Children’s Novels and Carol Birds

In my post, The Spark, I told you I was updating my first children’s novel, The Angels of Abbey Creek. I was revising the words and, with AI’s help, generating a new cover and pictures for each chapter. I expected this task to take me a few weeks. It took me almost ten months!

A few hours ago, the new edition of The Angels of Abbey Creek appeared in the Amazon store. It’s available as Kindle and print books!

I wrote a new introduction for the book:

I wrote a short children’s story called Sunday and then gave it to Father James Tierney, the author of the Bush Boys books, to read. With great kindness, he said, “Write some more stories!” So, I wrote this novel full of stories for my Goddaughter, Elizabeth.

I wanted Elizabeth to have a book set in her world. I hoped she’d enjoy reading about familiar places, events, and children who might be a bit like her.

I created the Angel family, who live in an Australian village nestled among the gum trees, which is very much like where I live.

The Angels’ life is similar to mine and Elizabeth’s. We both know all about enjoying life with lots of brothers and sisters. We celebrate birthdays, go on picnics, visit the beach, and do many other things families around the world like doing. We know about hunting for the perfect First Holy Communion dress, how wonderful it is to have three mothers, and how exciting it is to go out in the middle of the night to attend Midnight Mass. We’ve seen kangaroos bounding through the bush, woken up to the sound of chuckling kookaburras, jumped over venomous snakes baking themselves in the scorching summer sun, and admired the beauty of golden wattle flowers.

Whenever anyone asks me if the stories in The Angels of Abbey Creek are true, I reply, “Almost!” I took events that really happened in Elizabeth’s and my lives and sprinkled in some imagination.

You might live in the same world as me and Elizabeth. If you do, I hope the Angels feel like friends who live around the corner from your home.

And if your world is very different from ours, I hope you enjoy making new friends and hearing about things you might not experience where you live.

In the post, The Spark, I showed you some images I was hoping to include in the book. I didn’t end up using them. I generated some new ones using a different AI style. Here are a few of them:

The other day, I took the proof copy of The Angels of Abbey Creek along to our parish women’s group. All my friends were very excited for me and said how amazing the book looked and how they were each going to buy a copy. And now that the novel is published, everyone is placing their orders. Isn’t it lovely to have kind and supportive friends? What would I do without people to support and encourage me?

But not everyone likes my books. Not so long ago, maybe a couple of hours ago, I accidentally discovered there’s only one rating for the third book in my Angels series, The Angels of Wallaby Way. It’s a 3-star rating which is a bit disappointing. Obviously, as Seth Godin would say, I didn’t write the book for that person. It wasn’t their kind of story. Which is okay. We can’t please everyone, can we? My book didn’t appeal to them. I don’t know why it didn’t because they didn’t leave a review. A quick three stars, and that was it.

Gary Oldman from the Apple TV series, Slow Horses, said that other people’s opinions about his work is none of his business. I like that attitude because if we let ourselves be affected by the negative words of others, we’d soon give up doing anything.

So, I’m not really worried about the 3-star rating. I don’t think it’s a reflection of my story because, soon after it was published, plenty of people told me they enjoyed the book. But they didn’t rate or review the novel on Amazon. That’s the problem. A low rating might not discourage me from writing, but it might discourage people from buying and reading my book. They and their kids might never discover the Angels and their adventures.

If you bought The Angels of Wallaby Way and enjoyed it, I hope you’ll rate or review the book. A quick few clicks of the mouse might counteract the negative rating. That would really help me.

What’s next now that I’ve republished The Angels of Abbey Creek? Well, I’m in the middle of revising The Angels of Gum Tree Road! I want all three books in the series to have matching covers and illustrations.

Here are the new covers:

Here are a few of the images for The Angels of Gum Tree Road:

In between working on these books, I’d like to return to this blog and tell some more stories, and share what I’m reading, watching and listening to. Maybe I could write about exercise – I’ve given up running and am now jumping rope! – and the video games I’m playing. I want to post some photos and tell you about the seasonal changes that are happening here in our village. Now that spring has arrived, the carol bird has returned!

The old title of this blog has returned too: Where the Carol Bird Sings!

The carol bird is really a koel. I think my name is much more poetic than the bird’s real one! I’ve never seen a carol bird. I’ve looked for it, trying to locate it by following its loud and insistent calls, but I haven’t yet been successful. It hides in the trees, not wanting to reveal itself. But Rajesh De knows what the koel looks like. He captured a photo of the bird and shared it on Unsplash.

So, my friends, will you take a look at the updated edition of my book, The Angels of Abbey Creek? If you already have the Kindle book, you can get the new version by syncing your reader or app.