“Ted, The Fire Engine Who is Afraid of Fire!” Available for FREE! On the 18th and 19th of September 2016.
More about the book.
Inspiration
At home, I am surrounded by my son’s toys, mainly consisting of cars, trucks, fire engines and a whole variety of other vehicles. Together we have made up several stories with all those toys. Needless to say, my first picture book was bound to be based on some vehicle. A fire engine somehow appealed to me the most. My son and I decided to call him Ted. I wanted him to look funny. Several doodles later, my son picked the potato shape and that’s what stayed till the very end.
Ted’s Personality
Defining his personality was relatively lot easier. Ted could not be a regular fire engine who puts off fire. He had to be different. The idea of him running away from a fire sounded interesting and I decided to go along with it.
Once Ted’s character was designed, the other characters who would help the story come alive had to be thought of and designed. Since I knew that this was going to be a picture book, I knew that the plot had to be simple and have the smallest number of characters possible. The next decision was whether Ted overcomes his fear at all and if yes how? After some thought I decided that he must overcome his fear, but ‘how’ was a bigger problem to solve.
I came up with various options to answer the ‘how’ question out of which one stood out. The next problem was convincing Ted to overcome his fear. My son helped me out here with a very compelling idea. It is amazing how children can imagine extraordinary ideas in seconds, while I had spent several hours coming up with ideas that were not as compelling as his.
The story plot being set, I started to write. I sent my draft to Stephanie Baudet (a renowned children’s book author) to appraise my manuscript. That was probably the best decision I ever made. She gave me valuable advice to make the manuscript a lot more interesting for a child to listen to while a parent reads. Illustrations started to emerge on the side.
The end product was the book titled “Ted, The Fire Engine Who is Afraid of Fire!”
A gist
As the title suggests, Ted is a fire engine who is afraid of fire. Ted believes that his fireman might give him away. He becomes sad and wishes for a magical way to become brave before it is too late.
Through a series of events, Ted finally finds a way to become brave.
If you would like to find out how, the book is available on Amazon Kindle.
The book is absolutely FREE! Today and tomorrow. Grab your free copy as soon as you can!
