Good News Everyone!
Cue Futurama Gif
My wife and I are excited to announce our upcoming kid’s book: Kelly & Ellie
The Book will feature a creative and fearless young girl named Kelly as she faces the world of imagination with her best friend at her side Ellie, her trusted & keen Tangerine Leopard Gecko!
The Book is in it’s testing phase right now with young readers to see if any last minute edits need to be fixed before we do a print run later this year.
After a LONG 3 year journey, we have finally printed this book we have been keeping under wraps for a good while now. Myself or my wife have never published or let alone help create a book cover to cover, so this journey included it’s fair share of learning opportunities. The best way to explain everything is in an Article format… so here we go!
Clarification: This post is in no-way an advertisement. This is a big part of myself and my wife’s life and I felt no better way to talk about it and unveil the book other than on the platform that I have sunk so many hours and hours onto, as well as built up a community that I have so heavily involved myself with over the past 5 years.
I will in the future look to sell this book, but I have no plans on posting it on E4 as a means of advertisement. This post serves as a sharing of experience along with a sharing of passion in artwork/stories/and relationships.
Kendal, my wife, has always been an introvert at heart, as many of you can relate. She is always a hard worker but sometimes would be too critical on herself. Due to this, she is very logical and doesn’t like to try new things due to the fear of failure. As her husband, I try to encourage her as much as I can to help her out of her funks whenever she finds herself there. So whenever she does something new or creative, I try to encourage herself as much as possible since I love when she is creative and courageous in her ideas.
About 3 years ago in early 2022, my wife had a creative drive one day and wrote the short story Kelly & Ellie inspired by our recently purchased little Leopard Gecko “Ellie”. As I was being deployed with my military unit, she needed a little companion to keep her company while I was away. Since we couldn’t purchase any cats or dogs due to the renting situation, he had to be a little more creative on what could be purchase. At the time, Kendal was watching a good bit of Go Herping on Youtube. This sparked her enjoyment in the little reptile creatures. So a few weeks before I was sent off, we purchased our first pet together “Ellie”.
We set up her enclosure pretty nice with a humid hide, a hot hide, and a water bowl. Everything a little leopard gecko needs to feel safe at home. We even included a little rainbow cow to keep her company!
A couple of months into the deployment, my wife informed me about the little story she made about Ellie on a google docs. After telling me I sat down and read it that very day. My wife has always been a book worm so she knew a few things about telling a story. After finishing the story, I was blown away at her creative talent in writing a story about our newest additional to our family. When I brought up the idea of creating a book about it, she just downplayed the story and called it “nothing special”. I tried to convince her that she had a great story and that I loved every bit of it, but nothing translated. To her, it was just was an idea of a story to pass the time one afternoon. I knew this wasn’t the case and it really left me with a saddened spot.
A few weeks passed and the thought kept coming back to me… I wanted to show my wife that she IS creative and that her stories ARE good, but how do I do this?
The idea came to me instantly, I’ll help bring her story to life.
The most important aspect to a kid’s picture book is… well the PICTURES! So I went to the only artist filled website that I knew, Fivr!
I know @cyberurchin is probably cringing right now due to that statement, but that was the website I chose to search for an artist. I scavenged the site for an illustration artist that had the look I was after in this book I sought to create with this future artist. After days of looking on the site, my focused narrowed on 3-5 artists. I commissioned each of them to illustrate Ellie on hoe they would like to draw her. I told them I was making a children’s book and that I was looking to create a book about our little Leopard Gecko Ellie and her caretaker Kelly.
I gave them these examples of what I was kinf od after:
I then sat back and waiting to see what they would create...
Then came the first commission to complete:
I liked it and the artist did a good job, but wasn’t digging how realistic the drawing was. So I waited on the other commissions to come in.
A few artists didn’t have much time and decided to cancel the commission. After a couple more and some more emails back and forth, the final commission came in:
I was immediately hooked, I had found THE ONE!
Turns out he was a local artist down in Argentina named Manuel “Manurro” Romero
He loved my idea from the start and asked if he could read the story to full understand the characters. I sent him the rough draft and I got to brainstorming on how the first page was going to be setup. We spent the next couple of weeks setting up a notion page to start the process of illustrating the book.
Writing a book is never easy, let along illustrating one! After coming to terms with payment and all the legalese, we started on the first page. I gave him my idea for a scene and what it should look like. After that he sent me his sketch:
I had lots of ideas and other ways to portray the scene, but ultimately it was hard to describe what exactly I was after.
After talking with Manurro on the best way of giving creative freedom but also needing certain criteria to be met, I thought of the idea of making rough sketches to let him have an idea of what I was thinking for how the illustration was to look. Along with having a full time military workload on deployment, balancing this was not going to be easy. Doing this would be a journey and not a month project.
The Process went on for months and months, me giving a rough sketch as shown below:
Him making a rough Sketch:
and through various alterations & tweaks, we would get to the finished product:
This was the process through my entire deployment. Working on them whenever Manurro would send me new updates on sketches. Whenever a page was complete, I would print it out and hung up the illustration on my wall so I wouldn’t miss any details or fluidity throughout the story such as Kelly being left handed or the house being drawn wrong when changing perspectives. I was really focused on attention to detail when it came to the story. If I was going to put my time and effort into this, it needed to be right.
After a few pages, I would surprise my wife with the revealing of my efforts into making her story a reality. I had her face time me as I showed her the first piece Manurro created:
She was blown away by his artistic skill and that I had gone this far with her little story she created one day. She was thrilled to say the very least! She gave a little insight into imagining Kelly as no more than 8 years old. That changed the illustration to what it is now:
She loved everything Manurro had done so far and couldn’t wait to see more. So off I went helping illustrate the world of Kelly & Ellie with lots and lots of badly drawn sketches shown below. Thankfully I had a real artist like Manurro to help beautify my creations:
Fast forward 3 years and here we are, book in hand and ready to test it with our nieces and nephews to see what else can be improved.
Overall, I think I have put close to 200 hours into helping imagine, edit, illustrate, and bring to life this world that my wife’s beautiful creative mind typed out one day. I am very proud to have her name along side mine on the front cover of our book we created together. I hope this book brings happiness to those who pick it up to read to their young ones or to admire themselves. To “shed” some light on our friendly lizard friends that live in this world around us. And to close this out, here is how my wife sums up the short story she created which is located on the back of the book:
Join Kelly and her leopard gecko Ellie, as they journey into their imagination. A pirate themed dress up adventure teaches them the power of friendship and honesty.
What would you do to protect your best friend?
This book won’t change anyone’s life, but it has surely opened my eyes to the difficulty of creating, illustrating, and producing kid’s books. But Most important, this journey taught me the importance of encouraging those around you. When you see a flicker of light, don’t watch it wither away, but instead, Encourage, uplift, empower, and protect it. It is only in this environment that the once flickering light can shine like a beacon.
For those who want to get notified on future updates with this project,
please visit: Kelly & Ellie for more information on that :]
And for those who are still reading this far down, Here are the first 15 pages of the 47 page kids picture book: Enjoy :]
More updated to come in the future :]
-Slade
Gives us a nice glimpse into the thought process and the hard work that goes into something like this.
there was definitely a lot of thought process behind this whole creation. You should see the email chain between myself and Manurro haha. The soft tones is why I fell in love with Manurro’s work. Something with his color pallet and the vibrancy of the story works so well together :]
are really cool pets. They mostly chill, but since they are cold-blooded, they love the warmth of your hand when handling them. I know Ellie loves to flop down on my hand/arm to chill a little bit while taking in some nice warmth. I just have to make sure she doesn’t get any crazy ideas and tries to walk off lol 
