Shelly Laroque published her second book and learned techniques that helped her complete her illustrations

Shelley Larocque is here with us. Welcome, Shelley.

Thank you, Shelly. It's wonderful to be with everybody. And my story may be a little different.

Because I never thought about writing. So I'm a new writer, and my hopes is when people hear about how the first book came about, which is the Sunflower Journey.

That they will be encouraged, that when God calls you, he will equip you for his glory, even if you don't know where to begin, like myself. So my journey started April of 2020, where the Lord put on my heart to plant sunflowers. Now, the interesting thing about that is I don't plant flowers. Quite frankly, I don't know the first thing about a flower, except they're pretty. Yeah. Now, I will say that some flowers are my favorite, so that was exciting.

So anyway, the seeds got planted, thanks to my husband, who gardens with fruits and vegetables and, you know, when the Lord put on my heart to plant the sunflowers, he said to document every stage of their growth and put it into a children's book. Now, I did ask why a children's book? And what I heard was, it will not only reach the child, but it will reach the adult reading to the child as well.

Very true.

What I did was I went out to the garden almost every single day. I really didn't know what to do, so I just started looking around and I would start taking pictures and. And then I would document what was on my heart as far as watching the sunflowers grow. And then eventually I would add biblical verses to go along with that.

So when it was time to put the book together, I had no idea what I was doing, you know, So I thought, well, now what? Right? So I remembered a friend of mine wrote a book, and I called them, and they did tell me about KDP to self publish. Of course, I didn't know anything about that. So I did some research. And long story short, her husband was instrumental in helping me to upload and do some formatting for the book. And we would just kind of go back and forth. I would proof it. And then, of course, I went through the steps through KDP to self publish, and I learned a lot.

But then as. As time went on.

Another book came about. And it with the Sunflower journey on the first one in the garden, these flowers start appearing, and I didn't know what kind they were, so I contacted my friend who I knew would know. She said they were morning glories. And I said, oh, okay. And the next year, they miraculously started appearing. I was Just intrigued by their colors. It was incredible. And what I noticed was the leaves of the morning glories. They resembled angel wings.

So that's where the morning glory bedtime story came about. The Lord gave me the title and also the words now. Now I'm at the point where I have to figure this out myself. And on my Facebook feed, guess what shows up? Cba. And we know the perfect timing. God's timing, right? And like, like I always say, you. You don't know what you don't know until you know what you don't know, right?

And so I was like, I saw this, and it was the right timing because I had wrote the first book, but I had no idea how to market it. And of course, you were offering the free workshop, Shelly, on the many marketing messages. So I signed up for that. And then I looked into cba, which is incredible because it has training on everything from writing your first draft to self publishing to marketing, and just so much more. And now it was time to put the book together. But it's a children's book but for a much younger child. And of course, those books are more animated, but yet I wanted to use my original pictures out of the Garden, and I didn't know how to go about it. So I went through a training in CBA and learned about illustrators.

Which was fascinating to learn about that. But I realized that sometimes it can be a little expensive, and I wasn't prepared for that. I was wondering how I could get these pictures that I had into that type of form.

With CBA and the private Facebook page, the group, you can ask questions, you can get feedback, you can get prayer and suggestions. It's just a wonderful place to be for everybody and to support each other. And one lady had shared with me that you can actually upload your original pictures into a website.

And they would actually turn them into paintings. It could be anything from mosaics to pastels to anything you can think of in a paint form. So I did that for all the pictures that I had. It was able to put it together and self publish the Morning Glory bedtime story of April of this year. So it was very exciting. I'm learning a lot, and I look forward to learning more as the Lord is putting on my heart to also write poetry as well. So I'm so grateful for kdp. I'm grateful for Shelley and cj. Thank you guys so much for.

Doing with the Lord. Put on your heart and bringing us all cba. So thank you all.

Yes. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. And, you know, I was an unexpected author as well. Never thought I would write any books. And you just never know. I call it the twists and turns of Life. Right. And so now here you are, published author of two different books. So thank you so much for sharing.