Nicholas C. Rossis
Hi Elle, thank you so much for your question!
The Runaway Smile started out as a silly poem that I was playing with in my head (you can read the final version of it at the end). I mentioned it to my illustrator friend, Dimitris Fousekis, and he suggested we turn it into a children's book. This was before I decided to become an author, and Pearseus had not even been conceived, so I was intrigued by the idea.
At first, we wanted to do a traditional children's book (full-colour spread with a couple of verses on each page). However, when we approached a Greek publisher, she suggested we do it instead in the form of Frightfully Friendly Ghosties (http://www.amazon.com/Frightfully-Fri...). This would both keep the printing costs down and allow us to turn the book into a series.
I played around with my poem and ended up writing the whole book in a single Saturday morning. I remember it clearly, as Electra wanted to go for a walk in Tatoi (a nearby national park) and was annoyed that I chose instead to spend my Saturday writing :)
Sadly, it took Dimitris much longer to complete the illustrations, and the book was only published in December, after over two years in the making.
The Runaway Smile started out as a silly poem that I was playing with in my head (you can read the final version of it at the end). I mentioned it to my illustrator friend, Dimitris Fousekis, and he suggested we turn it into a children's book. This was before I decided to become an author, and Pearseus had not even been conceived, so I was intrigued by the idea.
At first, we wanted to do a traditional children's book (full-colour spread with a couple of verses on each page). However, when we approached a Greek publisher, she suggested we do it instead in the form of Frightfully Friendly Ghosties (http://www.amazon.com/Frightfully-Fri...). This would both keep the printing costs down and allow us to turn the book into a series.
I played around with my poem and ended up writing the whole book in a single Saturday morning. I remember it clearly, as Electra wanted to go for a walk in Tatoi (a nearby national park) and was annoyed that I chose instead to spend my Saturday writing :)
Sadly, it took Dimitris much longer to complete the illustrations, and the book was only published in December, after over two years in the making.
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