For several years now, I have participated in the Artist Academy Podcast‘s 31-Day Painting Challenge. The challenge consists of completing one painting for each day in the month of January. I wanted to work on my illustration skills this year so I decided to illustrate the alphabet. This also provided easy prompts for most of the month.

Halfway through the month, I decided I wanted to publish an alphabet book with my illustrations. I began researching the options available for self-publishing. I chose Amazon’s KDP program, primarily because it is free. In addition to being incredibly budget-friendly, it was also a very simple process. Affordable and easy were exactly what I needed since I was committing to a painting challenge while simultaneously raising a six-year-old, a four-year-old, a three-year-old, and a four-month-old.

Creating an illustration that was not only well done but also looked both like the letter and something that started with the letter of the alphabet proved to be a challenge- have you ever seen an “I” shaped ice cream cone? However, it was a lot of fun and sometimes, I had a hard time choosing which stylized letter would make the final cut. Finally, when A-Z had been painted, I designed a cover that held with the theme of the book but would not duplicate any of the illustrations.

A lot of time on Amazon’s KDP platform, a proof book, and a large helping of imposter syndrome later, and my first children’s book, ABC was born!

ABC is available as both a paperback book and Kindle ebook via Amazon. You can find both formats here. Or head to my “Published Works” page to see all of my published works.