Terri Sabol's Blog: Behind the Scenes with Author Terri Sabol

I’m often asked how long it takes to make a book. I know authors can take anywhere from 1 month to 10 years to write a manuscript. Then an author who wants to be traditionally published might take 1 to 2 years to sign with a literary agent, plus it can take 6 months to 2+ years to sell the manuscript to a publishing house, and finally another 1 to 2 years to get the manuscript illustrated plus waiting on printing in China and marketing. Green With Envy took just over a year from idea conception to print.

Of course, this isn’t the only author-related thing I did in that year. I released two Oscar and Emmy Books, finalized another Oscar and Emmy manuscript #5 and delivered that to the illustrator, wrote a new draft for the 6th Oscar and Emmy book, tweaked my 1st Oscar and Emmy book to flow better and match the font to the rest of the series, wrote about six other manuscripts that are in various stages of revision, attended many conferences, watched hundreds of hours of webinars, read a couple hundred children’s books for research, revamped my website, was active on social media and sent out newsletters, and many, many other things.

This will be my final Book Launch post for Green With Envy. I hope you enjoyed this look behind the scenes about my whole book-making process.

Here’s another fun behind the scenes from the illustrator creating Blade and Augustine in the 32 page picture book, Green With Envy. These are just some of the layers it takes for Pei Jen to create an illustration. I could watch these videos over and over!

When I start a new manuscript, I like to brainstorm all the words or phrases I can think of about the topic to give me a word bank to pull from as I write. St. Augustine grass is very popular on the Gulf Coast since it does well in high heat and humidity.

I knew I wanted a female and a male as my two main characters, and around the 2nd draft, I settled on the names Blade and Augustine. Pei Jen brought these two beautiful characters to life in the picture book, Green With Envy.

Here’s a fun behind the scene from the illustrator creating Blade in the 32 page picture book, Green With Envy. These are just some of the layers it takes for Pei Jen to create an illustration. So mesmerizing! Let me know if you want to see another video of Blade and Augustine.

Since the majority of my first book (2016’s Oscar and Emmy Get Rescued) was 80% done after midnight (I am a Night Owl), it was fitting that my publishing company be called Burning the Midnight Oil Publishing. (To this day, my best working hours are between 10 pm and 4am.) My husband gave me the sweetest gift that Christmas, an old time lantern with a label designating the name of my company and the year it was established. Now with 5 books published under this company and several more to be published before next summer, I decided it was time to give my company an official logo. I hired Tia-Rose Pezzani to take the idea of that lantern my husband bought me and combine it with the publishing name. She came up with something completely creative and unique. I love it!

For Green With Envy, I researched for several months to find my illustrator, Pei Jen. Once I narrowed it down to my top 8 choices, I contacted each of them for rates and availability. Then I chose my top 4 and commissioned each of them to create a sample of Blade and Augustine.

The main thing that won me over about Pei Jen was her attention to detail, and how she knew she would need to create this world beyond just two blades of grass. She added different angles and details like dandelions, snails, and a creative use of leaves throughout the book.  I didn’t give Pei Jen much art direction. Instead, I relied on her skill to come up with the perfect complement to my text. I especially love the expressions she gave each of the two main characters. You really are rooting for Blade. (pun intended)

Pei Jen also did the book design and cover, as well as her illustrator bio pic, which is really cool. She was great to work with, and I am a fan of her other books, including The Lonely Cloud, When the Clock Strikes series, and Crackodile.

Pei Jen lives in Malaysia, and I live in Texas, USA. Communication was easy in this age of technology, email, and Google Slides. I look forward to working with her again on a future book. 

There are so many people who are integral to making a book besides the author and the illustrator. Earlier I posted about acknowledging the specific people behind the (technical) scenes of each book. Today, I want to talk about book dedications. These can include people throughout the author or illustrator’s lives who have helped shape them to be who they are today or were maybe a specific inspiration for the book.

I am dedicating Green With Envy to my parents, who raised me to not be a jealous person and to celebrate other people’s successes. Thank you, Mom and Dad. I love you!

Green With Envy is a 32 page picture book is written by Terri Sabol and beautifully illustrated by Pei Jen. 

There are so many people that are integral to making a book besides the author and the illustrator. This team of people can include accountability partners, critique partners, beta readers, editors, and so many others. It would be impossible to list them all. In addition to a dedication, I always include acknowledgments for some of the behind the scenes people that helped make this specific book possible.

Candice has been my accountability partner since my very first book, as well as my extra pair of eyes and sounding board plus much more.

Leslie is a published author who gave me a professional critique last fall and encouraged me that this manuscript was near publish-ready. She also suggested some tweaks that made a world of difference, including a title change and an alteration to the give the last line more punch.

Karen came aboard later in the game. She read my manuscript right before I handed it over to the illustrator. As an experienced librarian, she could see it from a child’s eye and gave the right amount of tweaks and encouragement. She also suggested the ‘twist’ spread should slightly have different wording during the storyboard phase once we could see the illustration sketches.

No author writes alone. There is a team of support behind them, and I am very grateful for my team.

Green With Envy is a 32 page picture book is written by Terri Sabol and beautifully illustrated by Pei Jen. 

Curious what my latest book, Green With Envy, is about? You can check out the trailer here. https://youtu.be/ptS-lUZgmBs

Blade is jealous of his cousin Augustine’s beautiful green color and location in the yard. Blade tries to make the most of what he has, but finally can’t take it any longer and moves to Augustine’s side of the yard. After soaking it all in, something happens that makes Blade realize his old life wasn’t as bad as he thought.

This 32 page picture book is written by Terri Sabol and beautifully illustrated by Pei Jen.