Piggie and Puppy are back! Remember book one, Piggie and Puppy at the Beach?
Tatum and I decided to write a sequel since we were studying fairy tales this summer.
We worked on our rough draft and ideated for weeks. Man, we couldn’t come up with a theme, but we landed on the challenge of temptation. We had been studying this term in the Bible (and if experienced in our lives!) and had read many verses about staying focused on Christ and having wisdom with decisions/discernment.
Here are our notes and our dialogue. We had to plan out each page. (The parenthesis means we don’t write that but draw it).
Ok, we are ready to create the book. Coming up with a title was the last hurdle, but more on that later.
We wanted Piggie to be tempted by a “villian” since a fairy tale has this feature. He was warned by a “curious bird,” and then was tempted by the villain. The reader has to guess what will happen (and root for Piggie to make the wise choice).
We chose “Bait ‘n’ Surf” for our title as a play on Bait and Switch. Piggie is being baited and then gets to surf.
COVER:
Now the first couple pages:
Ok, now for the curious bird who approaches with a WARNING. All fairy tales have this!
Puppy returns.
And the villian now is introduced. (We love Petey the Cat in the Dogman books, so thanks to Dav Pilkey for this).
Hmmmm…..pink magic? Sounds fishy. The reader is worried. Piggie!! Don’t listen to him!
He is faced with a choice. We all face temptation daily, and how do we choose what is right?
(Well, Tot and I turn to prayer and the Holy Spirit speaks to us, but we kept this part out). The reader now is to wonder, what color is he using as he surfs against gorilla!??
Aaahhhh, good choice, Piggie. (as he holds up his blue ribbon and the bird is giving a thumbs up. Petey is disturbed).
And our tag line of “The End.”
What fun. We had a blast making our book. Now we are ready for our next book. Oh, the work never ends for us authors. HEE!