Olivia's Not So Boring Day

By  Jodi Nelson

The idea for “Olivia’s Not So Boring Day” came to me on a day when I was watching my six-year-old granddaughter and 4-year-old grandson while my son was at work. Both of my grandchildren love to be read to and would sleep with a book tucked under their pillow. On this particular day,it was cold and rainy outside, so my granddaughter was complaining that she was bored and her little brother was annoying her. You know, typical toddler sibling behavior. 

I started on the book that day. The original title was my granddaughter’s name and the little brother had her brother's name. I drew some very amateur pictures to go with it and stapled the pages together. They loved it!

A few years later, we moved to Colorado where we live now. We were going to spend some time with our daughter and her two girls, so I changed some things around in the book to make it so that it fit their family dynamics, including the children’s names. By this time, I had gotten a blank book and filled the pages with the story and pictures to make it more like a real book. They too loved the story!

The children grew up, but the story is still a cute one and my husband encouraged me to have it published. We looked into self-publishing, but I didn’t feel confident in my ability to do that on my own. Then I saw a piece in the local news showing a family that had created their own book and had it published through She Rises Studios. 

I did an internet search and found that She Rises was looking for women to submit books for publishing. I contacted them and got an interview after which I was told that I could publish through She Rises. They were going to provide an illustrator as I’m not an artist and felt that the book would have more success if someone professional were to create the illustrations.

Five months before the projected publication date I was told that the illustrator had not renewed their contract and I could either hire someone to illustrate for me or do it myself. After a few failed attempts at getting a professional, I decided to try to do it myself. I bought an app for my iPad and an Apple Pencil and the results are what you see in the book. The best character that I was able to create is Pappy. 

He looks just like my husband! Although I tried, none of the other characters even closely resembled the people they were meant to represent. My absolute favorite is the cow on the kitchen counter, I love how it turned out! You’ll find pictures on the walls and bookcases that have been blurred out. Those pictures have each of my five grandchildren in them, as well as a couple of pictures that I took while on a trip that I thought you would find on the wall of a home. I included the wooden spoon and fork in the kitchen because my mother had one on her kitchen wall when we were growing up. It felt like a grandma’s kitchen. I had originally written that Bobcat would “leave the kind of presents that no one wanted, especially if you stepped in them”. I had meant fur balls because my son’s cat was notorious for them, but after having a friend read the book, he commented that he thought it was supposed to be poop. I quickly nixed that idea! 

I love the way the book turned out. It looks so professional and better than I had hoped for. I’m so grateful to She Rises for helping me to make this dream come true. And I’m happy with the end result, knowing that the whole book is my creation. I’m actually glad that their illustrator fell through now. Lol.

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