By Ivy Velazquez
For writers, inspiration can come from all sorts of places, be it the scenery outside their home or a conversation they had with a friend. For Jessica Edler, it was her son’s hiccups that inspired her new children’s book, Dinosaur Hiccups.
“I wrote a little book for him and then I was like, you know, this is really cute. What if I share it with the world?” said Edler.
Though the story itself only took her about two days to write, she found the publishing process to be a little more arduous. “The whole actual publishing it and getting it formatted correctly, it was such a process,” she said.
However, despite some difficulties, she was able to self-publish through Amazon, where you can buy it either as an ebook or paperback.
Published in May, Dinosaur Hiccups follows Derek the Dinosaur as he has to go through the day dealing with a case of the hiccups. He tries to figure out how he can get rid of them, unsure if he will be able to.
According to Edler, “I definitely didn’t think I was going to be a children’s author of any sort.” As a teenager, she had envisioned herself writing poetry or sci-fi/fantasy, which she is still working on. But Dinosaur Hiccups wasn’t something that she had foreseen for her future. And it’s not stopping there. She has found further inspiration through her daughter.
“I definitely find a lot of inspiration with my kids,” said Edler. She had grown bored with the regular stories she had been reading to her daughter before bed. So, she started making up her own for her daughter to enjoy. And as she continued, she wanted to start writing them down and it was then that she realized that she could actually make them into a story. At the moment, she is in the process of finding an illustrator for the books.
And her creativity doesn’t stop there. A self-proclaimed “creative at heart,” Edler also has a photography business called J Morgan Images in Brandon, where she has lived for about seven years now with her family.
“I photograph all sorts of things but I specialize in making women feel beautiful,” said Edler. Her creative spark also goes into things like comic con, for which she makes her own cosplay costumes.
Edler can be reached at, jmorganimages@gmail.com. Visit www.jmorganimages.com or her Facebook page at www.facebook.com/jmorganimages. Dinosaur Hiccups can be purchased for $10 online on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.
