Guest Blogger: The Book for Capstone by the Dog Walker

And now, this is the moment you've all been waiting for! I have finally been able to get my story all written and illustrated! This is the first book that I ever wrote to have a professional hard cover. This is a new series book that I came up with. I'm pretty sure you might like to know what the name of this book series is called, or you can probably tell from the picture of the book.

Samy Kind is a character that I came up with when I was a kid, because I thought there weren't many characters that would have "Kind" for a surname or even a character that would show kindness. And now at this moment, I'm planning to write a series about him. This is considered the third volume of the series. And there's a reason why that is.

It was a long progress to write the story and draw the pictures. Then Mom and Drama Queen helped me with some editing because I didn't quite understand why it was a big deal, until they told me that my story had to show evidence about what autism is really like. As an adult now, it's quite hard for me to go back to acting like a kid with a little bit of confusion, curiosity, or even some untreated speech therapy. So after I finished writing the story, and digitally drawing the pictures, I had Drama Queen and Mom check on my story to make sure it was all ready before the Capstone event that happened on the 3rd of December.

 After all the story was finished, Drama Queen and Mom went onto the Shutterfly website to try to make my book look professional like any other book. It was a long and hard progress for them, because the Shutterfly formatting is a bit tricky with Docs formatting. Every page had to go in one at a time. When they finally were able to get it all on Shutterfly, sadly, it wasn't going to come the house until the day after the Capstone event. It got me and Mom worried about that, because I was so excited that when it was ready, and I could show it to the judges.

We ended up hoping and praying that it would come sooner after my mom made desperate contacts with the Shutterfly company to try to send it over to us. They promised to help us, but after all the shipping that went around for the whole week, all we ended up getting were my illustrations laid out on photo sheets. At least it was still better than having nothing at my Capstone display to show the judges.

By the time the event came, I still didn't get the book, so instead I used my laptop to show my book like an ebook. I set up the illustrations all around my table, along with my other things that I planned to use. I took my turn to present my PowerPoint presentation about the process I did throughout the semester. I got a lot of positive reviews from the judges. As a matter of fact, all of them said that they loved the presentation I made and they thought my message was inspirational. And another thing they told me...THEY WANT A COPY OF MY BOOK!

Even though we were a little disappointed that my book didn't make it to the event, everyone did tell me that they really liked the way I set up the booth and that I got to show them all the hard work I put in throughout the semester. Mom and Dad were so proud of me for showing all the hard work I did on the story. On the day after the event, the shipping was showing either still packed or en route. Maybe the production teams was slacking off on trying to get my book shipped to the house.

Finally, my mom got a message that they said it would come by Monday. But coincidentally, Scout, Teach, and Twizlet, told me that it came just today! I came up to open the box from Shutterfly and it turned out to be the book that I wrote. I was quite surprised about the size of it. I thought it would be like the size of any other chapter book that is like vertically 8 1/2 in and horizontally 5 1/2 in. But, I shouldn't complain or even judge, because a book is still a book, no matter what size it is. Besides, this was a fun process.

Since this is the third book of the series, I'll have to start writing the first two books of the series, but for now, I think I'll have to wait until the holidays are over. I'm really looking forward to getting this book published for everyone, along with my other future books.