Our School - Tanjong Katong Campus 10 May 2018

The family that publishes together stays together

By CIS Communications
Photograph by CIS Communications

If writing and publishing a book has always been on your to-do list, then the Mortlock family, part of our TK community, will be a wonderful inspiration to you. The reason? They not only wrote and illustrated their own book titled ‘What’s Different About Trevor?’, they also successfully overcame the usual publishing hurdles - as a family. We spoke with dad Mike Mortlock to find out what went on behind the scenes.

Is this your family’s first time publishing a book?

Yes, although Olivia (currently in grade 7) also helped TK teacher Wendy Tian with illustrations for her recent book.

What inspired this project?

The seven lions’ stories started on a family holiday in Japan. I told them to Olivia and Samantha (grade 4) on train journeys to help stave off the boredom and after every silly story I told them, they would insist I tell them more. On a business trip to London, I re-told a couple of stories to my niece and nephew who live there, and they told them the next day to their friends at school who liked them and insisted on hearing more. On hearing this, my brother-in-law suggested we turn the stories into books, which we are now doing.

Tell us about the entire process from conception to publication. Were there any challenges along the way?

Getting started was probably the biggest challenge. It took about 6 months from the idea to writing the first book to finally finishing the first written draft. We then moved on to the illustrating, which is mostly Olivia's domain.

Her biggest challenge in the process was deciding what the lions should look like. She did quite a lot of research and took elements from a lot of different sources that she liked to arrive at the final product. All the drawings were done by hand on manga paper and then coloured by Samantha.

Deciding on the colours was also a joint effort and we spent quite a lot of time at the art shop experimenting with various colours before landing on the final palette for the book. For our first book, we relied quite heavily on our friend, Siska, to help with the final layout and desktop publishing elements to get the soft copy ready to be sent to the publisher and printer.

As this was also Siska’s first time working on a book format, it took a few attempts to get the formatting perfect according the publisher’s requirements. We also learnt a lot about various publishing options like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and also about general requirements like ISBNs and copyright.

What do you hope to achieve with this project?

We have a couple of main goals. Working together on the books as a family, I think, brings us closer together especially as the girls are getting older. Ultimately we also hope to finish a series of books that we can look back on and be proud of.

How many books have you planned for this series?

At the moment, we have no set plan for the number of books. In terms of stories and plots, we could probably write over 10, but it all depends on how long our enthusiasm holds out. We have discussed about aiming for at least 6.

What have you learned from the entire process? Did you learn anything new about your family members along the way?

This was quite a stretch for the girls in terms of the quantity of work involved and the need to work consistently over a long period of time to deliver the final result. What I am most proud of is after the process of the first book, they continued straight on into the second book with barely a rest, and we are already discussing the third book.

What can we look forward to in the next book?

More of the same really. The lions are unlikely to learn any lessons from the first book, so expect them to keep getting into the same sticky situations.

Publishing a book can be scary, so we are glad that the Mortlock family has showed us that it can be an enriching journey—especially when you do it together as a family! The book What’s different about Trevor? is now available on Amazon and Book Depository, but you can also borrow it from either the TK or Lakeside primary libraries. Have fun reading about the adventures of the seven lions!

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