Shoes, Hippos and Rhymes Keep Kids Entertained

Treats, crayons for drawing and catchy rhymes were all on hand at on Castro Street Saturday evening as Sue Fliess read from her children's book to a group of parents and kids.

Shoes For Me may be Fliess' first children's book, but it won't be for long, as already, she has other books in the works.

Mountain View Patch: Where do you live?

Sue Fliess: I live right in Mountain View. I live in the Cuesta Park neighborhood.

Patch: Where did you grow up?

Fliess: I was born in Modesto, California. When I was 7, we moved to New Jersey, and that is really where I grew up. Then after college, I lived in New Jersey for a little while, and then we moved out here in 1997.

Patch: How many readings have you done for Shoes For Me, so far?

Fliess: This is my fifth reading event. My launch event was at Kepler’s (in Menlo Park). I have done a few private moms’ groups events, and I did a neighborhood event for the Cuesta Park neighborhood. Then I did Linden Tree (in Los Altos) and then I did The Town Book Store in Westfield, NJ; and The Reading Bug (in San Carlos) and Books, Inc.

Patch: How has the turnout been at each event?

Fliess: Actually amazing. They told me 10 books is a good event for story time, and my launch event sold 37 books, and then the event in Westfield two weekends ago sold over 50 books. So it has actually been really great and a great turnout.

Patch: Why did you decide to write children’s books?

Fliess: I think it is mostly because I have kids, and I was reading so many children’s books. I have always been a writer and I have always written creative stories, but I always wrote them for grown ups. I wrote poetry for a long time.

It wasn’t until I had my own kids and I started reading them a lot of books that I thought maybe I can transfer my writing skills to kids’ books. I used to like to write when I was young in rhyme a lot, and I thought adults don’t want to read rhyming poems. So when I started writing children’s books, I thought that was a perfect outlet for that rhyme.

Patch: How many children do you have?

Fliess: I have two boys. They are 6 and 8.

Patch: Do they read the stories you write?

Fliess: They read all of my books, even the ones that aren’t getting published or that may never get published. So they are sort of my first readers.

Patch: Where did the idea come from for Shoes For Me?

Fliess: I was thinking about writing a book about shoes, because my child at the time–I only had one–was taking off his shoes in the wrong places. So I thought maybe I will write a book about when it is OK to take your shoes off, when you should keep your shoes on, but it wasn’t really working.

The children’s librarian at the lives across the street from me, which is very fortunate, and she had a great suggestion. She said, ‘I think you are trying to do too much with it. Why don’t you try shorter rhymes?’ When I did that it forced me to make it a different story line, and I thought it could be about somebody who wants to try on shoes, and then I thought maybe I would just make it about shoe shopping. My kids love shoes, so I thought if it appealed to boys, then it would appeal to girls too.

Patch: What other forms of writing do you do outside of writing children’s books?

Fliess: Since January, I am a copywriter for eBay part time, but even before then, I did a lot of freelance writing. I wrote articles for parenting publications. One of them is Education.com. I wrote for them for about a year. I did some different writing for companies, like startups. I did a lot of freelance writing for a bunch of startups when they were getting the website going and needed copy for their website and developing a voice for their website.

I recently sold an article to Writer’s Digest, and I am writing an article about a shoe in a book drive that I did, and I am sending it to Publishers Weekly, so we’ll see if they will buy it or take it. I don’t even know if they pay.”

Patch: Why did you go into freelance writing?

Fliess: I started doing the freelance writing to have a better cover letter for submitting my children’s book manuscripts, and the freelance writing took on this whole life of its own. Now I feel like I am finally doing what I really want to do, which is writing all the time. I used to do marketing and public relations and I enjoyed that, but I just didn’t want to go back to work to do that, so I feel like I have this ideal situation right now.

Patch: What was your favorite children’s book growing up?

Fliess: I had a few different interesting ones that were not that well known. Of course, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble is well known, and I still love that book. A couple that are more obscure [include] one called Creole, and it was about a creature in the forest that didn’t fit in. Then another one that I really liked that I still have is called The Adventures of the Three Colors. It’s one of these books where you turn it, and the cellophane will change and show different pictures, so it’s kind of interesting. You sort of have to look at it, and that got me really interested in art, too.”

Patch: What is a unique feature in your writing that readers will notice?

Fliess: This is only my first book, so I am not sure. I would say I have a knack for the short rhyming. It’s very staccato and very melodic.

Patch: The illustrator, Mike Laughead, is from Michigan. How did you two become involved in both working on the book?

Fliess: When I sold the manuscript, it was this 12-point, Times New Roman font on white paper. I didn’t have an illustrator in mind. In fact I didn’t have a hippo in mind. When the editors who bought the story, Marilyn Brigham and Marshall Cavendish, sent me a revision, she said, ‘I think this might be cute with animals.’ She told me what she would like to see more of in the story, so I changed it and when they were looking for illustrators, they worked with their art director to find somebody who could do animals well.

At that point, they created a short list of illustrators, and then they chose one. She did actually pass me his drawings, to say this is what we are thinking, because they want to make me happy too. So they found the illustrator; I really had nothing to do with it.

Patch: What did you think of the illustrations?

Fliess: I think he did a really good job. I have an art background, so my editor was very much open to getting my feedback on all the illustrations throughout the process. That was a neat part that I didn’t really expect to participate in.

Patch: What ideas are you working on for future books?

Fliess: I do have another book coming out in this “For Me” series, which is what I am calling it. A Dress For Me comes out next March. Then I have a novelty truck book, real toddler focused, coming out from Harcourt, which is called Tons of Trucks, in July 2012. I have two stories that I am working on right now. A picture book, and right now I am calling it The Cow Whisper. It’s about this cow that has a growing utter, and the farmer can’t figure out how to milk it, so he asks the townspeople for help, and all these people try to milk it. The other one I am writing is sort of a young middle grade, and it is about a guinea pig that is the hero of a pet store.

Patch: With so many different story ideas, where do the ideas for your stories come from?

Fliess: The ideas come from all over the place. The cow one I started writing in 2008, and it has gone in 17 million directions. I was writing a barnyard book, and while I was writing that one I got the idea for this cow that nobody could milk because the cow was ticklish, and that wasn’t really working.

For the guinea pig one, I got the idea because we had a guinea pig, and my kids are always saying, "What do you think Mocha is thinking?" So I started saying, ‘Maybe he is thinking this and this.’ I thought it would be fun to write a book from an animal’s perspective. Sometimes I get ideas from being at the park, overhearing conversations between parents and their kids. Kids say the darnedest things.