My Little Secret for Creating Content That Engages Little Readers

My Little Secret for Creating Content That Engages Little Readers
A long time ago I was given one of the best writer's gifts that I still have on my desk to this day. It doesn't matter how much experience you have as an author, you could always use a fresh take on some of the words you use to write children's books, articles, sales copy, books, or novellas. When I received my first Roget's thesaurus, it was like I received a cheat-sheet to upgrade my words to sound more professional. Once I decided to go full-time classic kids books, I needed to actually do a complete about-face with the way my words come across is these stories.

In order to develop popular children's books, the words must not only make sense for these little kids, they need to understand exactly what I am trying to say. It took me a while to understand the vocabulary a preschool child could really understand, and this thesaurus was instrumental in helping me to select better words that fit the story but allowed little ones to easily follow along. I remember the day I received this awesome gift, and it continues to be one of my writing resources that I can not rave enough about. Even if you use the book once a month, it is worth the price a hundred times over.

In order to ensure that kids read books online easily, I love using my thesaurus to make use of words they can connect with. The more popular nursery rhymes I write, the easier it becomes to write at a toddler level. If I ever hit a speed bump, I simply reach over and grab this book for help. All these years later I still find fun words that help me to tell my stories. If you are an aspiring author, or you are looking for a great gift for writers, this thesaurus is something that will certainly go to good use. The price for this little book is minimal and will make a return on investment several thousand times over. Grab your thesaurus today and place it on the corner of your writer's desk, it will be one of your invaluable writing resources.

The Secret to Being More Productive and Getting Your Writing Published Finally

The Secret to Being More Productive and Getting Your Writing Published Finally
Ever since I decided to post my Mr Tim Zak journey, I get tons of e-mails a week asking me about writing resources I used and still use to get all my children's books online. I am glad to share websites that I use to find synonyms, check grammar, or even look for rhyming words, but one resource in particular continues to be my number one choice for going from a struggling author to a top-rated best selling author. Whenever I am asked about these tools, I always say that the Writer's Market book is by far the most beneficial guide for getting published.

When it comes to rhyming books for children, this is a very competitive market and one that gobbles up writers on a daily basis. With so many websites, discussion boards, and forums for authors, you can get just about every opinion about how and where to get published if you look hard enough. The trouble with so many resources online is that you tend to get overwhelmed, leading to analysis paralysis. With the Writer's Market Deluxe Edition, you get up to the minute contact information for all the places that are accepting writing, regardless what type of writer you are. The book is packed with so much information in one place that you should have little trouble connecting with an editor, publisher, or illustrator.

I learned a valuable lesson when writing classic children's books, I needed to stop trying to reinvent the wheel and simply go with a formula that already works and just modify it to my needs. This book is the perfect gift for writers that you know or should be considered the bible of getting publishing for any author trying to breakthrough into publishing. Not only will you find places that are eagerly looking for new writers, you will save a tremendous amount of time just flipping through the pages and taking action! I still have all my Writer's Market books from previous years, and I am constantly using them to improve my visibility.

Vintage Leather Journal Essential Gift for Writers and for Reaching Your Goals

Vintage Leather Journal Essential Gift for Writers and for Reaching Your Goals
If I could give writing advice to all those up-and-coming young authors out there, it would be to purchase a new leather bound journal before you ever put that pen to paper. This will be the best writer's gift that you ever gave yourself, something that will keep on giving year after year. I started my journal many years after I began my journey, and looking back on those years I still am amazed at how much I have learned along the way. The journal acts like a time capsule to show me where I have been and how far I have really come.

Don't just grab any other cheap one dollar notebook and call it a writer's journal, you want to spend a few dollars and really give yourself something you will cherish and instantly recognize as something of value when you see it sitting on your desk. This vintage leather bound journal allows me to keep all my progress with my classic children's books in one place, and I have to tell you I go back and read it almost weekly. It is fun and educational to see how I was feeling when I still writing my first kids book, and how today I am so many miles away from those days of fear, apprehension, and confusion. If you have an author in your inner circle, this journal makes an excellent authors gift they will cherish a lifetime.

If you are a writer and not using a journal, you are letting so much information just slip away that can help you to not only grow, but to keep you from making the same mistakes again and again in the future. I uses this leather bound journal that I received as a writers gift a few years ago to track my progress and inventory my ideas. If I get inspiration from a show or video, I quickly write it in the back of the journal rather than saying I will write that idea down later and forget. The journal is my most valuable resource because it shows me step by step how to write rhyming books for children, how to format them, and how to upload them. If anything happened to me, someone could pick up this writers journal and follow my journey step-by-step.

Increase Your Writing Production While Eliminating Any Noise in Your Work Space

Increase Your Writing Production While Eliminating Any Noise in Your Work Space
When I began my journey to writing children's books online full time, I knew it was going to be a little challenging working out of my home office, but I had no idea what I was in store for. If you work from home, then you already know that distractions are simply a part of running a home-based business successfully. What I didn't realize is that when you are a writer, the noise and distractions is ramped up a hundred times worse because you need peace and quite to get those creative juices flowing effectively. I loved the fact that I was home all the time and could see my little baby every second of her day, but I was not prepared for my writing production to take such a huge hit.

The family is well aware that I need to have things moderately quiet if I am trying to write a book, or I usually wait until they are out so I can focus without distractions. I already take the phone off the hook, turn off my cell phone, and close the windows when I need to brainstorm. What I found was noises you would never associate with distractions were interrupting my ability to produce children's picture books with regularity. Car horns honking, the neighbors cutting their grass, children playing in the pool next door, barking dogs, bigger dogs barking, and even the garbage truck picking up cans would stop my creativity in its tracks.

Within a few days of me trying to write my first rhyming picture book I need to find a solution, and that is when I found the Marpac white noise sound machine! I plugged it in and the sound of the breeze blowing took me away to a tropical paradise while I was seated in my office chair. Within minutes I didn't hear dogs barking, kids playing, or car horns honking. When the family was home, I didn't hear the television playing loudly, video games in the other room, or even the doorbell ringing. This little noise machine will increase your writing production and eliminate just about any noises and distractions that can kill your creative juices. I use mine every day now and working on my 16th nursery rhymes for children is proof how far this device has helped me move my career along.

Funny Children's Book About Cute Little Becca in "The Bat Who Lost Her Hat"

Funny Childrens Book About Cute Little Becca in The Bat Who Lost Her Hat
Hard to believe that this time last year I was overwhelmed with the thought of getting all these nursery rhymes for children out of my head and into print. I worried for endless nights about who would read my books, how would I handle the nuts and bolts of getting them into e-book format, and even coming up with the illustrations based on the numerous ideas floating around inside my head. Well, here were are at book #15 already, and Becca the bat has finally flown from inside my head to her very own classic children's book called "The Bat Who Lost Her Hat". This cute little bat has a real story to tell that most parents will be able to relate to quite easily. Becca was one of the first children's books that I had wanted to release, but for some reason I kept pushing her off because other stories needing to get out of my head seemed like they needed the center stage.

Finally, Becca has her time and she is flying from my computer to Amazon, and to hundreds of thousands of readers around the globe. I released this preschool rhyming book for free for the first five days, and on the second day there were over 1,000 downloads. I really didn't do that much marketing for Becca, she just seems to have found her groove on her own, and today she is soaring into the homes of little kids everywhere. By the last day of my free book promotion, Becca has doubled my previous books best record, and she appears to be showing no signs of slowing down. This little nursery rhyme was especially popular in Japan, I have not really connected with that audience before, but they quickly gobbled up hundreds of the e-book in a few days, and now I have even seen sales for my other books like "The Pony That Hates Macaroni" and "The Pig Who Loved to Dig" because of all the added excitement of Becca. This cute little bat obviously was waiting in the wings for a reason, and today she has found me a whole new audience from halfway around the world. I really do owe a lot to this little bat.

So that brings me to the story of Becca the bat and her cute little pink hat. I have developed this unique process for writing children's books now. I look for a lesson I learned as a child, and look for a silly and fun way to tell it to my own daughter using cute baby animals to tell the story. See, the lessons these little animals learn are ones I hope my little girls and children around the world can learn while they are still young enough to not let ego and the pressure from friends cloud their judgement. I remember a saying one of my elementary school teachers told me, she said you already made the mistake and paid the tuition, you might as well get the lesson. So with Becca the bat, she was absolutely in love with her hat to the point she made sure everyone in her world knew about it. She told friends, family, classmates, and neighbors, and they all responded how they loved it too. One day when the hat goes missing, Becca blames those same people because she assumes since they loved it too, they had to have taken it. The blame game is a very dangerous one, especially for young children. I think after they see what happens to Becca in this fun kid's book, they will think twice about jumping to conclusions in their own little worlds.

Funny Nursery Rhyme Children's Book called "The Shark Afraid of the Dark"

Funny Nursery Rhyme for Children Book called The Shark Afraid of the Dark
The best books for toddlers age 2-3 are ones that deal with issues these little ones have. I know from experience that many little children have this fear of the dark, and it is something that stays with many children right up to adulthood. I decided that for my 14th children's picture book, I was going to combine a fear many little kids have with one of the scariest creatures in the sea that evokes fear in adults as well as their kids. My thoughts were if I could make the shark cute enough, then I could easily show children how even the scariest monster in the deep can get over something like being scared of the dark. As far as rhyming children's books, this one will be a favorite of children of all ages.

Similar to my classic kids book, The Duck Who Has Bad Luck, Seth the shark was happy living his life the way it was. He found a way to simply make the best of things, always home by sun down and never having to really have to deal with the dark. Rather than confront his fear, Seth found that he could keep himself busy doing other things and never have to really worry about the dark. With this preschool rhyming book, my goal was to show kids that by not talking or dealing with something that frightens you, it just makes the issue bigger and scarier than it really is. The thing that kept running through my mind was the old adage about nothing to fear but fear itself. I mean think about it for a second, how much sense does it make to give that fear all the attention anyway? If you deal with it once, the issue can go away. If you ignore it, you wind up fighting that battle over and over again.

So in my latest rhyming children's book, Seth the shark found himself hanging with his friends after school one day and getting lost. Now what happens is the group can not get home before the sun sets, and this puts Seth in the position of having to deal with his fear of the dark once and for all. Luckily for Seth, he has his friends close by to help. My hope is that if a child is afraid of the dark and reading this book with their parents, that they may reach out or possibly talk about it and be able to see that it really is nothing but their imagination. Seth is a scary shark and he has fears, but he found that by getting the help of those that loved him, he could get over just about anything. Sharks don't have to be scary, as you can plainly see in this cute baby animals rhyming picture book, The Shark Afraid of the Dark!

Friday the 13th and a Cute Black Cat Rhyming Picture Book the "The Cat Who Loves to Chat"

Friday the 13th and a Cute Black Cat in The Cat Who Loves to Chat
It was no coincidence that my 13th popular children's book was going to feature a cute little black cat named Cathy. My daughter is getting older and she is falling for mobile technology like every kid in her school. So while I knew that this rhyming picture book had to be about a black cat and Friday the 13th, I was having trouble coming up with a story line that would not frighten toddlers and preschool children. Once again I got my inspiration from my little angel when she pretended she heard me talking and simply said yes, yes, yes. I decided to ask her if it was cool with her that she stay grounded for a month, and she said sure, thanks, no problem. The idea for chatty Cathy was born and this one really was going to hit home.

I understand that things have changed since I was in grade school, but children today are literally plugged into mobile technology morning, noon, and night. They use their mobile devices to wake themselves up, they chat before school, they use the phones to do assignments in class, and they use them right up until bed posting selfies on a number of social media platforms. So for this rhyming children's book. I decided to show little kids how much trouble you can get into if you allow your focus to wander and not pay close attention, especially when their parents are speaking to them. With all popular nursery rhymes, the story has to engage, be silly, and yet have this underlying theme that really lets the children have to think and associate the story of the main character with things they do, no matter how small they might be. With Cathy, she just loved to talk, talk, talk, even when someone else was talking, she would talk, talk, talk. It was when her mother warned her about Friday the 13th and her not paying attention that my latest kids book begins.

Me and my little one have this special connection with the number 13, with Halloween, black cats, anything to do with that silly and fun holiday. When I am writing children's books, I am always looking to make the story fun, adventurous, and yet show little kids the results of some cute little baby animal making an innocent mistake. In this preschool rhyming book, the story is not meant to frighten or even lecture children, it just shows them how a silly little black cat who lost her focus, set in motion events that could have really been trouble. Cathy the cat is all about a little kitten who simply lost focus, something children of all ages do today. With the way kids today are so connected to their mobile devices and distracted by any new app or social media platform that pops up, I just want them to see at a young age that Mom and Dad are always there looking out for the best, not to lecture, not to deprive, but to nudge them along the way so that when they do wander out on their own, they steer clear of the troubles that found Cathy the cat in the children's book the Cat Who Loves to Chat!

One of My Best Preschool Rhyming Books is "The Worm Who Has a Perm"

One of My Best Preschool Rhyming Books is The Worm Who Has a Perm
We are really cooking with steam now, as my 12th rhyming book for children is officially published. When I created the idea for Willis the worm in "The Worm Who Has a Perm", my intentions were very simple. I just wanted to create a fun little children's book that basically told the story about how kids that are unique are special in their own way. I really had no point of reference with Willis other than he was a cool little guy who seemed to march to the beat to his own drummer. I have seen in my years too many kids get bullied for being different, so this little worm with a perm was going to do his best to make kids smile.

Now unlike those little cute animals in my kids books "The Chick Who Could Not Kick" and "The Whale That Broke the Scale", Willis the worm really didn't see anything wrong with the way he wore his hair. In fact, Willis the worm would encourage others to talk about his hair because he saw how it made people smile. See this little guy was not concerned about anything buy making others happy, and if it came at the expense of him being made fun of, he didn't really let any of that bother him. My intention with this children's picture book was to let kids see that their differences make them unique in a good way, not a bad way. If a child would embrace their skin color, their curly hair, or their unique height, then no amount of ridicule could ever affect them.

With this classic kids book, I knew that grade school kids would relate to bullying, and toddlers would simply think Willis was cool with his colorful perm and his fun-loving attitude. This worm had his share of being bullied in school because the way he looked, but Willis never let it bother him for one second. In fact, when the bully's did not get the reaction they wanted, they thought something was wrong with this little worm. The moral of this story is that when a child is made fun of for the way they look, not letting bully's affect them will cause the bully to go find someone else to pick on. If a child can relate to how Willis ignored ridicule from others in this kid's book, they may be able to express their own individuality more easily!

Cute Preschool Rhyming Book called "The Duck Who Has Bad Luck"

Cute Preschool Rhyming Book called The Duck Who Has Bad Luck
Hard to believe it, but Mr Tim Zak has officially written, illustrated, and now published 11 children's picture books. Looking back only a few months, I still can not believe many of these cute animals that have been jumping around in my head are being read by kids all over the world. I still pinch myself when I see kids books sales coming in from France, China, Germany, and Australia. The reaction around the world is the same, first the parents tell me how much their little ones love these illustrated baby animals, then they tell me that they are bout to snuggle up and read it for the 100th time this month. Who knows, maybe someday one of these characters in my children's books will make it to the big screen. Disney, are you listening?

The subject for my latest classic kids book is Drake the duck who has bad luck! I got the inspiration for little Drake when I remembered an incident that happened to me in grade school. There was this one little kid who had the worst possible luck. He would get hurt playing basketball, he would fall off the school bus, he even got hit with a stick during his birthday party as kids were trying to smash open a pinata. I still remember it like yesterday, he was convinced he had bad luck, so, he had bad luck. He reinforced that belief into his subconscious, and it didn't help that everyone within ear shot would remind him that he was bad luck to be around. I remember feeling that he must not like having that bad luck, but he always seems to muscle through it and just wear it like a badge of honor. So the idea for my next rhyming kids book was born, with a little twist for creativity.

So with all my children's books online, I try to give those little ones a positive life lesson. I try to teach them that we are all different, and even if you are not like the rest of your group, that is still fine. With Drake, this little duck simply had the worst luck. His friends knew it, his parents knew it, and Drake knew it. However, when I am writing children's books, I always look for that twist that will spark a little fire inside all of the kids around the world. With Drake, his bad luck actually put him in a very unique situation where he would save the day. Like many popular nursery rhymes, the stories are not scary, they are not judgemental, they are designed to just entertain and maybe bring a cute little smile to those future generations.

My Latest Kids Bedtime Story is "The Spider Who Became a Writer"

My Latest Kids Bedtime Story is The Spider Who Became a Writer
When I finally released my 10th preschool rhyming book, "The Spider Who Became a Writer", the rhyming story of Sally the Spider who became a writer, I have to admit I drew inspiration from within. Actually, the inspiration was pulled from my experience about being a writer who knew that some day my real talents would be recognized. Despite being told by my high school teacher that I had an incredible talent to tell stories, I needed to learn the hard way. My goal here with this latest children's picture book is to give little kids the inspiration to follow their dreams when they have a talent, no matter how challenging that road may seem at the onset. The story of Sally shows children that when you do have a special talent, keep at it because some day the world will recognize what you knew all along.

The theme for this nursery rhyme for children is similar to that in my story of Chuck the chick who could not kick, when you have a talent, you need to let it shine. Many times I get asked by parents would I go back to my high school days and start writing at age 17 instead of starting at 47? My answer is always the same! I never regret talking the path I chose and I would never want to do it all over again and start when I was a teenager. The reason is two-fold, and I think it has resulted in me writing better kids books online. First, all the experiences I have had in my years has inspired me to come up with some very unique story-lines for my kids books. Secondly, and more importantly, it was the birth of my daughter Amber that really inspired me to push forward because I wanted to leave something behind when I am gone for her to remember me by, and I get so much of my creative ideas from her. Amber helps with the illustrations, she helps with the animal names, and she helps me with how the story plays out. That bond me and her share with my stories is something I wish every father could experience with their daughters, and I would never want it any other way.

That brings us to the story of Sally the spider, and how she always knew from a young age she was destined to be a writer. Sally was told by the farmer many times that she has to stop daydreaming and she needs to start carrying her weight like all the other animals on the farm. The job of a spider is to catch the bugs that are making life difficult for horses, cows, and other animals in the barn. Sally knew she had a job, but that desire to write, was burning inside her and it literally created her eventual destiny. Grab your little one close and read them this fun, cute, rhyming bedtime story about the spider who became a writer!