National Bullying Prevention Month – TW Bright Speaks at Bookstore
This is Stirling Books and Brew, where I’m going to go and discuss my new book, Bright and the Bully, and another upcoming project. It starts at 7:00 and I’m about 15 minutes early, going to mingle a little bit and see you guys inside.
Inside here, it’s pretty nice, this is the local section, Albion, my hometown. You can see all the different authors who have written books here. Looking around Books and Brews, it’s pretty cool, they have a little fireplace in the lounge area. Saying hello and seeing the authors who are performing tonight.
Now it’s my turn.
I am an up and coming author, with my recent children’s book. The one that I hold in my hand right now is the one I want to talk about that I’m getting published. It’s got about another week more of revisions from the illustrator and I’m super excited about it and I wanted to share it with you guys.
It’s really like my baby and really near my heart because I was one of those kids in school who used to put their head down on the table when it came to English class. I liked math, but when it came to reading and writing, English and all of that, I just put my head down. If someone would have told me when I was younger that I would actually be a writer, I would have laughed at them.
So, I believe that the Lord started giving me these ideas about these stories and it was kind of unbelievable to me. But, at the same time it really gave me this inner joy to do when I started. For that reason, this is my baby. This is one I wanted to traditionally publish, but I didn’t want anybody touching it, I didn’t want anybody changing anything, and I wanted my ideas to remain intact. I wanted the story to remain intact, so this one I’m actually self-publishing.
This one is called Bright and the Bully and it’s a superhero book, but with a different spin on it. From the cover, one of the things I did is I took a group of people, both white and black, and what does this cover say to you. At first it was just the two kids on it and I said “does this look like it’s race-baiting or something?”. Some of them said no, others said yeah, so we ended up putting some other kids in the back just to change it up.
With anything that I do, it comes from somewhere, from an actual story. And in working with kids and volunteering at schools, and things like that, I’ve got a lot of stories.
So, one of the things I wanted to do in this book is I wanted to focus on the bystander.
Traditionally books are dealing with the bully. What I wanted to do was deal with the bystander, because oftentimes what it is, is that the kids around it could make it a lot better. If we have a group of kids here, and this specific kid is being bullied, and all the bystanders are all standing around laughing, they make things worse.
So, what I wanted to do with my story is I wanted to make this a story that focuses more on the bystanders than the bully.
It’s about a kid named Brighton, and he’s faced with this conflict that one of the little girls at the school is being bullied. And immediately, Brighton starts to think in his head, “If only I could use my superpowers, I would twirl him around like a tornado, I would fly him to the moon!”
So, he’s thinking from what we normally think of superheroes, vigilante style.
Then he hears a little voice coming from inside of him telling him to be the light of the world. As he does that, he turns into this superhero, this great superhero and his name is Bright.
This is when he goes forth and teaches the other kids how to deal with a bully and he actually uses five steps on how to deal with the bully, not the violent way. It’s ways that a believer or somebody who has some kind of moral base would do and not vigilante style.
I thought it was right on time, especially with National Bullying Prevention Month coming up, and I’ve been working really hard trying to get this done for about two years. If anyone would have told me that writing and publishing a children’s book would be this hard, I wouldn’t have really believed it. It’s definitely time consuming and you have to put a lot of money into it because you’re paying for each and every illustration, but I say it’s well worth it.
I’m really excited about it and I wanted to share it with you guys. It’s not out right now, but it’s going to be on Amazon and I’m working with some people to get it in Barnes and Nobles. Hopefully before we go it’ll be all over the world. This is just one of the series and I hope you guys will tune in and share it once I get it all up and going.
Thank you.
Q&A
Where can we find out more about it?
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/brightkidhero/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/bright_the_hero
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/twbright_official/
What are your other ideas for children’s books?
The next one is going to be about the origin and how he became Bright.
Brighton is actually my little nephew, Breslin, and he recently got his hair cut. He had the same kind of hair so I was thinking about doing one about him getting a hair cut. Because a lot of kids have a problem with being afraid to go get a haircut.
But the next one will be about the origins of Brighton.
