Thank you @Krista Brea 📚 I Escaped Hollywood, Barely.: Short Stories from My Memoir 📚 I Published My Short Story Collection! I Escaped Hollywood, Barely. Five true stories from my years as a young model and actress in Hollywood and Japan. ❤️ My best friend on Sunset Boulevard. A haircut I cried over that landed me on a billboard. Leaving for Tokyo at fifteen. Nine auditions a day. And adventures I couldn’t have made up if I tried. These are the stories behind the photographs—and they’re finally in a book! The full memoir is still coming. These five “Takes” are the beginning. I wanted to share this moment with you. Thank you for cheering me on! https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/bookshelf?ref_=kdp_kdp_BS_D_TN_bs

Where Are Your Feet? — a picture book about a young rabbit called Noodle whose head is always somewhere else. Fourteen spreads, thirty-two pages, finished print files ready for KDP. I’ve written three books for adults. This was my first for children and my first time illustrating anything. The workflow, in case it’s useful: I developed the story and the character with Claude — the manuscript, the spread-by-spread structure, the scene descriptions, and a lot of back-and-forth about what the book was actually about. Then Firefly for the character reference images, Noodle and his friend Tilly. Then StorySmile to build the spreads, hold the character consistent, and produce the print files. Each tool doing the thing it’s good at, rather than fighting one of them to do everything. Four things I learned: -The reference image decides everything. I locked in a lovely seated rabbit — and then every spread came back with him sitting down, no matter how clearly I described standing. The tool wasn’t ignoring me; it was faithfully reproducing the character I’d given it. I had to go back to Firefly and build a second reference before the spreads behaved. -Use the edit function, not a regenerate. When a scene is 90% right, editing preserves the character, setting and continuity and changes only what you asked about. I wasted several generations learning that. -The continuity note wants one backward reference. Not three, and not a description of what future spreads will need. “Same kitchen as Spread 3.” That’s it. -The automated checker is a nudge, not a verdict. It flagged my rabbit’s ears as inconsistent on five separate spreads — they were fine every time. It also caught a genuine trim-edge problem I’d have missed. Treat it as a prompt to go and look, and trust your own eyes. And the thing that actually mattered: My opening line was “Noodle has very big feet.” Five attempts later the feet were still ordinary rabbit feet, because a soft watercolor rabbit is a soft watercolor rabbit and the style was never going to caricature.

Let's Help Each Other LEVEL UP to Unlock BONUS CONTENT. Here's what you'll unlock along the way: 📚 Level 1: Top 25 Book Categories 🎤 Level 2: Guest Event Replays 🤖 Level 3: AI Prompts to Speed Up Your Book Writing ✅ Level 4: Self-Publishing Checklist 🎯 Level 5: 1:1 Strategy Call with Me 👇 DROP AN INSPIRING WORD AND FOLLOW COMMENT ON SOMEONE ELSE'S WORD WITH A GIF 🙌

The second in my "Cooky Clock" series is available on Amazon.com NOW. "24 Hours Till Turkey" is a story-coloring book introducing Gooble T. Gobler as he discovers that Thanksgiving dinner may (or may not) be a celebration in his honor. Thanks all here in the community who provided guidance and encouragement! UPDATE: My celebration of this event has been temporarily postponed due to Auburn's win over Georgia that happened the same day, LOL. There is a time and a season for everything...

I used to volunteer at the local hospital delivering the blessed hosts and praying for the sick. Lo and behold my two volunteer buddies bought two copies of one of my Halloween books and helped get me a #13 last week. I haven’t seen them in six years! It was totally out of the blue! Great friends sometimes are better than family!