In this episode Mark interviews bestselling children's author Laurie Wright who is on a mission to empower people one book at a time through her books and the support she offers other authors to take action and publish their own books.

This episode is sponsored by Findaway Voices. Mark talks about the promotional pricing tools built in to their tools.

You can learn more about how you can get your work distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway.

Prior to the interview, Mark shares a bit of an update about the previous week at NINC (Novelists Inc). He then congratulates the winners of copies of M.L. Buchman's ESTATE PLANNING FOR AUTHORS.

Amy Tasukada And Vanessa Kier where the listeners who won by commenting on Episode 92 of the podcast. Julie Strauss and Amy Teegan were the two patron winners.

In their conversation, Mark and Laurie talk about:

• Laurie's background as a kindergarten teacher and how she was so motivated by the presence of "learned helplessness" to go home and write a book in order to address it
• It wasn't that the children couldn't solve their problems it was that they didn't take the steps to solve the problem
• Laurie's belief that boredom is a good thing, particularly for creativity and that great things can come from boredom
• The importance of the repetition in Laurie's books for 4 and 5 year olds, such as "I Can Handle It!" that become their self-talk and a mantra and a pathway for them
• Putting the book aside for ten years before actually doing something with it
• Why she went whole hog into self-publishing with this project
• Creating the print book first (considering the audience) and the reason Laurie created an eBook via prompting from Brian Meeks and Amazon Ads
• Selling the foreign language rights of her book in Chinese, Korean, Romanian, Icelandic, and Vietnamese
• The importance of a foreign rights agent in the process of selling those foreign rights
• Laurie's interest in mental health for children and the importance of open non-scheduled time for children for free play (what she also calls "wildness")
• How Laurie has fallen in love with the marketing and other aspects of writing, and how she adapted that into creating helpful content for other writers
• The importance of "short and easy" in a course
• Laurie's podcast for children's book writers

After the interview, Mark reflects on self-talk, self-doubt, negative thinking, and positive thinking. He works through a You-Can-Do-It attitude inspired by Laurie's work.

Links of Interest:

• Laurie Wright's Website
• Laurie's Books on Amazon
• Laurie's Foreign Agent
• Laurie's Courses for Writers
• Laurie's Tedx Talk: Release the WILD in our children
• Findaway Voices
• NINC Conference
• Patreon for Stark Reflections

Laurie Wright is a bestselling children's author on a mission to empower people one book at a time. She empowers children through her books, that gently and with humor coach kids in self-regulation. She empowers writers by getting them to step up, take action and publish those books! In a weekly podcast 'The Writer's Way' she shares stories of other everyday authors for inspiration. Walter Koenig (Chekov from Star Trek) reading 'I Can Handle It' on YouTube at https://lauriewrighter.com/Chekov is a definite high point in Laurie's career. Connect on Facebook (www.fb.com/lauriewrighter or www.fb.com/lauriewrightauthor), or her website www.lauriewrighter.com, and check out Laurie's courses at www.creativewrighter.com.

The music for this podcast ("Laser Groove") was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0