Author Bio:
Trey Watson is a Texas-based author who writes children books and gardening books. He is best known as the author of the Adventures of Mac The Fire Truck series, a book series that follows the zany adventures of a talking fire truck. He is also the author of a book about growing apples in the southern U. S. and a children’s story based on his experience of showing his son his favorite childhood toy (Loved Again).
Trey is also an entrepreneur and is the owner of Legg Creek Farm, LLC (www.leggcreekfarm.com), a company that specializes in fruit producing plants for the southern United States.
Trey and his wife reside in Texas with their son. They are expecting a second child in November. 2012. When he’s not working or writing, Trey enjoys reading, taking quiet walks in the woods, and playing in the creek with his son.
What inspires you to write?
I guess it took having a child to really make me tap into the creative part of me. I’ve always had a vivid imagination, to the point that my mind runs wild when I try to fall asleep at night. For some reason, having a child caused me to tap into that flow of creativity. My son and his love for fire trucks is what inspired me to start writing. The fact that he likes the stories, as do apparently thousands of other children, keeps that inspiration fresh.
I was looking for a talking fire truck who could, in some ways, be a role model. I didn’t find one, so I decided to create it myself.
Tell us about your writing process
I flesh out the broad ideas for the stories during the day and bounce them off my son in the evening. If that goes over well, I start to work on the details of the story. Usually in the evening when the house is quiet, I start writing the rough draft, focusing on rhythm and rhyming words.
I am the worst at making typos, so I have a couple of people who edit for me to catch my mistakes, both in terms of typos or mistakes in logic. I know what your thinking…mistakes in logic in a children’s book? Yeah, it happens! 🙂
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
I imagine them, but I don’t talk to them. I watch them talk to each other!
How did you decide how to publish your books?
This is an interesting question. I am self-published (I like to say “indie”) and I thought long and hard about publishing this way. Ultimately, for me it was about control and timing. Traditional publishing takes time and typically authors lose at least some creative control. I am a “doer” – I like to get things done. Waiting for traditional publishing to happen seemed like waste of time (no offense intended to anyone!:). Plus in traditional publishing, it is still up to the author, especially new authors, to do most of their own promotion. I opted for self-publishing because if I am going to do most of the promotion, I wanted most of the profit 🙂
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
I think ebooks will increase their domination in the market place. When I published the first Mac The Fire Truck book as a Kindle ebook, there were fewer than 900 children’s books in the Kindle store. Now there are close to 2000. I think that even in children’s literature we will see more ebooks, and more interactive ebooks for mobile devices.
What do you use?
Professional Cover Designer, Beta Readers
What genres do you write?
Children’s, gardening
What formats are your books in?
Both eBook and Print
Website(s)
Author Home Page Link
Link To Author Page On Amazon
Your Social Media Links
http://www.facebook.com/MacTheFireTruck
http://www.twitter.com/AuthorTrey
