Colleen_Piano
00:00:00.000 | Hello, everybody. It's Sam from the Financial Samurai Podcast where we try to help you achieve
00:00:13.200 | financial freedom sooner rather than later. Today I have a special guest with me, author
00:00:19.240 | and illustrator Colleen Kong Savage of Piano Wants to Play. Welcome to the show, Colleen.
00:00:25.440 | Hey, Sam. Good to meet you and thanks for having me on.
00:00:28.960 | Well, no problem. I've actually been working with you for a while since you illustrated
00:00:34.680 | the chapter art for Buy This, Not That for my book as well as came up with many awesome
00:00:42.000 | graphics for Financial Samurai over the years.
00:00:44.120 | Way back when.
00:00:45.120 | That's right. That's right. So in this episode, I'd love to know everything there is to know
00:00:51.120 | about being an illustrator and an author of children's books in New York City because
00:00:57.120 | as a fellow author, I know it's pretty hard grind. I'm not sure anybody really gets rich
00:01:04.960 | being an author. So I'd love to hear your story because you're almost like the classic
00:01:10.600 | starving artist it seems like in New York City.
00:01:12.920 | It's just a hustle. Everything is hustle if you're a creative, especially in New York
00:01:19.240 | City where it's so expensive just to exist. I'm a teaching artist in addition to being
00:01:25.800 | an illustrator and I do some graphic design work as well here and there for some small
00:01:30.960 | businesses and with those small business owners, they're hustling also. It's hustle city.
00:01:38.280 | So New York City, it's quintessentially one of the most expensive places to live in America.
00:01:43.480 | There was a recent Zillow study and we were just talking about it saying it's number six
00:01:48.600 | and the top most expensive place to live in America in terms of how much median household
00:01:53.800 | income you need to earn. It's something like $211,000+ to be able to buy that typical home.
00:02:00.720 | So how do artists get by and why don't more artists or writers live in cheaper areas of
00:02:08.400 | the country? Why is there just like this mecca of attraction in New York City?
00:02:13.200 | Because there's so many creatives here. In the children's book publishing industry, it's
00:02:18.280 | actually kind of a small community. All the publishing houses are here and authors, illustrators.
00:02:25.920 | Once a month, I know in Brooklyn, they have a monthly meetup. They call it kid-lit group
00:02:32.200 | therapy and you have a whole bunch of illustrators and authors meeting up at a bar and just connecting,
00:02:41.600 | creating a community. Last night, I got to hang out with some other fellow creatives
00:02:47.120 | in Queens, our own monthly meetup. I wouldn't get that if I was living in Ohio, say.
00:02:55.080 | Right, right. I mean, it must be so fun to have all these meetups and just feel so invigorating
00:03:01.720 | to collaborate and meet with small and big illustrators and writers.
00:03:07.080 | Yeah, it's inspiring. The kid-lit community is actually so warm. You imagine, you fantasize
00:03:15.120 | that kid-lit people like children's book authors and illustrators would be very nice people
00:03:19.920 | because they work with kids. And it's true. It's so competitive and yet there's an understanding
00:03:28.160 | that there's enough room for our diverse voices and styles. Everybody knows that it's a struggle,
00:03:34.520 | so people treat each other with respect.
00:03:37.240 | Yeah, that's great. And you mentioned competitiveness because one of the things I recommend on Financial
00:03:43.600 | Samurai is actually to go to expensive cities because there's more opportunity to create
00:03:51.040 | for your job or investment opportunities or whatnot. But you have to survive that cost
00:03:57.880 | factor in the initial several years to see if you can make it. How competitive would
00:04:02.080 | you say it is to get a book deal to author and illustrate a children's book?
00:04:06.720 | Honestly, I have been at this for over a decade. My daughter was three or four when I wrote
00:04:16.400 | my first manuscript, which I tried to shop around and it didn't go anywhere. But then
00:04:22.480 | I had a friend who was an established illustrator and he kind of got me hooked up with Society
00:04:27.720 | of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. And that led me to a path where my daughter
00:04:34.280 | is 19 now. So it took me that long to get my very first author, illustrator, debut children's
00:04:42.800 | picture book. I illustrated another one earlier, like several years ago, but it's been rough.
00:04:50.320 | I won't lie.
00:04:51.960 | Yeah. Well, you did The Turtle Ship, which I thought was an amazing book.
00:04:56.000 | Thank you.
00:04:57.000 | And how did you get that opportunity?
00:04:59.120 | That was a weird story. So I'd been with this agent for a while and nothing, nothing, nothing
00:05:05.440 | is going on. And then I go to LA for a conference and we have an opportunity to showcase our
00:05:11.240 | portfolios and art editors and other agents, publishers look through everybody's portfolio.
00:05:17.680 | I come back to New York City and I finally get an email from my agent saying, "Would
00:05:23.600 | you like to work with this publisher who has this manuscript about a boy and his pet turtle
00:05:29.480 | and together they design a battleship?" I was like, "That sounds cool. Yeah." And about
00:05:36.720 | 10 days later, I get another email from this author who says, "Hey, I saw your portfolio.
00:05:44.640 | I love it. Just giving you the heads up. I sent a link to my publisher to your website
00:05:51.240 | because I would love you to illustrate my book. It's about a boy and his pet turtle.
00:05:58.960 | That is so interesting. I have two people who are interested in me designing a book
00:06:06.520 | about a boy and his turtle." And it turned out that it was the same book. It was The
00:06:13.280 | Turtle Ship. So they had independently found me.
00:06:16.640 | Wow.
00:06:17.640 | So one through my agent and then the other one, because I had gone to LA, this author
00:06:23.440 | Helena Kuri, she's based in California. And so she had seen my portfolio in the showcase.
00:06:31.680 | Okay. So it sounds to me like there is an element of grit and endurance where you just
00:06:39.080 | kind of got to keep on going, putting yourself out there and networking to hopefully one
00:06:44.400 | day get a literary agent and a book deal.
00:06:47.040 | It's all about grit. It's how long you can last in the game so that you're available
00:06:51.760 | when the opportunities come up. I actually had to change agents. I was getting frustrated
00:06:58.400 | not getting anywhere. And it's very scary to change agents because it's a little bit
00:07:04.120 | like being married. You can't talk to other agents until you divorce your actual agent.
00:07:10.680 | I was taking a chance. I felt like maybe I would never get another agent.
00:07:14.880 | Right. That's interesting. Is the children's literary agent community pretty small, too?
00:07:22.400 | It's all part of the same community, so I imagine. Although I don't know that many agents
00:07:28.160 | personally.
00:07:29.160 | Okay. Well, tell us more about success in terms of a children's book because as a father
00:07:34.960 | of a couple of children, four and almost seven, I read children's books all the time. Seven
00:07:41.200 | years in a row, almost every single day. And I see some great ones and I see some ones
00:07:46.600 | that are like, "Eh." But the great ones, the bestsellers like Moe Williams, for example,
00:07:54.160 | they're good, but how do they become great? How do they become all-time bestsellers?
00:08:02.800 | I feel like publishers try and figure that out, too. And I don't know if anybody has
00:08:09.840 | an actual answer because I feel like a lot of it does have to do with luck. But Moe Williams,
00:08:14.720 | he actually created with Sesame Street for a good while. His sensibilities, I feel like,
00:08:22.600 | are spot on for what people in general, not just kids, will find funny. People love to
00:08:31.720 | be entertained. There's a lot of heart there. What are some of your favorite books and what
00:08:37.920 | attracts you to them?
00:08:40.160 | I like the Piggy and Gerald books. I think that's Moe Williams, right?
00:08:44.440 | Yeah. And they're simple, too, right?
00:08:46.480 | Yeah, they're very simple and they all have stories and lessons. One of the most favorite
00:08:51.120 | books that I've read is The Giving Tree. That's by Shel Silverstein. And it's pretty deep,
00:08:56.520 | very deep about a tree that gives everything to a young boy who grows up to be a man who
00:09:03.960 | neglects the tree. And then the man comes back and says, "I want more and more." And
00:09:08.760 | then The Giving Tree gives everything until she's only a stump. These stories are so powerful
00:09:16.520 | and the lessons they convey are so powerful. I know there's several others. The ones that
00:09:22.600 | have lessons that can not only entertain and teach are my favorite children's books.
00:09:29.520 | And that's one of the key elements of your book. Tell us about your book and how Piano
00:09:34.720 | Wants to Play came about, that idea.
00:09:37.080 | I want to touch on something you said, though, about lessons. You were saying that books
00:09:45.480 | with lessons really strike a chord with you. But I want to challenge that. Is it so much
00:09:51.520 | the lesson as it is just the emotions that they touch on? You know, the idea of you have
00:09:59.040 | empathy for this nurturing tree, like you're a parent yourself. You would give your whole
00:10:05.960 | self for your children, right? Much the way that tree gave her all to this one being that
00:10:14.640 | she loved more than anything. And I think that emotional connection is what really cements
00:10:21.840 | that book in your being consciousness.
00:10:24.400 | Sure.
00:10:25.400 | My book, like on the surface level, yes, it's about a musician's connection with her instrument.
00:10:33.360 | It's told from the point of view of the piano. And we all love to express ourselves as human
00:10:38.720 | beings. We're social animals. And so we express ourselves through speech, through music, through
00:10:44.680 | art, all these ways of expression. Imagine you're a piano. It's like your form of expression
00:10:50.880 | would be sound, except the only time you can express yourself is if you have a musician.
00:10:56.000 | So the challenge that the piano faces is it needs a musician to have a voice. And it didn't
00:11:03.000 | start out this way, but as I was writing it, I felt like I wanted to explore the idea of
00:11:09.720 | how it's important for us to have a voice. Like if you cannot express yourself, can you
00:11:18.280 | really fully exist? Like during the story, the little girl who learns music with the
00:11:27.600 | piano grows up and she leaves. And the piano is left behind with her brother, who's this
00:11:34.240 | horrible musician, could not care less about learning the piano. And together they have
00:11:41.360 | like this really wretched relationship where piano is making horrible sound. But even making
00:11:48.600 | a horrible sound is better than not being able to make any sound. To be able to have
00:11:55.400 | no voice, it's like you're a skeleton. Can you fully exist? Even if life is terrible,
00:12:04.480 | at least you get to complain about it, right? But imagine you're having this horrible time
00:12:11.320 | and you just have to eat it. You can't say anything. It's like important for us to be
00:12:17.240 | heard.
00:12:18.240 | Yeah. You conjure up an image of, I think, a man who was completely paralyzed for years
00:12:25.280 | and years, but he could only blink his one eye.
00:12:28.680 | I think I know what you're talking about. The whole book was written by this man blinking,
00:12:34.480 | right?
00:12:35.480 | I mean, that's unbelievable.
00:12:36.480 | Yeah.
00:12:37.480 | And so, is there a parallel to this in terms of the idea of being able to express yourself
00:12:44.400 | and sometimes we aren't or society doesn't allow us to? Is there any kind of deeper meaning
00:12:53.320 | in that regard?
00:12:54.320 | I mean, I'm just thinking of it as like a fundamental need for all of us. Like in the
00:13:02.960 | States, we're pretty lucky that we can be obnoxiously loud and not be thrown in jail
00:13:09.600 | for it, right?
00:13:10.600 | Yeah, that's true. Well, what about creativity? How do you think creativity works for you?
00:13:17.240 | How did this idea come about and how did the story arc evolve? Was it like thinking about
00:13:23.120 | it in one sitting, at the dinner table, for a walk? How does that work for you?
00:13:28.000 | This story took forever.
00:13:29.880 | Okay.
00:13:30.880 | On top of, the publishing industry already works really slowly. It takes like two years
00:13:37.560 | from the time you sign your contract to the time your book gets out onto a shelf. And
00:13:43.440 | then on top of that, I'm just slow to begin with. So this story, it began with one of
00:13:49.880 | the seeds was becoming a musician is so much work. And if you're a child and you pick up
00:13:56.680 | an instrument for the first time, and in the beginning it's novelty, but after a while,
00:14:04.800 | it just becomes a lot of work to try and make music. But you just have these like really
00:14:11.960 | off sounds coming out. And it takes like, I don't know, a few weeks before you really
00:14:18.680 | hear like the fruits of your hard work. And I wondered, you know, what would help a kid
00:14:27.400 | follow through with learning an instrument? What if your instrument was a partner in this
00:14:37.520 | endeavor to learn music? What if your instrument had its own spirit, was its own character?
00:14:44.040 | Then you have a friend as you're going through all this hard work. So it kind of started
00:14:50.240 | with that little seed.
00:14:52.120 | Okay. And why do you think we end up neglecting things or people important to us over time?
00:15:00.440 | Why do we give up on the things that brought us joy when we were growing up? Or frankly,
00:15:05.520 | the people that were closest to us when we were young or or not even young, just adults,
00:15:10.320 | and then we lose touch. What's going on here?
00:15:12.960 | Because we're always changing, like we're evolving. And that's what makes life interesting.
00:15:19.720 | We have so much capacity for growth and change. And as you grow and change, things that attract
00:15:25.720 | you are different or your needs are different. You know, marriages, people are in love in
00:15:33.040 | the beginning. And then after, I don't know, a decade or so, it's like people continue
00:15:39.000 | evolving and then suddenly you discover your partner is no longer the ideal match for you.
00:15:45.840 | Same with friends, you know, it's like, yeah, especially that's kind of traumatic. I think
00:15:51.240 | like kids for kids who grow up in the same school that they have to lose each other sometimes.
00:16:00.320 | And it's not because somebody moves. It's just that their interests are different and
00:16:04.760 | they met so-and-so who they think are cool, but then their old friend doesn't think so.
00:16:10.880 | Yeah, it's complicated, I guess. And it's hard as they say for adults to make new friends.
00:16:18.720 | And it might be because we're so set in our ways and set in the things that we want to
00:16:23.280 | do. I'm not sure about that.
00:16:25.920 | Yeah. And plus the phone, you know, how stunted our social skills are becoming, or at least
00:16:31.680 | with younger people, because it's so easy to communicate by texting on a phone that
00:16:38.960 | you don't talk to other people. And you forget those social skills. Especially for people
00:16:47.640 | who are introverted and shy, it takes courage even just to like go to the cashier and like
00:16:54.480 | have an interaction. It's like there's always like just a slight grain of anxiety there.
00:17:01.760 | So if you give into that anxiety and just like, you know, it's easy to say things if
00:17:07.760 | you can hide behind your screen. You know, the internet is full of trolls, anonymous,
00:17:14.640 | and it's so easy to type things. But it's harder to say things to people's faces.
00:17:20.120 | Yeah. Well, you actually brought up something interesting. I mean, I think what you're saying
00:17:24.160 | is true. So do you think that creators, children's book artists, writers are more introverted
00:17:31.320 | than the average person? Are there more introverts as creators?
00:17:34.720 | Yeah. Every time we get together for a conference, like one of the things that's mentioned is
00:17:42.480 | how all the introverts are coming out of their cave. They're forcing themselves out. You
00:17:49.120 | know, because they recognize the value of community. And it's such a hard thing to do
00:17:57.640 | to get published in children's books that the connection you find in a community is
00:18:03.280 | one of the things that will keep you going.
00:18:05.880 | Yes. I totally believe that. Community is awesome. To have like-minded people who are
00:18:11.440 | nice, kind, and sharing support your work and also share ideas. It's so huge. What about
00:18:17.320 | the financial angle? Because I'm assuming the vast majority of children's book authors
00:18:24.440 | and creators are not there to get rich. Or are there some who are like, you know what,
00:18:29.000 | I think I'm going to make it huge one day and this is my ticket out.
00:18:33.320 | No. Although I was quite surprised when I first spoke with my current literary agent.
00:18:43.280 | She said, "So what's your thought?" I can't remember how she phrased it, but basically
00:18:48.120 | she said, "Do you want to do this as a full-time career?" And of course it is, but I feel like
00:18:57.720 | you would have to be so lucky to be able to have enough work to sustain a comfortable
00:19:04.680 | lifestyle doing this work. When I did "The Turtle Ship," everybody else had another job.
00:19:14.000 | Helena Kool-Reed writes these beautiful stories, and she's a lawyer. And my production manager,
00:19:24.280 | he also writes children's books. My art director, she's like an award-winning bookmaker herself,
00:19:32.160 | like illustrator, author, and everybody has a day job.
00:19:36.480 | Right. It brings up an interesting point because there is this, I guess, knock against the
00:19:44.400 | journalism community in New York City because it seems like journalism doesn't pay very
00:19:50.560 | well. So maybe the knock or maybe the stereotype is that you have to already come from a wealthy
00:19:55.840 | family to be able to be a journalist or creator to be able to survive long enough. And it's
00:20:01.640 | the same thing with, if you see a lot of the most successful entrepreneurs in America.
00:20:07.440 | Bill Gates, for example, is Bill Gates III, and he grew up in a wealthy community in Seattle.
00:20:14.480 | His dad was wealthy. And there's the founder of, let's see, Snapchat.
00:20:20.680 | Amazon.
00:20:21.680 | Oh, Amazon. Yeah. Everybody kind of was wealthy. So it's kind of sad in a way that you have
00:20:26.400 | to be wealthy enough to be able to be poor enough to work on your creations.
00:20:33.080 | Yeah. It's really unfair. It skews towards higher income folks because, as we talked
00:20:42.200 | about grit, you just have to last long enough till that opportunity arises where you can
00:20:48.200 | get your foot in the door. That takes money. That takes resources. So somebody who has
00:20:54.080 | to work three jobs to make ends meet, you're not going to have the brain space, let alone
00:21:04.720 | time, to create. Creativity needs time. It's already enough work just to be creative. So
00:21:15.480 | to do that on top of all your other activities that you have to do to survive is a lot.
00:21:21.960 | How do you think we can change that? Give people who don't have as much means the opportunity
00:21:28.640 | to create. I'm just wondering, what is the solution? How can we help?
00:21:34.680 | I know that in most creative programs, people do offer scholarships. I've been the recipient
00:21:41.400 | of a couple of scholarships. The first time I went to Highlight Foundation, they're basically
00:21:48.440 | like a retreat for children's book authors and illustrators. I went there for a workshop.
00:21:55.800 | It was like a three to five day workshop where you learn how to do a good author's visit
00:22:04.600 | or an illustrator visit. It was great. They feed you every day. You don't have to think
00:22:10.040 | about doing the dishes. All your job to do is learn and focus on what it is you love
00:22:16.840 | to do. That was through a scholarship. Then SCBWI, the Society of Children's Book Writers
00:22:24.440 | and Illustrators, also offered me an award, which funded my next trip there.
00:22:30.960 | Oh, cool.
00:22:31.960 | So it's money. Basically, at the end of the day, it's money to buy the time that you need.
00:22:38.760 | I heard of one creative who learned how to invest money just so that he could buy himself
00:22:46.880 | some time to create his work. He was teaching other artists how to do the same.
00:22:55.480 | Yeah. Well, I think one thing that listeners can do is support our artists by buying their
00:23:02.480 | work. So if folks want to support Colleen, please go to your local bookstore or online
00:23:09.080 | and pick up a copy of Piano Wants to Play. That's something that I hope more of us can
00:23:14.760 | do is support writers and artists, because goodness knows, writing and art doesn't pay
00:23:20.960 | well for, I would say, 99% of the people out there.
00:23:25.920 | Yeah.
00:23:26.920 | And it's tough.
00:23:27.920 | It's a real labor of love.
00:23:30.080 | Yeah. It is a real labor of love. You have to enjoy writing and creating art to sustain
00:23:36.640 | yourself. Otherwise, there's no way I could sustain Financial Samurai since 2009, three
00:23:41.560 | posts a week for that many years in a row. If I didn't enjoy writing and interacting
00:23:45.880 | with the community, there's no way. I would have done something else. And if I wanted
00:23:49.480 | to do this for the money, I would have quit long ago because it's pretty soul-sucking
00:23:52.920 | if you want to be a creative to make money. It hurts the soul.
00:23:58.960 | Yeah. I mean, I do this not even just because I love it. It's just that I can't stop doing
00:24:04.800 | it. So I remember thinking when I got out of college, "I'm going to go get something
00:24:09.880 | that can give me a living wage." But I couldn't stop doing the creative work. I came to New
00:24:18.000 | York to do fiction writing. I had spent most of my life doing visual arts. And I just couldn't
00:24:24.440 | stay away.
00:24:25.440 | Yeah. No, that's interesting. That is interesting because it's a little bit sad with the way
00:24:32.720 | college tuition is going. It's so expensive, right? It's so crazy expensive, public or
00:24:37.960 | private school. And one of the things that I've been thinking about a lot, and I've talked
00:24:43.000 | to people who go to these very elite private universities that cost a lot of money, right?
00:24:48.840 | And I asked them about their hopes and dreams in their application process to get into these
00:24:54.280 | colleges. And they talk about being a writer, artist, starting a nonprofit, saving the world.
00:25:02.840 | And then if you look at the data, 60% of these college graduates, elite college graduates,
00:25:08.520 | end up going into tech, finance, and consulting, right? And so I always think to myself, what
00:25:14.560 | happened to changing the world on a humanitarian way, you know?
00:25:20.040 | It's expensive.
00:25:21.360 | It's expensive to help the world.
00:25:23.400 | I know.
00:25:24.480 | It's so sad.
00:25:25.480 | I know. And it's like even just individual integrity is difficult to maintain in reality.
00:25:34.040 | Just like work politics, it's like you find people who really would like to point out
00:25:41.800 | issues that their organization or workplace are having, and they keep silent because they
00:25:49.960 | don't want retribution. And it's hard when you need to work to survive.
00:25:58.400 | I know. I totally hear you. I mean, whether you have funny things going on at the workplace,
00:26:06.800 | or you have a micromanager boss, or you're just doing something you just really don't
00:26:12.560 | like, but you need the paycheck and you need the, what, healthcare benefits, you know?
00:26:18.960 | How do you manage healthcare benefits?
00:26:21.200 | Well, New York State Affordable Healthcare Act, so just going on to, for New York State,
00:26:27.520 | you go on to New York State of Health and they subsidize your health plan if you don't
00:26:35.560 | make a certain amount of money. And at some point, you qualify for Medicaid as well.
00:26:41.120 | Got it.
00:26:42.120 | And every year you reapply. Most of my co-workers don't even bother with that. They just go
00:26:47.440 | without healthcare, which drives me nuts, especially when they're muralists who have
00:26:53.200 | to work on scaffolding and it's dangerous and they don't have healthcare.
00:27:00.680 | Well, hopefully, I thought the Affordable Care Act was like, everybody is guaranteed
00:27:06.400 | coverage or something. I got to look into that. No?
00:27:08.840 | No, because there's this, well, they've changed it recently too, but there was like a segment
00:27:14.960 | of the population who makes too much to qualify for Medicaid, but at the same time, they don't
00:27:20.520 | make enough that even with subsidies, it was too difficult to have healthcare. So they
00:27:29.600 | would just end up like paying whatever penalty there was for not having healthcare. And then
00:27:36.600 | I can't remember what's gone on in the past few years, but.
00:27:39.800 | Got it. Well, let's conclude with some action items or first, maybe we'll talk about if
00:27:46.320 | you could rewind time 10, 15 years ago, is there anything you would have done differently
00:27:51.600 | to get on this successful path to creating a children's book?
00:27:55.880 | You were talking about elite educations and college degrees. I don't think I needed an
00:28:02.360 | expensive graduate degree to do what it is that I do today. The returns on that investment
00:28:08.680 | are very low. But the thing I do appreciate about getting my graduate degree is it brought
00:28:17.200 | me to New York City because I was terrified of coming to this city. It has this reputation
00:28:24.240 | of being like, you're going to get mugged as soon as you step off the bus. But it's
00:28:29.600 | been like the best decision I've made, I think, in terms of life choices, terms of
00:28:35.400 | my creative work. It has fed me as an artist, diversity. I grew up overseas, always in a
00:28:43.600 | different country every two, three years. And New York City is filled with so many cultures
00:28:51.040 | that it's comfortable here for me.
00:28:54.200 | Okay. That's good. It's like a path that you would take again, which is always nice
00:29:00.200 | to hear. And for those who want to be children's book authors, what advice would you give them
00:29:05.600 | to start?
00:29:06.600 | Read a lot of children's books. Society of Children's Book Writers/Illustrators was really
00:29:12.120 | good. And they're an international organization. Going to those conferences gave me an education
00:29:18.840 | about children's books, what publishers are looking for. There is stuff you can find online
00:29:25.680 | as well, just like the format. Did you know that most children's books are 32 pages and
00:29:31.520 | that the word count should be definitely not more than 1,000? A lot of people will show
00:29:39.720 | me their manuscripts and they'll say, "What do you think?" And it'll be way too long.
00:29:44.640 | It's like 500, 600 words is the sweet spot. So there are little things like that that
00:29:50.240 | you can learn either online or through SCBWI.
00:29:54.400 | And then discipline in terms of always be writing or drawing something. Just keep your
00:30:04.360 | hand on it because it's very easy to lose sight of. I've spent many months where I don't
00:30:13.800 | do anything with KidLit just because I'm so inundated with my other work as a teacher
00:30:20.680 | artist. And that's not good. You always have to be doing something with it.
00:30:26.240 | And then put your portfolio out there on the internet.
00:30:28.480 | Yeah. You have to have a website. People have to be able to find you. You have to call people
00:30:37.760 | to that website. If you have social media, great. Instagram. You get to share what you're
00:30:46.200 | working on. You get to show off your skills to people, create your following.
00:30:51.680 | Right, right. Yeah. What a journey. For those just getting started, I'm excited for y'all,
00:30:58.960 | for anybody just getting started to try to create something from nothing because it's
00:31:03.200 | really fun. It's really fun to come up with an idea and then to see it come into the real
00:31:09.280 | world. It's almost addicting. So Colleen, it's been great chatting with you for this
00:31:14.400 | past 30 plus minutes.
00:31:16.440 | Thanks.
00:31:17.440 | If people want to support your work, find you, where should they go?
00:31:21.120 | Piano Wants to Play and Turtleship are both available wherever books are sold. Go on Amazon
00:31:27.040 | or you can ask at your local bookstore also. My website is ckongsavage.com. So that's C-K-O-N-G-S-A-V-A-G-E.com.
00:31:40.160 | That's basically all the work that I do. Graphic design as well as illustration. You can find
00:31:47.920 | me on social media too. Instagram.
00:31:50.000 | Great. Well, I'll definitely link in the show notes to where people can find you. All right.
00:31:56.080 | Well, that's good. So what's next for the day?
00:31:58.720 | I just signed on to do this book on the history of the fortune cookie.
00:32:03.200 | Oh, that's a great topic. Is that going to be a children's book or educational book?
00:32:07.840 | It's going to be a children's book. And get this, did you know that there's a back and
00:32:13.600 | forth between Los Angeles and San Francisco, but I think most people agree that the fortune
00:32:18.760 | cookie originated in San Francisco, the Japanese tea garden. Did you know that it was a Japanese
00:32:25.720 | American that invented the fortune cookie, not a Chinese American, as most people would
00:32:32.520 | think.
00:32:33.520 | I didn't know. That's going to be interesting.
00:32:35.520 | I know.
00:32:36.520 | Wait, so this is a new book deal or?
00:32:39.280 | Yes.
00:32:40.280 | Oh.
00:32:41.280 | Yes.
00:32:42.280 | Well, congratulations.
00:32:43.280 | I just signed on like a couple of weeks ago and I've got the manuscript so I get to learn
00:32:47.640 | more about fortune cookies and it's just really cool. It's like have diagrams of fortune cookie
00:32:53.520 | making machine.
00:32:54.520 | You're going to have to come to San Francisco to do some research.
00:32:57.320 | Yes. Research, research.
00:32:58.640 | Awesome. That's awesome. Congratulations. It's the first I heard about this so that's
00:33:04.400 | great. And that's it. Just keep those winds coming. Keep going. Keep grinding. You never
00:33:10.000 | know what could happen. You just got to keep at it.
00:33:12.560 | All right, everyone. Well, thanks for listening to the Financial Samurai Podcast. If you enjoyed
00:33:17.160 | this episode, we'd appreciate a positive review, share and a subscribe. Every single review
00:33:23.040 | means a lot. And if you want to keep in touch, check out FinancialSamurai.com/news and definitely
00:33:28.920 | go and support Colleen Kong Savage's work. Congratulations again and thanks for coming
00:33:34.640 | on.
00:33:35.640 | Thank you, Sam.
00:33:36.640 | All right. Take care.
00:33:37.640 | Bye.
00:33:42.640 | you