Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Ted Fearson. I live in Wisconsin with my family which includes two teenage children. I worked as a special education teacher for twenty years, and then went on to train people who were working in education and wanted to get their teaching certificate. I also spent time working with individuals with disabilities and helped them to get training and employment.
Then Covid happened and I retired. I was at home with my family, and my spouse was working from home and my high schoolers were doing school online. The kids didn’t need much help, so I had a lot of time on my hands, and I decided to do something I had always wanted to do, write a book for kids.
I started off writing to give myself something to do, but after a short time decided to pursue getting some of my work published. I joined a critique group with a wonderful leader and a great group of people who inspired me and encouraged me to do my best.
Teaching gave me insight into what kids like to read and what they find fun and interesting. Working with a wide range of students of different ages and abilities taught me a lot about what kids like. In addition, I loved reading stories to my own kids when they were young. We loved books by Dr. Seuss. My daughter really enjoyed reading the Chrysanthemum books by Kevin Henkes, and my son loved Mo Willems Elephant and Piggy books, as well as many others. Bedtime stories are some of my favorite memories with them.
I got an idea for a book where the recipes were magical spells disguised as recipes. I added a cat familiar named Picatrix. A familiar is a spiritual guardian who protects items. I came up with Picatrix, a Balinese cat who protects the book. To my surprise Picatrix soon became much more popular with test readers and my critique group than I ever expected. I needed to add more about her to satisfy people. My book is set in a fictional town in Door County, WI named Iverson Cove. Door County is a vacation destination and we have been going there every summer for many years and it always had a magical quality to me. I loved the parks, the bay and lake, and the quaint little towns. Iverson Cove is a combination of several towns in Door County. I soon decided to make this a series of three books because I had too much to put in one, which I call the Magical Recipes series.
While I was writing that first Magical Recipes book, A Recipe for Disaster, I had serious writers block, and I began writing a book about a homemade angel ornament I had for years that was yellow felt with black stripes on her wings that my family called the “bee angel”. I always wanted to include her in a book. My original intention was to make a book about an ornament that never fit in with the other ornaments. This changed into a book about a little girl named Beatrix Weathersby who kept bees, and had to deal with a major change in her life.
I wondered what it would be like for Bea, who was home schooled, to suddenly need to go to public school and Bea Yourself (working title) took off. Bea doesn’t understand all the rules in school and has a difficult time fitting in with the other kids. This leads to many funny situations that Bea has to work her way through. I’ve written one additional book about Bea and have ideas for more in the works.
That’s where I am right now. I’d like to share with you the process of getting my books published and released. I’d also like to include character back stories on my blog and website. Magical Recipes has many characters people ask me a lot about, and I wanted a place to share their back stories.
That’s a little about me and who I am.
I hope you’ll join me on my blog and follow me in my process of getting these books published. I’ll provide you with back stories about the characters and give you insights and sneak peeks into where my stories are going.
Thanks for joining me on this adventure.