I am so excited to share today’s Author Spotlight with Christine Marie Layton today! She was one of the first people I met when I joined the kidlit community and I could not be happier for her success with her recent book, Light Speaks! Let’s dive in!
What was the first type of genre or manuscript that you wrote?
First off, thank you so much for having me on your blog! And of course, I’ve been writing since I was little. Then I got really focused about 10 years ago and started doing little pieces for trade journals, like publishing articles for free. Then I moved into paid articles for magazines and websites and from there I moved into the work for hire short books. Then into picture book.
Were those all in the children’s genre or were some of them in the adult genre too?
Some were in adult. Yeah, I’m a member of the House Rabbit Society. So, they have a trade journal called the House Rabbit Journal. It’s people who own rabbits and let them run around the house.
So, you’ve got a rabbit running around?
I have rabbits. So, I wrote about my rabbits and took pictures of my rabbits and they were happy to have contributors for their small trade journal. That was really a thrill to see my writing published and my rabbits published as models.
Your first manuscript that you wrote–did you have any that you’d written before the work for higher ones or was Light Speaks the first one?
Oh, yes. I jumped into trying to write a picture book without knowing much of anything and just boldly started writing them and sending them out to publishers and I was way off base. I know now looking back that I had a lot of learning to do. But I still recommend anybody just jump in feet first, give it a try. You can learn from anywhere that you’re starting at and get better.
Taking a couple steps back and joining SCBWI, a writing organization, and making lots of friends who are writers, I learned so much more and got so much better at it.
Cool! When did you join SCBWI?
I just looked this up. 2014. So, it’s been nine years.
I really got serious about it two years ago and treated it like it was grad school because there is so much content that you can study. It’s overwhelming.
Your book came out April 18th, do you have anything else in the works right now or are you not allowed to talk about it?
I always have stuff in the works but nothing that’s gotten picked up for publication. Recently, I took a little bit of time off to learn how to promote and how the publication process was gonna go because that’s a whole new world. The marketing and the promo. So, I haven’t sent anything out but I’d love to do a follow-up book about sound because that’s another learning standard for kids at this age. They learn about light and sound communication.
Did you have an agent for your book? I know you published with like a smaller publisher. A smaller press, yeah, I’m unagented. I never sent it to an agent and did a cold–not a cold call–but a cold email to a small publisher, Tilbury House. And they were kind enough and wonderful enough to see some potential in it.
They took a while to get back. I thought for sure it was a no because of how long it took to hear back. It turns out that the response was in my spam folder.s So, check the spam folder!
You write primarily children’s literature, do you write exclusively picture books or do you write in any other type of genres?
Oh, I also write science fiction short stories for adults that are on dailysciencefiction.com.
I’m obsessed. I love to write mysteries and they’re just the trashiest, most awful mysteries that are happening. They’re so much fun to write!
Are you trying to publish any of those yet or were you just writing them to get the experience?
Right now, I think I have a lot of learning to do to get to a novel-sized work but I’d love to write a middle grade mystery because that’s what I enjoyed reading.
When you’re writing, where do you write? Is there a specific part of your house? Do you go out somewhere else? What does that look like?
I would never give this advice to students but I write in bed. I like to write early in the morning when it’s quiet but also it’s a thrill to wake up late at night with an idea and grab the pen that has a little flashlight in it and write down the idea.
Those exist?
Yes.
Oh my gosh! That’s good to know! I’m learning all kinds of stuff today!
It’s a must have if you wake up frequently at night with ideas about books.
So, when you’re writing in bed do you mostly do it on the computer or do you do pen first?
I’m a notebook and pen person to jot down the ideas. And I have to have it pretty well developed before heading to the computer.
Can you tell me a little bit about the inspiration behind Light Speaks?
Yeah, it came from a classroom I was in, an elementary science classroom. They have learning standards, a list of things they must cover at this grade level and one of them is communicating with light and sound over long distances.
So, the teacher was talking about stop lights. How you have a green light that means go and a red light that means stop but you get that message without a sound and the kids had tons more ideas about fireflies and moonlight. And thinking the way the kids were thinking, they’re absolutely right.
Everybody out there in the universe is using light to communicate messages and some can pick up on the message and some can’t and that’s really cool.
So cool! You mentioned SCBWI earlier and joining the writing community. How has your involvement with that writer community changed your life?
Oh, so much. I think SCBWI just opened a ton of doors and maybe some I was ready to walk through some I was not ready to walk through–they weren’t my doors yet.
But I made a lot of friendships first and foremost, met a lot of really cool people with similar interests and then all this information was there to learn too about really every aspect of writing. So, like I said, about two years ago I got really serious and started treating it like a grad school class and really learning, taking notes. I have got a thick author’s notebook full of post-it notes and highlighting and that’s when doors started to open for me in the publishing world, when I started to take it really seriously.
When you’re writing, what keeps you going when you hit an obstacle?
Yeah, so in the past I would have said coffee and the stress of needing to supply something for my next critique group meeting. But these days I’m thinking, if there’s a blockage, don’t try to power through. Take a nap. Take a rest. Take a walk away from it for a bit and don’t try to force it but figure out why there’s a blockage there and maybe it’s not the right project or the right time for it. Learning a little bit of patience along the way.
I love that because I feel like a lot of times people are like butt in chair. You just gotta do it and power through and writing is pain. But it doesn’t have to be painful.
Yeah, I don’t want it to become stressful because I do this for fun. It’s not my main job so if it becomes too work-like that’s gonna suck the joy out of it. I mean we all need to be kind to ourselves and you don’t want to just assign extra work to people just because.
I write number one for fun. If I lived alone on a desert island and there was nobody else to see it, I would keep a journal in the sand. I just enjoy expressing myself through writing and then I’m actively trying to get published because I want to push myself to see how far I can go.
I just want to keep growing and learning.
Where can readers find you on the internet?
They can find me on my website christinemarielayton.com or on social media @layton_author.
Awesome! And then your book is available at most booksellers?
Yeah, Barnes Noble, Amazon, bookshop, all of them.
Head to my website for free activities related to the book and you don’t have to read the book to enjoy the activities.
I had so much fun chatting with Christine about her books and her journey. Next week, we will have Susan Johnston Taylor the author of Animals in Surprising Shades!
