It’s Here! In Person!

New Release!! The Secret Locker, Bunnies in the Orchard Lands – come see it in person at WGV Gymnastics’ Pro Shop!

It’s Here! In Person!

March 16, 2022

“Haven’t you ever wanted to meet bunnies who can do gymnastics, especially vault?” Asks Bonnie. (from “Bunnies in the Orchard Lands“)

I am over-the-moon excited about this project I’ve been heavily working on!

Let me introduce you to “The Secret Locker,” a series of illustrated children’s books based on the wonderful imaginations of the gymnasts at my gym! (okay, not my gym, but I coach here and would like to think of it as mine) Each book follows a group of gymnasts as they explore or go on adventures.

The first one (just released!!) is “Bunnies in the Orchard Lands.” In these fun pages, we meet Jilly Beanie, Lizi, and Bonnie and follow them into an enchanted place called “The Orchard Lands” where they meet bunnies who can do gymnastics!

Can you wait to see the bunny siblings? Moon, Star, Blob, Rose, and Dally… maybe just a glimpse of hmm… The apple blossoms!

Oh yes, The Orchard Lands have apple blossoms all over! Didn’t my illustrator, Rebeccah Tart, do a great job? I love her art!

If you are close to St Augustine, Florida, come to my gym’s Pro Shop at 135 Center Place Way, Saint Augustine, FL and buy a copy (if I’m at the desk, I’ll sign it for you) and support our gym!! Otherwise, you can buy it online and still support our gym because a portion of all sales from “The Secret Locker” series goes to WGV Gymnastics!

I’m so super excited!! Rebeccah and I have two more books in “The Secret Locker” series being produced now and many more ideas coming! All thanks to little gymnasts with BIG imaginations!

Type at you next time!

~Nancy Tart

Fresh New Year

Who else is excited for 2019? Who else looks at the new year like a child on Christmas morning looks at presents around the tree?

December 31, 2018

Fresh New Year

“It’s still 2018, right?” asks Kimberly, working on her History.

“Yes, it’s the last day of 2018,” I respond.  Christina pipes in with, “and our Aunt’s birthday!”  (One of their aunts is born on December 31!)

This makes me think: (uh-oh, I just heard two kids say “Mom’s writing another blog in her head.”) Yes, my children know me!

Tomorrow starts a fresh new year.  We are given a new beginning each day as the dawn warms our skies and the sun rises to dry the dew.

In the service industry, all days blend together and all the New Year has meant for me in the past 8 years was a barrage of people calling to order reservations at 1am on New Year’s Day from the Bayfront downtown or 11pm from the Saint Augustine Beach peir (two locations at the times we can never promise) so then it turns into irritated people who don’t understand the simple line, “I can’t guarantee that time at that location, you can try to call us at the time to see where our cabs are.”

I’m so glad today does not involve dispatching!  I’m only answering questions from the school table – awesome!

In 2018:

  • I started working at WGV Gymnastics as a coach (LOVE this job).
  • We closed our taxi company in December.  It feels awesome to be able to shut off my phone and not worry about missing a reservation call!
  • I’ve finished, polished, and published four new children’s books: A Foundling Furball, Alena’s Baby, The Tightrope Dare, and Fibbing Fishermen!
  • I’ve rejoiced with the addition of my best friend’s 10th baby!
  • I’ve rejoiced with my sister who is due about the same time I am!  (They will be close cousins!)
  • I’ve mourned and rejoiced with my family after my Daddy passed.
  • I celebrated the first Christmas ever without him – that was his favorite holiday.
  • Christina achieved CAP rank of C/CMSgt, become Red Cross certified, started officially babysitting, started working as needed at what she calls “my somewhat part time job,” and completed her third college semester.
  • Becky completed her second college semester, bred and raised a few dozen chicks up to “independence” for clients, raised her batches of “babies” (aka Guinea Piglets), joined gymnastics classes (finally finding something to encourage her fitness!), and has taught most of her siblings the Latin terms for every body part since she’s been dissecting animals in her biology labs!
  • Kimberly joined gymnastics classes with her gung-ho attitude and is expecting great things from herself, was gifted a bunny (she’s been saving to adopt one for almost a year but her awesome big sisters beat her to it) and Minuit has never left her side.
  • Jaquline discovered the amazing world of Geometry and everything is now interpreted in shapes or gymnastics skills!
  • Jillian started losing teeth, is studying sketching (she’s getting rather good actually!) and digital art along with Becky, and getting herself lost in the world of reading!
  • Lucas started trying to write his name!

We are all expecting amazing things to come in 2019.  God has paths lined up for us that we may not even be able to see yet – if you’d told me at the start of 2018 that I’d be teaching gymnastics for an awesome Christian boss, be pregnant again, and have no taxi company, I would have laughed.

But (positive!) God knows the desires of our hearts!  He knows I love children, love teaching, and that gymnastics has always been a dream. (Dream job come true?  YES!)  He knows Lucas loves babies and is super excited about getting to “take MY BABY home from church.”  (All the other babies he’s been around are those of church family, so he can’t take them home.)  He knows that rebuilding hybrid batteries is something else I love – tinkering with electronics as Daddy taught me & a niche few offer around here so maybe that will be our main income soon!

I’m about to polish and release a few more children’s books (maybe an entire new series working around my budding illustrators’ work!) and my goal for this year is 12 releases.

Who else is excited for 2019?  Who else looks at the new year like a child on Christmas morning looks at presents around the tree?  I see each day as a gift from God to be opened at each dawn.  I see gifts we can’t even dream of yet sitting there, waiting God’s perfect timing for us to unwrap and enjoy.  I’m praying that certain things are there – which day holds the gift of my child’s birth?  Does a gift in that pile include a property or home of our own?  Is there a gift of being able to read my books before a class, teach a grammar workshop, or tutor another child?  Only God knows what each gift holds.  My Daddy loved seeing the smiles and squeals of excitement on Christmas morning as his children opened presents – I love this part of Christmas morning as a parent too.  I can only imagine God smiling as we open each gift and yelp with excitement!

Enjoy your daily gifts in 2019!  Happy, blessed New Year!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

New Story Release! Fibbing Fisherman

New Release! The fifth book in the Devonians children’s series ~ check it out!

November 25, 2018

New Story Release!

 

Greetings!  I’m so excited about the fifth book in the Devonians Series!  One of my illustrators (Rebeccah) did an amazing job of sketching out a scene for cover art again! This time her scene sketch is within the village of Covenant instead of along the banks of the Creek.  It’s currently available in ebook format on nook and kindle.

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The Devonians are space castaways who have developed a colony on a strange new planet (they name it Devonia).

This newest story, Fibbing Fishermen, begins after Alena’s Baby.

Michael Summers, who loves to go fishing, is listening to a Meeting lesson about Peter and the other fishermen who followed Jesus long ago on Earth.  He starts daydreaming about going fishing.  He knows they will have a long week or two of planting tubers so figures he’d better go fishing right now!  But he doesn’t get permission.

For a peek into this newest story, read this excerpt from “Fibbing Fishermen!

The big barn was open at the middle with the two big ladders and as tall as three houses stacked together!  Michael had three fishhooks in his pocket. He always carried stuff in his pockets.  He discovered a roll of the very slender braided twine in the big barn.  While he was cutting two lengths of the twine that were twice as long as his arms outstretched, as his dad had taught him, Stephen Taylor showed up.

“What are you doing with fishing twine?” Stephen demanded.

Michael froze.  He stammered, “nothing, why?”

“Nothing?” Stephen snorted, “looks like you’re going fishing to me.”

Michael didn’t say anything for a moment.

“If you let me go along, I won’t tell your dad,” Stephen offered.

“You don’t have permission to go fishing,” Michael said.  He started looping the cut twine into a coil.

“Neither do you.”

Michael stammered, “I’m just fixing stuff.”

“You’re lying.”

Michael weighed his options quickly.  No, he hadn’t yet left the meetinghouse grounds, so he wasn’t technically doing anything wrong yet.  He could stop now and go back to listen with the others.  But then he remembered how much work there was to come in the next week or two and how he wouldn’t get another chance to go fishing until all of the planting was done.

“I’m going to Ice Cube Creek to help with dinner,” Michael sighed, “two fishermen would catch more fish.”

Stephen smirked.  He knew Michael didn’t have permission either.

The two boys sneaked off to the creek with their fishing gear.

 

Michael wasn’t sure what time it was, but his stomach was saying it was nearly suppertime.  He’d skipped out on lunch, anyway.  But they hadn’t caught any fish.  His excuse didn’t really work without any fish.  Michael was wondering if God had ordered all the fish to stay away from the two disobedient boys when a rustling disturbance pulled him from his thoughts.

 

… (be sure to find out what “disturbance” they encounter and continue reading Fibbing Fishermen here!  Or browse all my titles and formats here!)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

 

You Can’t Rush Art

“You Can’t Rush Art” say my illustrators while I’m waiting on cover art for two new releases!

July 24, 2018

You Can’t Rush Art

I love finishing a new book!  I actually have two (One is the pilot in a new young adult series, the other is the second in the Landmark Tribe Books) that are finished.

Now comes the part I’m always excited about… illustrations!

I never know exactly what my illustrators are going to come up with for covers.  Rebeccah is designing the one for the Landmark Tribe book because she loves drawing animals – and I love her furry squirrels!

She was discussing how to make a “quirky” Crunchie (aka teenage boy squirrel) but still keep the soft style she did with Granny Pecan for the “Busting Berry Bath” cover.  I can’t wait to see what she comes up with!

For the new series book, my illustrators get to come up with a whole theme!  With no pre-set design constraints, I’ve already seen a pastel sunset background, a sharper, darker, hard pencil background, and an oil-paint-style grid.  They haven’t decided on a “perfect” theme yet, but watching their imaginations run while they figure it out is amazing!

For now, I have to wait (trying to be patient – because “you can’t rush art!”) as they do the artistry part of my story.  Regardless of what people say, audiences DO judge a book by its cover.  This is why my illustrators make commissions off of their work!

I can’t wait to release these stories for ya’ll to enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

Family Fun Fest 2018

May 4, 2018

Family Fun Fest 2018!

We spent all day on April 28, 2018, a beautiful Saturday in Saint Augustine, at the Family Fun Fest.  This annual event at Francis Field supports the community work of Alpha Omega Maternity Home and their related outreaches.

Alpha Omega has been a vital community resource in Saint Augustine for a long time.  They are a wonderful organization to support – and we love the all-day fun!

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I set up a vendor booth to sell my printed books, DVD books, audio CDs, some of the girls’ assorted crafts, and my mom and dad’s beautiful prints.  We had a spot for children to make free bookmarks with fun yarn tassels.  (This was on the bright teal table & was Kimberly and Jaquline’s idea. Lots of kids stopped to color!)

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Christina and Rebeccah volunteered all day!  Didn’t they look sharp in their aprons?

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Kimberly, Jaquline, Jillian, and Anastasia were ambassadors for the face painting booth.  The artist did such an amazing job transforming their faces into bright works of art!

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Lucas wanted to be a tiger, but after watching his sisters and cousin sit still, he decided running was the life for him and no face paint was needed. Notice the big blow-up fun things behind the sister-cousins?  Once those went up, Lucas didn’t want to sit still!

Kimberly’s face paint scared some little ones.  (It almost scared me when she closed her eyes and had snake eyes on her eyelids!)

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Lucas almost never stopped dancing.  But then, the DJ was great so there was fun non-stop music.

We bought wristbands for the kiddies and they became “pros” at the various obstacles by the end of the day. (The lady at the Boy Scout’s obstacle said Anastasia and Jillian kept challenging each other to “new heights” like “tightroping with eyes closed” or “doing ballet across the bar.”)

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This event started at 10am and ended at 8pm.  We were there setting up at 7:30am and left the field just before 9pm.  (I did have to wait on my volunteers to finish assisting with some break-downs and you know; we like to chat!)

Local performers from dance schools to martial arts schools to youth groups and bands filled up the stage.  (Christina’s vantage point for this was perfect: she saw every act and relayed amazing reviews to our booth later.)  There were plenty of games for little ones.  Rebeccah got to play with them for hours!

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Jillian and Anastasia were so excited to meet Princess Cinderella!  Lucas was beside himself – he came back repeating, “Mommy, Cinderella is here!”

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The team obstacle course was fun to watch!  We clapped and encouraged each one – Kimberly’s commentary should have been shared over a loudspeaker for everyone else to laugh at!  (She has some Aunt Katy & Aunt Becca MC skills in there.)

Lucas finally took a 30 minute nap under my table (the “campout zone”) about 5pm.  He came to get a banana, but didn’t quite finish it!

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None of the little girls wanted a break – but they all fell asleep in the van on the way home!

Although it wasn’t a great “sale” day (we sold one book, one bracelet, and one set of clips), it was an amazing “fun” day and we’ll definitely be there again next year!

Come join us!  Follow Alpha Omega for updates and opportunities to volunteer at this event or at the campus.  Together, we can help our community grow stronger!  And, yes, have some amazing fun along the way!

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Oh yes, just this last picture of Anastasia snuggling with Grandma.  (No, she wans’t asleep, she was pretending so she could snuggle!)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

New Paperback Book!

New Release! Paperback version of “The Princess and the Swans” is now available!

March 12, 2018

New Paperback Book!

Introducing the paperback version of The Princess and the Swans!

Christina Tart did the illustration for this book.

Princess Joy is the sunshine of her father’s kingdom.  One day an illness starts to break their happiness.  Later, all of the kingdom’s princes disappear!  Joy sets herself with the task of finding her dear brothers.  Joy must face hardship and pain but she will never give up.  Once she finds her brothers, she discovers they have been cursed.  Joy is determined to find a way to help them so they can all go home.

Follow Joy in her journey of love, patience, and endurance on her quest to save her family.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

New Story Release! The Brown-Sheep Prank

New Release! 2nd in The Devonians Series – “The Brown-Sheep Prank”

December 13, 2017

New Story Release!

There’s a new chapter in the continuing story of the Devonians!  The Devonians are space castaways who have developed a colony on a strange new planet (they name it Devonia).

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The soft-crayon illustration is done by Christina Tart. (She is a published illustrator who wisely takes commission for her work!)

This newest story, The Brown-Sheep Prank, begins the day after the end of Daydreamer. Alena Summers, whose family husbands (takes care of) the village’s herd of Brown-Sheep, is very excited about her second-favorite time – Shearing Day!  (It just so happens, that’s the day covered in the story!)

Alena loves the busy time when all of her neighbors will be gathered at her family’s house, trimming the wool (called Shearing), washing fleeces (a fleece is the wool from one sheep), preparing food (Alena’s job is to assist here), and stacking the finished fleeces in the big barn (this one is shared by the entire village).  The boys and overgrown boys (men) love the table of ready-to-eat food that those on refill duty (Alena and Butterfly) have to keep stocked.

Devonia travels in a longer solar orbit so has the equivalent of 499 Earth days in the Devonian year – so when Alena says “5 years 8 months” it really means “about 7½ Earth years.”  Just a little hint about the world of Devonia!

Now to get an idea of how busy Shearing Day is in Covenant, read this excerpt from “The Brown-Sheep Prank!

Everyone was so busy that Alena had barely stopped moving since Mother had called her away from the Brown-Sheep observation this morning. 

It was nearly lunchtime. 

Alena’s stomach growled. 

“Oh my!” Cried Butterfly in fake shock, “you’d better feed that monster!” 

Alena laughed.  She and Butterfly were on refill duty.  This meant they helped in the kitchen and ran back and forth from the big table refilling the food baskets and bowls.  For Shearing Day, everyone snacked whenever they were hungry from the long table outside.  The unwed boys had brought it over from the meetinghouse before Alena awoke.  She grabbed a carrot stick and quickly ate it.

Alena’s Father and most of the other men plus a few older boys were cutting each Brown-Sheep’s wool close to the skin but taking care not to cut the soft skin.  This was called shearing.  This formed what they called a fleece.  The fleece was the shape of a flat sheep without legs or head.  The Brown-Sheep’s head and legs didn’t have wool like the rest of the body. 

A cluster of two men and three women with a few of the older boys and girls were thoroughly washing each fleece to make sure they would get clean. 

… (continued reading The Brown-Sheep Prank here!)

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

My Illustrators

August 3, 2017

My Illustrators

I love to write.  When it comes to drawing, I’m not an artist.  So when I’m ready to finish a story, I enlist the aid of my team of illustrators.

The latest releases, “The Mystery of the Strange Chip” and “A Clue in the Barn” were illustrated by a team.  Christina Tart sketched the design and Kimberly Tart used her new favorite medium, pastels, to color it in.  They turned to a computer editing software package to add text for the design.  The results are the new covers for what they call “old” stories.  (Old, well, they were written when I was dating and just after I was married – so they are older than the illustrators!)

It’s interesting for me to see what my illustrators come up with when they draw.  Sometimes what they see is not what I would have seen, but it’s usually much better!  When Ann Pearson (one of my little sisters) illustrated for “Long Tail” her images of Long Tail and Red Hawk looked different than what I pictured, but they were so perfect for the series!  Those images were colored by Christina and Rebeccah.  Crayon drawings gave the perfect texture to the childish, fun, read-along Long Tail stories.  (Ann’s running farmer was just perfect – you can see him in the DVD book and handmade book versions.)

Another new release is “Sisters at the Seashore” one of the Five Alive: Stories of the Funny Sisters.  Jaquline did her first illustration job on that!  She’s excited because “now I’m published too!”  Christina thinks it’s neat that their names show up on the ebook websites as illustrators or colorists (depending on their role).  Rebeccah loves getting commission on her work!  (I pay my illustrators 10 to 50 percent commission depending on the number of illustrations in the work.  The “Jilly and Luke’s Block Adventures” are 50 percent commission works because they are picture books – an illustration almost every page!)

At one bookshow I did, a fellow author expressed interest in my illustrations.  Her favorite was “The Living God” because she claimed the “abstract art is amazing” and she commented that it looked like the open jaws of a lion.  I’d honestly never seen it that way, but now, I can’t not see the open lion jaws when I see the book cover!  I previously just saw it as colorful geometric shapes.  (Christina’s favorite book cover illustrations appear to be random flowers, geometric designs, and scrollwork.)

As of the latest release, I now have five illustrators on my team: Ann Pearson, Christina Tart, Rebeccah Tart, Kimberly Tart, and Jaquline Tart.

Oh, and Jaquline’s second book cover illustration will be published shortly too – she redid the cover for “Birthday Present!”

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Meet Joseph

July 13, 2017

Meet Joseph

Jaquline’s favorite series of stories right now is The Devonians.  She loves the short, easy to read, stories with “bright colors” (Christina illustrates the covers in bold crayon) and “big words” (the lettering is large print).

Each of the Devonians stories follows a different child within the village colony of Covenant.

Daydreamer follows Joseph Taylor.

Joseph is a colonist on a planet called Devonia.

This planet has a much longer year than Earth does, so when Joseph says “6 years old” he’s really the same age as someone over 8 years old on Earth!  Joseph’s year is equal to about one year, four months, and two weeks of Earth time.

Joseph’s family lives on a farm – like everyone on Devonia.  They have running water because they pipe water using a waterwheel from the Crystal River to their farms using bamboo pipe!  They also collect rainwater from their rooftops!

Joseph likes to daydream.  He sometimes lets his daydreaming get in the way of his chores!  This is what happens in Daydreamer.  Joseph has a best friend who lives on the next farm.  Her name is Alena.  Joseph has four brothers and one new baby sister named Rose.  Two of his brothers are twins.

Jaquline says she likes Joseph because he’s a lot like her.  He tries to do big kid stuff, but sometimes his wandering thoughts get in the way.

Jaquline says, “Maybe, children on Devonia are the same as children everywhere!”

*Of course, Devonia is fiction.  It’s a world I made up and all the characters are also fiction!*

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

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