Letitia B. Burton

I am so excited to interview Letitia for February’s Newsletter. I met Letitia last year in Traverse City, Michigan, at the Moonbeam Awards Ceremony. Her book, Austin, as well as mine, Save the Trees won a Moonbeam Award. I know you’ll enjoy reading about her! 

Bio: I launched my career in New York City as a consultant for McKinsey & Company where I advised clients in the financial institutions practice.  I really liked the content of the job but I did not like the travelling, especially one project in Muscatine, Iowa to which I needed to take two flights and then rent a car and drive for several hours.  I’m very much of a home-body so it was tough for me. I went to Accenture – or as it was then called Andersen Consulting – to help them launch their thought leadership journal called Outlook. Since I had worked at McKinsey, I understood thought leadership and all of the business content. But I didn’t know anything about journalism.  Happily, Andersen Consulting then hired the former Editor-in-Chief of Institutional Investor as Editor-in-Chief of Outlook and we worked as a team, with me understanding consulting and him having terrific editing skills. We worked together for more than 15 years. From him, I learned so much about editing and publishing. So once I decided to become a children’s book author, I already knew how to publish. 
Where are you from? I grew up in Baltimore, spent 23 years in New York City and then moved to Southport, Connecticut in 2008.
When did you know you wanted to become a writer? About ten years ago, I read a biography of Dr. Seuss to one of my daughters.  In it, we learned that Ted Geisel launched his career as a journalist in New York City in the 1930s.  Following WWII, he travelled to Germany where he met some German children and was horrified to learn that they were prejudiced.  He realized that the most important audience to reach was not the adults he had been writing for.  It was children.  So he quit his job and dedicated his life to writing for children and teaching them values. I closed the biography, turned to my daughter and with a tear tickling down my cheek told her I was meant to write for children. The following week I signed up for my first writing class.  The next year, I left my job at Accenture to focus fulltime on writing. And I’ve never looked back. 
Where do you get your inspiration for your books? From nature.  My first book, Soar, is based on a fact of nature: Soon after young osprey learn how to fly and can therefore fish for themselves, their parents abandon them to migrate to South America.  The young get bigger and stronger and have to find their way to South America on their own.  It seemed to be such an incredible basis for a story – with natural conflict built in between the parents:  the mom wanting to turn it into a family vacation and the dad thinking that the young needed to struggle to learn to survive.  And it’s a brother story with an opportunity to have one athletic and fearless and the other one more cautious, and not sure what his gifts are. 

I was inspired to write my second book Guthrie and Gretzky about two geese when I looked out my window one day and saw a goose with a broken wing. The other geese left it every morning and didn’t return until sundown; he looked so lonely by himself all day. It reminded me of the son of our dear friends in New York whose son had had leukemia when he was in elementary school and he was isolated all year while being treated. I thought it would be nice for kids to read a book about what they could do to include others when they are hurt or going through a tough time.  In Guthrie and Gretzky, one of the geese invents a game that the one with the broken wing can play – – Duck Duck Goose.  Oh and the boy who had leukemia: he’s now becoming a doctor. 

Austin my latest book is again about something from nature.  The minister at our church shared a story one Sunday about a baby robin who had been kicked out his nest by his mother because it was time for him to learn to fly. This is something that robins do. So I wrote a book from the baby robin’s perspective – being on the receiving end of tough love. I thought it would help teach kids how to navigate some of the inevitable ups and downs of life. A MOONBEAM AWARD WINNER!

Where is your favorite place to write? I write in my sleep. I literally wake up and it’s all there in my head, just waiting to be recorded in a Word document. It’s the easiest job I’ve ever had because I do it in my sleep – and I LOVE my sleep. 
Describe your process of writing a children’s book? Do you already know the story line (ending)? Or do you write it as you go? I write it as I go. The characters tell me where to take it by having conversations in my head. So I guess I’m literally a Bird Brain.  
What has been the most challenging for you as a writer/author? Credibility. I decided I wanted to self-publish for a number of reasons. My understanding is that in most deals for new authors, the publishing company takes full ownership of the book and prints 5000 copies. And unless you become a best-seller, that’s it. You can’t control printing of your book. That scared me as my books feel like children to me and I didn’t want to turn over ownership. I also knew I wanted to spend most of my time in underserved neighborhoods and give books away. And when I visited schools, I knew I wanted to go into the classrooms and sit on the floor with the kids and talk about my characters and stories.  But that’s not a great strategy if you are there to sell books.  If you are there to sell books, you get as many kids as possible in an auditorium and do a power point presentation and then book signing – which is really just a name for book sale. I think that’s what the publishing companies expect you to do.  I didn’t want to go into schools as a book salesperson. I wanted to go in and interact with the kids. So I had solid reasons for wanting to publish myself.  However, the problem is that if you self-publish, most people just assume that you couldn’t get published by a major publisher and that your book isn’t good. It’s been super helpful that I have won awards as they gave me credibility. 
What is next for you? I’m working on a picture book about the Easter Chicken. Why don’t chickens get any credit for the easter eggs? Bunnies don’t lay the eggs. 
If you’d like to follow Letitia: Letitia.b.burton@outlook.com LetitiaBBurton.com

Best Wishes to you!

FEBRUARY’S GIVEAWAY WINNERS ARE: 
Amanda Farmer from North Carolina won a free book. 
Karoline Rudulph from Virginia won a free critique—she attended my Picture Book Workshop! 

Congrats to you both.