Ana’s Journey – Click here

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

Minha familia – Sou a com lingua de fora. I’m the one with glasses sticking out my tongue – right side of my mom. My sisters tricked us- my brother, my mom and me. They said: stick out your tongues. They didn’t! I did.

Am I too old to start all over?

A long, long time ago, I wrote stories in Brazil.

I was happy and proud, but then …

Life happened!

I moved to California (In Brazil, there is a wonderful song about living the dream in California- here is a quick video.)

So, since the “grass always looks greener on the other side,” I left my beautiful Rio de Janeiro to search other seas.

And, there in California, I worked full-time as an interpreter, took care of my two amazing kids and tried to write. But then …

Life happened again! Ai, caramba!

I moved, with my ex-husband to Florida. Florida is the place to be, right?

I decided to forget about writing and focus on working and improving my English skills after I went to a writer’s conference and the editor told me:

Your story is weird! The weirdest things were:

1. I didn’t know what weird meant. 🤣
2. This story was a translation of my book in Portuguese that won a prize from the prestigious “Academia Brasileira de Letras.”

I guess my story of a Moon blinking and a girl revealing -what all kids know – that the Moon has eyes and it was flirting with everybody, was not a story for the American market. That was in 1996!!! But I’m not that old.

Well, yes I am. I’m already a grandmother – two girls and three boys- all wonderful and cute. I can send you pictures if you ask me to. 😊

Life kept happening, and I went back to teaching. Now, I teach Spanish with FLVS. My kids all left the house. And I had to keep writing crazy stories to my students – at the time Saint Pauls Clearwater Independent School.

Then one day, they asked me to write a story about “The Duck Song.” Check the video; it’s hilarious. And, TA-DA, this Easy Reader, with authorization from the songwriter Bryant Oden, has been published by Teacher’s Discovery. It’s called EL PATO QUIERE UVAS.

Wow! I told myself. Now, I’m an author again and from now on, everything will be a piece of cake. Vai ser moleza!

But … Oh, no! How hard it is! Here are some steps:

• Start writing.
• Feel, oh, so proud!
• Send to a critique group.
• Oops, they couldn’t get your message at all. They think the duck is a chicken. And the duck’s mom is a witch. And the witch is the chicken. All wrong!
• Time to rewrite.
• Join all writing groups you can join – SCBWI, 12×12, Storyteller Academy.
• Read, at least, 20 Picture Books a day.
• Keep on swapping manuscripts with your critique partners until they understand who the witch is.
• And, after revising your manuscripts so many times, you do not know how the story began…
• Time to research submission guidelines, agents, publishers, and
• to learn how to write query letters,
• and Twitter pitches. I didn’t even have a twitter account!

In summary, writing is no piece of cake. But, I keep on hoping, I will have a book published before it’s literally too late.

If you’re also trying and one day you feel proud and the next you feel you can’t even write a recipe, please join me and write your comments below.

My Book Available at Teacher’s Discovery. Check here Book Trailer.