I will wax poetic here.
It's been one year since I handed over a draft to start my first collaborative writing effort. The end result is ParaEducate, available at Amazon, Amazon.co.uk, and Kindle formats.
And by our first meeting and after 5 hours of work, we had made 50% progress to our first draft. By November, we had a physical first draft. By December we had finished up all major edits and January we had spent most of doing graphics. Feburary was fine tuning, marketing, getting our company established, and on February 29, 2012, we were live just in time as we walked into our first conference.
And now, we've done a total of 2 speaking venues as a company, we've been accepted to the national stage to speak for the first time to a wider audience. Our book has sold the first copies. We've been reviewed as authors.
And I'm preparing several new projects as an author.
I sit back and have to let out a deep breath. It's been like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and we've not even reached the height of where we want to go.
Life will lead if you are unprepared. But I know this, I have never been more honored as an author to have written with Megan, Jenny, and Lisa. I cannot wait until our next project is ready to be shared.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Look Out Long Beach!
Co-authors Jennifer Kurth, Megan Gross, and I will all be speaking at TASH, Long Beach 2012.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Strangely Qualified But This Is Much Harder Than I'm Used To
To be honest, writing work for students with disabilities is a lot harder than one might imagine. Especially with trying to generate content that is original. And then you realize, that Project Alpha is completely about non-fiction works of places I've never been.
So, my readers will be getting realistic looking villages, cathedrals, minerets all drawn by me in whatever illustration program I have at my finger tips. Probably Form Z because I'm that sort of precise. One would imagine my background would pay off here.
But it's the location of the information that is the hard part. I'm 900 miles away from my preferred library with all of this information archived. My hand is proving untrained as I approach black and white drawings.
Of all the things I've done for Project Alpha, this is the one thing I'm the most qualified to do. I've spent years studying ancient architecture, most of my formative years in college were about all the developments to just past the Renaissance in architecture. And architecture at that time was the kingpin in all things cultural, religious, and social. Martin Luther did not tack his 95 theses to a random tree. He tacked them to the church door. Roman aqueducts still are in use in Europe. What is built and what is not built before the era of Exploration is key in the way that we view our world today.
I'm also troubled by the precision that exists of the types of materials I have had in the past. Normally, if I were doing this work at work, I'd Google up some images and paste them into my file and print like mad. There you go. That's it. And I would hope that at least hundreds of the best teachers were doing that at least for their students. But it's time to move away from this time consuming project. Project Alpha wants to stop that part. Not because it's time consuming, but because case managers and teachers have better things to do with their time. And the information has got to be correct because I have met all too many well intentioned staffers being too vague when they need to be specific or making the information up. (This is not to say the time I offered a student two answers to the question, "What was the Gettysburg Address for?" A. President Lincoln to summon the zombies at the Gettysburg field to rise up and fight for the South, B. President Lincoln's attempt to write about the loss of life at Gettysburg and why the North must continue to fight the Civil War and my student chose 'A' because she heard the word "zombie" and that HAD to be the right answer.)
Except right now, I'm drawing a Roman Army. I wonder if the students will notice that they're stick figures because there are a TON of these pesky little soldiers waiting to 'die' for their Emperor.
So Project Alpha has history, science, we're open to discussions of covering specific health topics. We are also working on a lit circle book for students. The first phase of Project Alpha even includes information about Adaptations and Modifications, a How to and why to. Project Alpha will have multiple levels to access the same information. There's a lot of work being done to make this worth while. It currently does look like it may just be more than 3 books worth of material here.
But I've got to get back to my illustrations. Maybe I'll take a break from Rome and work on some armor for knights or work on the towers of an Western African Mosque.
So, my readers will be getting realistic looking villages, cathedrals, minerets all drawn by me in whatever illustration program I have at my finger tips. Probably Form Z because I'm that sort of precise. One would imagine my background would pay off here.
But it's the location of the information that is the hard part. I'm 900 miles away from my preferred library with all of this information archived. My hand is proving untrained as I approach black and white drawings.
Of all the things I've done for Project Alpha, this is the one thing I'm the most qualified to do. I've spent years studying ancient architecture, most of my formative years in college were about all the developments to just past the Renaissance in architecture. And architecture at that time was the kingpin in all things cultural, religious, and social. Martin Luther did not tack his 95 theses to a random tree. He tacked them to the church door. Roman aqueducts still are in use in Europe. What is built and what is not built before the era of Exploration is key in the way that we view our world today.
I'm also troubled by the precision that exists of the types of materials I have had in the past. Normally, if I were doing this work at work, I'd Google up some images and paste them into my file and print like mad. There you go. That's it. And I would hope that at least hundreds of the best teachers were doing that at least for their students. But it's time to move away from this time consuming project. Project Alpha wants to stop that part. Not because it's time consuming, but because case managers and teachers have better things to do with their time. And the information has got to be correct because I have met all too many well intentioned staffers being too vague when they need to be specific or making the information up. (This is not to say the time I offered a student two answers to the question, "What was the Gettysburg Address for?" A. President Lincoln to summon the zombies at the Gettysburg field to rise up and fight for the South, B. President Lincoln's attempt to write about the loss of life at Gettysburg and why the North must continue to fight the Civil War and my student chose 'A' because she heard the word "zombie" and that HAD to be the right answer.)
Except right now, I'm drawing a Roman Army. I wonder if the students will notice that they're stick figures because there are a TON of these pesky little soldiers waiting to 'die' for their Emperor.
So Project Alpha has history, science, we're open to discussions of covering specific health topics. We are also working on a lit circle book for students. The first phase of Project Alpha even includes information about Adaptations and Modifications, a How to and why to. Project Alpha will have multiple levels to access the same information. There's a lot of work being done to make this worth while. It currently does look like it may just be more than 3 books worth of material here.
But I've got to get back to my illustrations. Maybe I'll take a break from Rome and work on some armor for knights or work on the towers of an Western African Mosque.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Project Alpha
So I would name all my current writing projects but that would get silly. At any one time I probably am honestly thinking about 20-30 plot lines, some even within the universes I create and then the plot lines I'm teaching my students to follow and trying to keep my fiction ideas separate from my non fiction ideas.
Crazy right?
So here's the deal: because I sincerely believe I will be doing more work related to special education, I'll label these projects. I think my short stories, especially the many that will remain incomplete are always mine and soley mine. The way someone might call a child 'mine'. Nobody else will get to deal with those characters the way i have through the lives that they choose to share with me.
But my special education topics, I need to get out to the world to hopefully make it easier for future people to have access to the materials and ideas. There are a million blogs about special education but not one of them are soley dedicated to making sure that the ideas are available.
Am I losing sight as an author? No.. My writing will be directed here. I will still talk about my writing process. I will still be dealing with the amusement of having worked for hours on a paragraph when I could have worked on any number of other things.
So Project Alpha has just completed Phase 1. Phase 2: adding illustrations. And due to this wonderful degree I have in architecture, students will see my hand drawings instead of illegally copied images from the internet. Unless the images are public domain...
The future of Project Alpha starts now.
Crazy right?
So here's the deal: because I sincerely believe I will be doing more work related to special education, I'll label these projects. I think my short stories, especially the many that will remain incomplete are always mine and soley mine. The way someone might call a child 'mine'. Nobody else will get to deal with those characters the way i have through the lives that they choose to share with me.
But my special education topics, I need to get out to the world to hopefully make it easier for future people to have access to the materials and ideas. There are a million blogs about special education but not one of them are soley dedicated to making sure that the ideas are available.
Am I losing sight as an author? No.. My writing will be directed here. I will still talk about my writing process. I will still be dealing with the amusement of having worked for hours on a paragraph when I could have worked on any number of other things.
So Project Alpha has just completed Phase 1. Phase 2: adding illustrations. And due to this wonderful degree I have in architecture, students will see my hand drawings instead of illegally copied images from the internet. Unless the images are public domain...
The future of Project Alpha starts now.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
What's the story with...
Some questions that have been brought to my attention here to amuse you.
1)Q: Have you ever seen "Fresh Produce" thrown around the Produce aisle at your grocery store?
A: Yes I have. I just find that so odd. What other type of produce would it be? "The rotten produce?" I'm not so sure I'd buy that.
2) Q: Which book that you've published to date is your favorite?
A: I'm going to have to say The Exploit Journey tied with ParaEducate.
3) Q: I can't find The Exploit Journey. Where can I find it?
A: I published The Exploit Journey when I was in (wait for it) the 6th grade. It's actually my first written piece I won an award for. It's not mass published. Probably never will be. I'm the most proud of it. It is written very much like a 6th grader should write, so I can also look at this book and see how much I've changed as an author.
4) Q: So looking at Putting It On The Line and Small Voices: Dellusions, Discourses, and Discovories, why are all your books so different?
A: Because I'm so different. I started writing Putting It On the Line when I was 14. The original draft is on a 5.25 inch floppy. I don't even think I have anything that can get into that file anymore sadly. I know I do have a hard copy of that original manuscript (Times font, 10 point, around 40 pages). It took me all of about 5 hours to generate one winter break day. I have more to Putting It On the Line than what I published. I have this whole two year journey with Jessie as an adult. I decided not to make it into the final draft because it seemed to diminish Jessie's abilities as an adult.
Small Voices: Dellusions, Discourses, and Discoveries is really about the honesty one has to take with mental disabilities. The honesty with themselves. The nearly nameless character shares her thoughts with you and knows her life is spiralling out of her control, but won't make that final move until she's ready to share it with the world. The ending is something I've actually done, spoken about some of my disabilities to my students. That was harder that day than it should have been. It raises awareness very simply in the methods that disabilities aren't just lables and aren't just things that can be swept away. A disability must be lived with. And any means of coping are important to the person who has the disability (-ies).
5) Q: What's you're next project?
A: My business partner is returning to full time work in addition to the full time parenting job she has of her 2 year old, and I'm living in the world of part time work, so it's going to take a lot more time to get our next book out. Let's take a look at my To Do list here:
A: I think I show a lot of character by the work I generate. Fiction, I have 3 things going. I think, however, I may release a collection of short stories first. That may be sooner than I expect we'll see.
7) Q: You're so busy. How do you find the time?
A: I'm not sure. I'll answer that when I know myself.
If you have questions, feel free to ask. I'll get out to them as soon as possible.
1)Q: Have you ever seen "Fresh Produce" thrown around the Produce aisle at your grocery store?
A: Yes I have. I just find that so odd. What other type of produce would it be? "The rotten produce?" I'm not so sure I'd buy that.
2) Q: Which book that you've published to date is your favorite?
A: I'm going to have to say The Exploit Journey tied with ParaEducate.
3) Q: I can't find The Exploit Journey. Where can I find it?
A: I published The Exploit Journey when I was in (wait for it) the 6th grade. It's actually my first written piece I won an award for. It's not mass published. Probably never will be. I'm the most proud of it. It is written very much like a 6th grader should write, so I can also look at this book and see how much I've changed as an author.
4) Q: So looking at Putting It On The Line and Small Voices: Dellusions, Discourses, and Discovories, why are all your books so different?
A: Because I'm so different. I started writing Putting It On the Line when I was 14. The original draft is on a 5.25 inch floppy. I don't even think I have anything that can get into that file anymore sadly. I know I do have a hard copy of that original manuscript (Times font, 10 point, around 40 pages). It took me all of about 5 hours to generate one winter break day. I have more to Putting It On the Line than what I published. I have this whole two year journey with Jessie as an adult. I decided not to make it into the final draft because it seemed to diminish Jessie's abilities as an adult.
Small Voices: Dellusions, Discourses, and Discoveries is really about the honesty one has to take with mental disabilities. The honesty with themselves. The nearly nameless character shares her thoughts with you and knows her life is spiralling out of her control, but won't make that final move until she's ready to share it with the world. The ending is something I've actually done, spoken about some of my disabilities to my students. That was harder that day than it should have been. It raises awareness very simply in the methods that disabilities aren't just lables and aren't just things that can be swept away. A disability must be lived with. And any means of coping are important to the person who has the disability (-ies).
5) Q: What's you're next project?
A: My business partner is returning to full time work in addition to the full time parenting job she has of her 2 year old, and I'm living in the world of part time work, so it's going to take a lot more time to get our next book out. Let's take a look at my To Do list here:
- I'm currently creating a series of books to be use with students with disabilities and getting outlines ready for implementatin of these books.
- I'm also working on marketing ParaEducate to specific districts.
- I'm working on the outline for a book to general education teachers and special education teachers about adapted materials
- I'm preparing an outline for a book to adminstrators about Special Education
- Generateing blacklines for a project that may be published soon.
A: I think I show a lot of character by the work I generate. Fiction, I have 3 things going. I think, however, I may release a collection of short stories first. That may be sooner than I expect we'll see.
7) Q: You're so busy. How do you find the time?
A: I'm not sure. I'll answer that when I know myself.
If you have questions, feel free to ask. I'll get out to them as soon as possible.
Monday, May 14, 2012
What Was Behind ParaEducate?
So my latest book, is ParaEducate. Previously, I've stuck to fictional works. Both Small Voices: Delusions, Discourses, and Discoveries and Putting It On The Line were all fictional. I've published some other short stories, but the point is, I like writing my imagination. Characters come to life. I want my readers to care about who I've created in my own head.
But ParaEducate isn't any of that.
First, my day job: I'm a Paraeducator. Purely by job description on my campus, this means I walk around helping students with moderate to severe disabilities. I have a functional knowledge of what to generally expect in every class with a student and how to best get that student to demonstrate their knowledge of the subject at hand. I also represent 1 of roughly 300,000 paraeducators across the country. Eight hours a day, I see students with autism, cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, and assorted behaviors. And they bring that with them into the classroom and some days are more successful than others.
As a whole: paraeducators are tended to be "dumped" on: expected to demonstrate more knowledge than they are capable of with the least amount of resources and training. There are many, many, many, wonderful paraeducators out there. But there is also very high turn over. In my eight years of working full time, there is one person who is still with me at the same campus who started off with me eight years ago. Of the 16 paraeducators on my campus, there were 10 new people this year all of whom have had less than 2 years of full time experience, let alone experience with grades 7, 8, and 9.
I was fortunate, I got to work with Jenny, Megan, and Lisa through my 8 years of being at the same school district and then we all collaborated and created this book. This book covers all the things a paraeducator should be told and a few other things that usually aren't told. Even if you've been at the job for years, it's always hard to remember where you might have first heard something about a specific disability or even about a method that is a part of best practices. Megan did an insane amount of research and helped complete the significant parts that I did not have formal education. (If you've seen, I studied architecture, and I've never regretted one moment of that decision).
ParaEducate is most definitely one of those books that defines a career. And even if you're not going to be a paraeducator for your entire life, you deserve to be given appropriate tools to help you learn to navigate what could be one of the hardest jobs you have the pleasure of ever doing.
If you haven't picked up a copy, take a gander at the sample online. You might see something that sparks your interest. If you have more questions, feel free to leave a comment here I will get back to you.
But ParaEducate isn't any of that.
First, my day job: I'm a Paraeducator. Purely by job description on my campus, this means I walk around helping students with moderate to severe disabilities. I have a functional knowledge of what to generally expect in every class with a student and how to best get that student to demonstrate their knowledge of the subject at hand. I also represent 1 of roughly 300,000 paraeducators across the country. Eight hours a day, I see students with autism, cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, and assorted behaviors. And they bring that with them into the classroom and some days are more successful than others.
As a whole: paraeducators are tended to be "dumped" on: expected to demonstrate more knowledge than they are capable of with the least amount of resources and training. There are many, many, many, wonderful paraeducators out there. But there is also very high turn over. In my eight years of working full time, there is one person who is still with me at the same campus who started off with me eight years ago. Of the 16 paraeducators on my campus, there were 10 new people this year all of whom have had less than 2 years of full time experience, let alone experience with grades 7, 8, and 9.
I was fortunate, I got to work with Jenny, Megan, and Lisa through my 8 years of being at the same school district and then we all collaborated and created this book. This book covers all the things a paraeducator should be told and a few other things that usually aren't told. Even if you've been at the job for years, it's always hard to remember where you might have first heard something about a specific disability or even about a method that is a part of best practices. Megan did an insane amount of research and helped complete the significant parts that I did not have formal education. (If you've seen, I studied architecture, and I've never regretted one moment of that decision).
ParaEducate is most definitely one of those books that defines a career. And even if you're not going to be a paraeducator for your entire life, you deserve to be given appropriate tools to help you learn to navigate what could be one of the hardest jobs you have the pleasure of ever doing.
If you haven't picked up a copy, take a gander at the sample online. You might see something that sparks your interest. If you have more questions, feel free to leave a comment here I will get back to you.
Saturday, May 12, 2012
For my fans
This isn't my first blog. I have a few others. Actually, one was even dedicated to my writing, and it's still up, and I have no intention of taking it down. But this blog here, this is a whole new ball game.
I've just ventured into serious business most recently. And while the business involves the new book I helped co-author and subsequent books around the topic of special education, I haven't really had a venue for talking about these topics as clearly as I'd like to.
So, like any good writer, what do I do? I write yet another blog.
A little about me.
First of all, I'm a private person. Which may be shocking because I tweet, use Facebook, run two blogs with 4 different blog communities, and a few other medium to keep track of everything and everyone I really care about. But I think it develops me as a writer to know that there are times when I can completely turn all of that noise off and just be me.
I don't think I'm going to be famous really by being an author. But I write what I care about which is probably more reflective of who I am.
I blog, I play video games, I go to work in special education by day, dabble in graphic design on the side, and to date, I've published 3 books. One of the 3 I have been working on since I was 14. I published 2/3rds of the original manuscript I wrote as a "thing" for my 30th birthday, it's Putting It On The Line.
I have a fairly technical mind. I'm often accused of tightening bolts before there are even screws in place.
I spent the better part of my adolescence sweeping up dirt and sawdust on the technical side of theater. I studied architecture and intended to build schools for kids to learn in.
I fritter away time watching network television.
I've spent 6 years doing NaNoWriMo and completed it every year no matter how many distractions have been my direction.
I consider myself a person with deep loyalty. I am also given to a very sneaky side which benefits my friends when they want to pull off a surprise for someone else.
Fair warning, I do have liberal political leanings with an emotionally conservative background. I view the need for culture before I need my own religious reconciliations. My country isn't perfect, but then again, no one's is and I'm grateful mine is generally better than most.
There are other parts of my life that make me up, but these are the ones that matter most.
I fully intend this blog to be about my written work, my writing process, and stories related to the process of publishing the different types of materials I create.
I've just ventured into serious business most recently. And while the business involves the new book I helped co-author and subsequent books around the topic of special education, I haven't really had a venue for talking about these topics as clearly as I'd like to.
So, like any good writer, what do I do? I write yet another blog.
A little about me.
First of all, I'm a private person. Which may be shocking because I tweet, use Facebook, run two blogs with 4 different blog communities, and a few other medium to keep track of everything and everyone I really care about. But I think it develops me as a writer to know that there are times when I can completely turn all of that noise off and just be me.
I don't think I'm going to be famous really by being an author. But I write what I care about which is probably more reflective of who I am.
I blog, I play video games, I go to work in special education by day, dabble in graphic design on the side, and to date, I've published 3 books. One of the 3 I have been working on since I was 14. I published 2/3rds of the original manuscript I wrote as a "thing" for my 30th birthday, it's Putting It On The Line.
I have a fairly technical mind. I'm often accused of tightening bolts before there are even screws in place.
I spent the better part of my adolescence sweeping up dirt and sawdust on the technical side of theater. I studied architecture and intended to build schools for kids to learn in.
I fritter away time watching network television.
I've spent 6 years doing NaNoWriMo and completed it every year no matter how many distractions have been my direction.
I consider myself a person with deep loyalty. I am also given to a very sneaky side which benefits my friends when they want to pull off a surprise for someone else.
Fair warning, I do have liberal political leanings with an emotionally conservative background. I view the need for culture before I need my own religious reconciliations. My country isn't perfect, but then again, no one's is and I'm grateful mine is generally better than most.
There are other parts of my life that make me up, but these are the ones that matter most.
I fully intend this blog to be about my written work, my writing process, and stories related to the process of publishing the different types of materials I create.
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