ELISSA Skinner was inspired to write her children’s e-books after following the blog of an American mother whose twin boys died at birth.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
When the woman’s second pregnancy turned bad, resulting in the death of a third baby, Elissa decided to write a series of online books in memory of the ‘Little Angels’.
Over the past three years, she has penned 12 children’s books and one novel dedicated to young children and their families all over the world.
With three young boys of her own, the Lake Conjola mother said she was moved to write about “real life issues” after reading other children’s books that were “pretty ordinary”.
“I used to record books on to CDs for my boys to listen to and, after a while, I thought, ‘I can do better than that’,” she said.
“So, when the baby was sleeping, I spent two hours a day writing.”
With no formal training, Elissa wrote a novel about her own family and her first two books in the Little Angels series.
She could not afford the cost to have them printed, so she offered them for free on Amazon to build interest in her work, before selling them for 99 cents.
She wrote two e-books for her son which were shared with his classmates at Milton Public School and eight personal books for children who filled in a questionnaire about their family and interests and provided photos and artwork for the books.
“The personal books were great, the kids provided their own artwork for the book cover and photos to be included,” Elissa said.
With growing interest in her work, Elissa decided to try her hand at drawing and she is about to release her first e-book that she has fully illustrated and written.
“I’m really excited and pleased with the way it has come together,” she said.
Elissa is offering her new book The Little Yellow Duckling to readers free on Amazon for one week.
She said people should go to her Facebook page, Elissa Skinner Author, for details about accessing a free copy of the book to be read on a Kindle or similar device.
“The book has a real message for kids and I hope people will like it,” she said.
Producing e-books means Elissa is not limited to the length of her stories and some personalised books have more than 500 words.
As well as allowing children to get their hands on the free copy of The Little Yellow Duckling, Elissa is keen to create personalised books for children in the area.
One day, she hopes to have her works published on paper.
“I would love to have enough support so I can get a real illustrator and a real publisher and do print versions of my books,” she said.
Writing has provided a creative outlet for the stay at home mum and singing teacher, who also recently unleashed her creativity on stage as the lead role in the Milton Follies Badjelly the Witch and has also secured a role in the next Follies production Summer Wonderland.
