Dan Bodenstein's Blog

The latest children’s story I am working on involves a small old western town in the middle of nowhere. Unlike other western towns, this one didn’t pop up around a gold or silver rush. Nope. This one popped up around a more unusual product of mother earth.

The story is in the outline stage and is being set around the people of the town itself. It’s staged to be a group of short stories that revolve around the every day life of these colorful, quirky, and sometimes misguided, characters.

I find...

Time flies. It sure does. It’s been a while since my last post here on my blog. Sorry about that. So, what’s going on. On the sadder side of things, my mother passed away on Father’s Day this year. She was very ill and had been battling diabetes here whole life, as well as the loss of her kidneys. In the end, her body just gave out. In spite of all of that, our family is going well.

As for projects, work is proceeding on Fields of Dreams. We hope to have some illustrations for Volume 0 very so...

Every year the Loggerhead MarinelifeCenter of Juno Beach has their annual event, TurtleFest. This year I had the privilegeof attending and signing copies of Eartha the Sea Turtle. I really enjoy the look on a child’s face when they see me write their name in the book, and sign it. TurtleFest is an amazing event that includes live music, art displays, gift vendors, food, and educational information as well. All this and you also get to tour the facility and see the sea turtles currently being...

FreeFromHarm.org recently contacted me about doing an interview regarding my children’s book, Steven the Vegan. FreeFromHarm.org is an in-depth news and information source for all things regarding animal rights, and veganism. I’m very excited that the book is starting to get recognition in the vegan community.

Check out the interview here.

This year I attended my first con. During my visit to Orlando, I met with Ron (my illustrator and friend) and we attended the MegaCon ComicbookConvention at the Orange County Convention Center. As I said, it was my first con. My interest in the convention was to see and meet other independent writers and illustrators. I noticed the more mainstream illustrators draw in the same format, that standard hero post, comic book format. The more independent illustrators had their own formats, and, wha...

You’ve heard the expression, “Writers write.” That is very true. I have a slew of story ideas I’ve been cultivating for the past year. One of the stories is a pirate tale. The goal is to create a story which can be turned into a graphic novel. Writing a pirate story is not as simple as it sounds. Most of my knowledge of pirates came from movies, and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World. I wanted to learn more about real pirates, not just those in fiction. But I also wanted to mai...

On a recent trip to Orlando to visit my friend and illustrator Ron, we took a day off and visited the Magic Kingdom. I didn’t realize until the day before that the New Fantasyland had just opened. Prior to my visit I did some research online and found that there were a few restaurants that had garden burgers in the Magic Kingdom. Being a vegan, I find it necessary to make sure I can find something to eat when visiting new places.

While in the new Fantasyland, Ron and I decided to give the new...

We started our next project and have once again turned to fans to help back it. Myth Illogical is our latest project. It takes a child’s perspective at looking at mythological creatures … with a twist. What’s the twist? Well, if I tell you then it won’t be a real twist will it.

The story surrounds four characters, Bigfoot, Unicorn, Minotaur, and Dragon. As the story unfolds, Bigfoot is trying to scare the reader … unsuccessfully. He starts getting pointer and tips from the other characters unt...

Today, Steven the Vegan was promoted on VeganCuts.com VeganCuts is an amazing service that offers deals on vegan products ranging from foods, to … books! While I was completing the layouts of the pages I contacted VeganCuts and asked if my book was something they’d like to offer. (Duh!) Of course, they said yes.

Be sure to checkout the deal at VeganCuts.com and sign up for their newsletter to get deals on other vegan products!

The books are here!

Last week the illustrator for Steven the Vegan,Ron Robrahn, signed all the books, and now it’s my turn. Ron also hand drew all the sketch cards which look AWESOME! This weekend I will start signing and endorsing all the books. Next week they will slowly begin shipping out to all the Kickstarter.com backers.

I cannot stress how important their role was in getting this book published. Not only did they provide financial support, but they provided moral support as well. Notes o...