eat it.
[22:24]And so I am baroned on waffle.
[22:25]But I love those waffles that you get at the hotels
[22:28]when you point the batter and they're not usually vegan.
[22:30]But yeah, that's my favorite, is those batter
[22:34]when they flip it over and it beeps after.
[22:36]Yeah, that's, those are the best.
[22:39]Remember how we stayed at the Hampton Inn?
[22:41]You could pour the...
[22:41]Yeah, the Hampton Inn always has them.
[22:43]It's always a good thing.
[22:44]Yeah, that's the one you could pour.
[22:45]Yeah, yeah.
[22:46]This episode is sponsored by the Hampton Inn.
[22:49]That's that.
[22:50]Yeah, we actually know.
[22:51]We got one of those little tiny ones that cause like
[22:53]$10 to target and it's lasted.
[22:56]It makes like the individual waffles.
[22:57]So we make those with the vegan waffle mix.
[22:59]Vegan pancake batter works just the same as waffle.
[23:02]Oh, you mean, those little, this thing,
[23:05]so that's the batter in the clothes.
[23:07]Yeah, yeah.
[23:08]Yeah.
[23:09]You just got it.
[23:09]You got to make sure to clean it afterwards.
[23:10]It was on as you do.
[23:11]I see, I see people on YouTube like,
[23:15]melt, gummy bears, you gummy bears.
[23:17]Oh, yeah, don't do that.
[23:18]Don't take the batter in the pancake thing.
[23:21]They close it and they bake it
[23:23]or like whatever it's called and they open them
[23:25]and they eat it.
[23:26]Clearly, we need more restrictions on YouTube.
[23:28]Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[23:31]Okay, so what advice do you have
[23:33]for an aspiring children's book author in the making?
[23:37]Well, for children or adults, I guess.
[23:41]So it's I have advice for both.
[23:42]But I would say for adults, I think that my best advice,
[23:47]I have a resources for writers section on my website.
[23:50]And it's mostly kid friendly.
[23:52]Well, it's entirely kid friendly,
[23:53]but it has links to other places that might not be.
[23:56]But you know, the best advice I have is to keep writing new things
[24:01]because if you write a story and you're like,
[24:04]this is really important story to me.
[24:05]And it's, you know, it's about something very, very personal.
[24:09]Chances are your first story's not gonna be the one
[24:11]that gets published.
[24:12]You're, you're gonna improve as you write, you know,
[24:15]Lady Pancake and Sir French toast was probably my 10th
[24:17]or 12th manuscript that I had written because the first,
[24:21]but I needed to write the first 10 and submit them
[24:23]to agents and editors, which was a mistake looking back on it.
[24:25]But everybody does that.
[24:27]And you have to write them and revise them
[24:30]and get feedback from friends and other writers
[24:33]and go to conferences and share them
[24:35]and get critique partners and go back and forth.
[24:38]And you need to do that with, you can't,
[24:40]but chances are your second story that you write
[24:44]is gonna be starting off in a better place
[24:46]than your first one will and your third even better than that.
[24:50]So, you know, keep writing new things
[24:52]and don't get tied to one idea too, too much
[24:56]because it's also a business and like it's hard
[24:58]with who knows what's marketable
[25:00]and over time things change
[25:02]and there's ebbs and flows to all of that.
[25:05]So, you know, I jokingly say don't stay away from the farm
[25:10]when you're writing a story
[25:11]because we have enough children's books about farms.
[25:15]We've had them since the beginning of time
[25:16]for picture books at least,
[25:18]but unless your book is gonna do something drastically different
[25:20]with farms, like the animals are gonna learn how to type
[25:24]and send a letter to the farmer, like with Klakmoo
[25:26]or, you know, it's like they're having a punk concert,
[25:30]like punk farm by Jerkors Oscar.
[25:32]So like, you have to do something different
[25:34]because we have enough farm animal stories.
[25:36]But for kids, I think the best thing for kids to do
[25:40]if you have any interest in maybe being an author,
[25:42]which by the way, when I was a kid,
[25:44]I did not think I was gonna be an author.
[25:46]I wanted to, at first, I wanted to be a picture
[25:48]for the Boston Red Sox.
[25:50]I wanted to be a rock star,
[25:53]then I wanted to be a softer engineer,
[25:55]which I am still a softer engineer.
[25:57]That's my new job and then I wanted to be a picture book author.
[26:00]But, you know, who knows?
[26:01]10 years from now, you might be doing a different podcast
[26:04]and you'll have me on to talk about how I've been teaching
[26:07]kids how to do ballet, you know, I mean, who knows?
[26:10]Probably not, but you never know.
[26:11]I still don't know what to do.
[26:12]I'm starting to have time to do ballet.
[26:14]There you go.
[26:15]Coming to you live, 2034.
[26:17]Exactly.
[26:18]But for kids, I think the best advice that I have
[26:21]is just, you know, you need to have fun,
[26:25]both reading and writing.
[26:26]Because the more that you read,
[26:29]the better you're gonna know what makes a good beginning
[26:32]and a satisfying ending and great characters
[26:34]and despicable villains and compelling dialogue
[26:38]and awesome action scenes
[26:39]and read all different kinds of things.
[26:41]Read fiction, nonfiction, picture books,
[26:42]chapter books, graphic novels, comic books, fantasy,
[26:45]mystery, biographies, read all kinds of things.
[26:48]Because that way you'll know what you like.
[26:50]And once you know what you like,
[26:51]just write something that you would wanna read.
[26:53]Write something that entertains you.
[26:55]Write something that might entertain your friends
[26:56]or your family.
[26:57]Because if you're writing something that makes you laugh,
[27:00]chances are it'll make other people laugh too.
[27:02]And you know, and that's what I like to do.
[27:04]I like to write funny stuff, silly stuff, goofy,
[27:07]sometimes gross out stuff.
[27:09]I don't know, a lot of kids like scary things,
[27:11]like any kind of emotion that you can make people feel.
[27:14]But yeah, so write something that you would wanna read.
[27:16]And if you like it, chances are other people too.
[27:18]So just read a lot and have fun with it.
[27:21]Because you know, not all writing is to make a book.
[27:24]Writing can also be something where, you know,
[27:27]when I grew up with my friend Ben,
[27:29]he and I used to write stories together as kids.
[27:31]And I didn't know it at the time,
[27:33]but he knew he wanted to write and act
[27:36]and be in TV shows and movies and Hollywood.
[27:39]And, but we just had fun writing.
[27:41]And he became the editor of the school newspaper.
[27:43]He went to Harvard and it was on the Harvard Lampoon.
[27:46]And he has one picture book he might be familiar with
[27:48]called The Book with No Pictures.
[27:50]He goes by Bijin.
[27:52]But the two of us used to hang out and write stories together.
[27:55]And yeah, we just had fun doing it.
[27:59]And you never know if it's gonna turn into a book
[28:01]or maybe you'll end up wanting to write for TV shows
[28:04]or movies or, I mean, they can't start,
[28:07]I'm a big video game fan.
[28:08]You can't start making a video game
[28:10]until you have a story for it, you know.
[28:11]Like, I like the Zelda video games.
[28:13]And so if games like that, you need good characters
[28:17]and you need a good story before you can start coding
[28:19]and animating that stuff up.
[28:21]And so it really all, all those things on a screen,
[28:24]they all start with the story.
[28:26]And so yeah, just having fun writing
[28:28]because you never know where it's gonna take you.
[28:30]Amazing.
[28:32]Thank you.
[28:33]Thank you so much for having me.
[28:35]How can I normalize you?
[28:35]Thank you so much.
[28:36]Thank you so much.
[28:37]This was really fun.
[28:38]Really appreciate all your time and effort.
[28:40]Oh, my pleasure.
[28:42]Thanks for having me and definitely, you know,
[28:44]tag me on all the things when it's done.
[28:46]Appreciate it.
[28:47]Appreciate it.
[28:48]It was good talking to you and you two in the back.
[28:50]Bye.
[28:51]Hey, sorry, take a bite.
[28:53]So what are you reading?
[28:55]What are you reading over there?
[28:56]It's called Out There, Bye.
[28:58]I can't pronounce the name something Miller.
[29:01]Oh, sounds fun.
[29:04]Yeah, I don't know.
[29:04]I'm more into like the mysteries and fantasy
[29:07]are my two favorite genres.
[29:09]Nice.
[29:09]You two graphic novels at all.
[29:11]Yeah, we love them.
[29:13]You love graphic novels.
[29:14]I had graphic novel.
[29:15]I'm actually going to a book event tonight
[29:17]with Rajanee LaRocha and Kate Messner.
[29:20]The two of them are doing a, I'm just attending.
[29:23]I'm gonna go to their signing at the, where are you located?
[29:28]Where in New York City?
[29:29]North guess what I thought, yeah.
[29:30]It's in the, I'm outside Boston.
[29:32]So the Silver Unicorn is a fun bookstore
[29:35]in the Boston suburbs.
[29:36]So I'm out there right now.
[29:37]Amazing.
[29:39]Yeah, it was fun.
[29:39]Well, it's good to talk to you.
[29:40]Thank you for taking this time.
[29:41]Thank you so much.
[29:42]Bye.
[29:43]Bye.
[29:44]Bye.
[29:45]Bye.
[29:48]Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books.
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