The Adventures of a Children's Book Author

So I live in a questionable neighborhood these days (not because I’m broke but because the house was new and pretty) and I’ve seen a few cats running around my neighbor’s house.  My girlfriend and I formed a plan to get a couple, feed them, clean them up, and drop them off at a non-lethal adoption place. So a couple weeks back I asked about the kittens and he simply replied, “Do you want them”?  Apparently the mother isn’t fixed and likes to party, so she has kittens quite frequently.  But when my neighbor brought out the kittens, they weren’t the two I had seen running around in the earlier weeks.  These kittens were tiny.  We asked if they were old enough to leave their mother and the neighbor and co. told us “It’s cool, she’ll have more”.  So we decided we needed to get those kittens out of that situation before they turned to a life of drugs and crime.

When we got them home we did some research and realized they weren’t more than 3 to 5 weeks old.  Both seemed to have colds. We couldn’t get them to eat the canned kitten food we’d bought, and they kept sucking on my shirt, so we got them some milk replacement formula and began bottle-feeding them.  This is something we had to do every 5 hours.  But after a day of the bottle-feeding and a quick bath, the kittens actually grew a little and their colds disappeared.  We took them to the vet and everything checked out fine. The vet told us they were about 6 weeks old.  We’ve had them for about 10 days now and they have gone from a bottle, to saucers, and are now eating canned kitten food.  They have learned to use the litter box and love playing with each other and taking naps on me!

The littlest one is a dark charcoal grey, almost black, and I named her Knight-Rider.  She’s really funny and kind of looks like a bat, and purrs like she runs on a motor.  The other kitten—light grey with white on his belly and nose—is a little beefier and has big cartoon eyes.  I named him Carl.  They both are really entertaining and have gone from barely being able to walk to running all over the house and climbing.  (Couches, not rocks…Yet…)

We still haven’t figured out what we are going to do with them, we are currently looking to get them into a nice home. My girlfriend has two cats already and I can’t have pets.  Let me know if you’d like a cute kitten or two.

And They like food, so buy some books!

Carl

Knight-Rider

When I walk into a school for the first time, I usually notice something funny right off the bat. I was in Hilton Head one day a couple months back and saw this…

Welcome to the new website.  I’ve had a hard time keeping up with this blog as of late due to a demanding schedule.  In the month of May alone I drove more than 1,200 miles a week going to one to two schools a day.  In the end it was great but exhausting!  I did have the chance to read to more than 10,000 kids in the month and have some wonderful and very funny stories from my school visit, which I will share later.  This week the new Vineyard Vines Summer Catalogue came out, and it featured the books, some artwork, and myself.  This is a really big deal for me—not only is it my first male modeling gig, but it also spreads the word of Sammy’s Adventures to about 300,000 people.  So this is for the 300,000 people who are just now learning about Sammy.

I started a publishing company back in 2007; I now have two books and now have an army of eight-year-old fans!  The books are geared for kids three to 12 years old (The ages I typically read to in schools). They are all illustrated out of construction paper and take anywhere from 30 to 40 hours per page to make.  The paper style is something kids really connect with and seem to really enjoy.  I wrote the books with a certain amount of humor geared towards adult as well, so that adults reading the books would enjoy the pictures and the stories as much as kids would.  I guess this is why when anyone asks me what the age level for the books are, I simply say “zero to eighty-five.” If you or your kids enjoy books or great stories, my books are definitely for you.

All this is me: the illustrations, the words, the marketing and sales, the operations, the school visits. So when you get a Sammy Book, you are getting a little chunk of my life as well.  I enjoy what I do more than anything in the world and I put all my energy and creativity into making these books enjoyable to the reader.

So please keep in mind your kids, any friends, any dachshund owners, any dog owners for that matter, nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles, teachers, grandparents, co-workers who you think would enjoy the greatest picture book on Earth and get them a copy today! There’s free shipping all summer atwww.sammydogbooks.com, and your supporting a pretty awesome guy.

But don’t just do it for me…Do it for America and most importantly, Do it for the Kids!

Thanks,

Jonathan Miller

P.S.  Shoot me and email to let us know if you have any issues with the shipping or website and we’ll get it all figured out.  It’s our newest website, and we had a shipping issue yesterday, so I want to be sure everything is working as it should.

We are working on getting Free Shipping to the entire country. If you are trying to order books and having problems please shoot us an email and let us know. We will have it up and running soon. Thanks for understanding!
jonmiller33@gmail.com

As a kid I was good at making deals and negotiating to get the things I wanted.  This involved pushing back bedtimes, scamming grandparents, and sometimes even working for things when I couldn’t talk my way into or out of something.

My dad did not believe in the South Carolina Child Labor Laws, so at the age of 14 I began to work.  Hard and often.

Over those next 15 years, I had various sales jobs.  I sold Hawaiian shaved ice, pretzels, frozen lemonade, cotton candy at NBA games (best job ever), rugs, health insurance, life insurance, and even cars.  The car thing still gives me nightmares…

Something I like to do at the end of readings and after the kids ask a bunch of questions is throw out a sales pitch.

So the other day I was reading to a school and decided I was going to have some fun and go all “Don Draper” on these kids and really sell them on getting a copy of the book.  The pitch varied from group to group depending on age but mostly went something like this:

“Raise your hand if you want a copy of the book.”

(They would all raise their hands.)

“Well when I was your age, I was really good at getting what I wanted!  Sometimes I would beg, do chores, or I’d even cry every once in a while if I had too! If you really want a book, just tell your parents you’ll do the dishes, take the garbage out for a week or even offer to cut the grass. I’m sure one of these things will work.  Now go out there and show me what good little sales people you are.”

When I got back to the school on Friday, not only did I sell more books than I have at any other school, but I had this waiting on me:

A Ziploc bag with $7 in paper bills and the other $8 in pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters (All of which I couldn’t even get into the shot.)  I like to think this kid got the $7 out of some elaborate deal he struck with his folks. The other $8 I assume came from his 401k (piggy bank.)  It was one of the cutest things that has  happened to me since I began all of this.  I hope the kid is happy and enjoying his new book.

And I hope his parents got some yard work out of it…

I think one of the funniest things about going to schools and reading to the kids is the expectation the kids have of my celebrity.

I don’t know if this comes from teachers trying to get the kids excited about reading, or just the fact that a new person is in the school they’ve never seen before.

I eventually have to explain that I am not really famous, only about 9% famous. (based on a weird scale my business partner and I made up)

Once I did lie.  I told some 3rd graders I knew the Jonas Brothers, but only because I was asked to pretend to be famous to encourage a group of kids to think reading was cool by a frustrated teacher.

Kids often ask me if I know “other famous people”.  Some of these people have included:

Miley Cyrus, George Clooney, Justin Timberlake, Barack Obama, Jay-Z, anyone from Twilight,  and Oprah…

So to be honest:  Since I’ve been an author, I met the mayor once and

I did a piece of artwork for Paula Deen and she is basically white Oprah…So there.

I had honestly wanted to make an effort to start this blog 1/1/10 but as things go with children’s books and life I have not met that goal.  So I guess 19 days later is as good of a time as ever….

So I’m going to start writing this blog to share some stories about being a 20 something children’s book author. I have read to more than 30,000 kids over the past year with my first book.  Up until then I couldn’t tell the difference between a 2 year old and a 10 year old.

I know now.

I’ve shared many of these stories with friends and other people, some fimilar with kids, some not.  This is pretty much the only thing I actually have to talk about these days, because I basically spend most of my time hanging out around kids.  So now I’m going to start sharing them with the inter-web…

As a disclaimer:

This blog has nothing to do with the actual character Sammy from my books.  The views, opinions, and stories expressed in this blog are soley about me, Jonathan Miller, the person.  Some of this stuff might not be cut out for the average kindergarten age Sammy fan.  Don’t worry I’m not going to talk about anything too crazy and I will use clean language.  Just scan it to see if you think it appropriate before you share it with a kid…

With that all said, stay tuned.  I’ll be back to tell you some pretty incredible things that have happened in the past and as they are going on in the life of a children’s book author.

JM

More to come.