Meegenius CEO Shares Her Thoughts on Reading

Wany Hoh, the CEO and founder of Meegenius wrote a nice article on the importance of reading and how it effect our children. Take a look, it's worth a read.

Huffington Post

Today is the Day! Owen the Pirate Goes Live!

That's right my friends, book one in the Owen the Pirate series is official up and running. I'm so excited about this series. Please follow the link and buy you copy today!

Owen the Pirate: Voyage to Sandbox Beach

For the Adults!

Just a FYI, if you enjoy creepy horror you need to take a listen to my short story "Swallow". It was recently narrated by Mr. Creepy Pasta and it has 5,789 views as of writing this!

Swallow by Mateo Hellion

Updates As Promissed

I have a good amount of updating to give you... Let's start with the Touch-a-Truck event. It was a huge success and I owe a lot of that to my wife Stacey who spent many hours making bookmarks and posting about the event on Facebook. Even though she's going through some medical stuff she came out and supported me.

We sold several bookmarks and handed out a ton of promotional bookmarks to promote Owen the Pirate and The Hiccup Mummy.

Muzzles on deck!

Chris doing the promoting thing.

Meegenius is in the process of making book one public and the illustrations for book two are done and turned in. Jessika is doing an amazing job on the illustrations as usual and I can't wait to see how the "Owen the Pirate" series does.

I'll tell every as soon as the first book is up and running.

As for Hiccup Mummy... the first quarter sales report was just emailed to me.

January 2013:    144 copies sold

February 2013:  287 copies sold

March 2013:      196 copies sold

Total copies sold for the 1st quarter of 2013 = 627 copies sold!

Not too shabby.

As for the summer plans, I'll be promoting Owen the Pirate as much as possible and fishing out several manuscripts for other stories, including Beaver Finds Home and Mom's Mean French Toast.

UPDATES ARE ON THE WAY

Hey gang,

I apologize for not giving updates recently. Life has been crazy and as usual a curve ball or two has been thrown in my direction.

But have no fear... the updates are coming!

Here is a small list of the updates I have in the works:

A brief on the Touch-a-Truck event (+pictures!)
Updates on the Owen the Pirate series (books 1 and 2)
Updates on my freelance writing
Updates on my horror blog, MateoHellion.blogspot.com

Monroe's Touch-a-Truck Event

1st Promotional Event!

I'm proud to announce that I'll be promoting the Owen the Pirate series as well as The Hiccup Mummy at the first annual Touch-a-Truck event in Monroe WA, June 1st.

Kids will get a free bookmark, prizes, and other fun stuff from our booth. The wife is also making some great leather and bead bookmarks for all of the mothers and fathers out there!

Here's a peak at the bookmarks the kiddos will be getting!

Cheers

Owen the Pirate Updates

Owen the Pirate: Voyage to Sandbox Beach is through the illustration phase and is now in the hands of Meegenius' creative team for formatting and narration. Jessika is busy using up her art supplies on book two, Voyage to Couch Island... you're in for a treat to say a little about the artwork.

Here's a sneak peek!

Egg Heads

What happens when you ask me to mark the hard boiled eggs?

You get eggheads

New Videos Posted

If you check out the WRITER 4 HIRE page you'll see that I've added several explainer and white board videos. These are a few of the over 50 projects that I've help with in the last year. I've written the video concepts and voice over scripts for each.

Look Out!!! Thar be books on the way!

A quick update on the Owen the Pirate series.

The illustrations for the first in the series is now finished and 'Voyage to Sandbox Beach' will be published on Meegenius very soon. Our goal is to get a book up and running every month with a very special treat for the kiddos starting December 1st.

As the books hit the market I'll be doing my best to promote them through social media, POD cast interviews, etc. With any luck we'll have a nice fan base to conduct an Owen the Pirate drawing contest with the winners getting free copies of 'Owen the Pirate and the Christmas Caper'!

So stay tuned and keep an eye out on Meegenius for book #1

Autism Awareness

April is Autism Awareness Month...

Do something fun and loving for a child with autism or special needs. They're great kids!

Sneak Peek!

A fun little sneak peek of the work in progress for the 'Owen the Pirate' series. Look out Meegenius fans! I think Owen the Pirate is going to be a hit!

Gone Fishing!

I'm happy to announce that I've started to send out a couple of manuscripts as I fish for literary agents and publishers. The first is for a picture book story that I truly think with be a great book... of course I'm a little bias since I wrote it. But who wouldn't love to read a picture book about a beaver trying to find his place in life to their children?

Beaver Finds Home was first inspired while I was still working nights as a patrol officer for the Bellevue School District. Late one night while I was stopped at a red light I noticed a lonely and rather plump beaver waddling down the street. It made me think, "Why is there a beaver in the middle of the road in the middle of downtown? There were no lakes, rivers, streams, or ponds nearby. Where was the little guy going?"... and so, Beaver was created.

A story about a beaver who doesn't feel appreciated and decides to find a new home. Along his adventure he tries to live like the other animals, but soon learns that he doesn't fit in Mouse's home, can't climb trees like the Raccoon family, and can't hang-out like Possum. Beaver finds himself in the city and tries to be like the animals at the zoo, but again he doesn't fit in. Sad and lonely, Beaver meets an old and wise police horse who reminds Beaver of how important he is and that he isn't good at being like the animals because he's perfect the way he is. Beaver runs home to find that he 'was' missed by the pond animals... and a happy ending ensues!

The other manuscript is a very exciting one for me because it mixes my two areas of writing, children's lit and horror!

Mom's Mean French Toast and Other Terrifying Tales is a collection of 13 short stories that are geared for middle-grade readers and early teens. If you like R. L. Stine's Goosebumps or David Lubar's Weenie series like I do, then you'll love these stories too. Within the pages are stories about syrup and butter spewing monsters, ghosts that haunt bigtoys and schools, curses that will trap you forever, and even a story that shows how needing to use the restroom can not only be torture... it can be hell.

With that said, if you happen to be a literary agent or publisher and you've stumbled upon this blog, please feel free to contact me. Just bite the hook and let me real you in.

Dr. Doofenshmirtz Momment

If I was the evil Dr. Doofenshmirtz I’d make a de-green-anator! It would take everyone’s green things from them and give them to me! Then I would be the only one not getting pinched on St. Patrick’s Day and while everyone is busy pinching each other I would take over the Tri-State area! Muhahaha!

Owen's 1st signed book

Got this a couple of years ago for own while at the scbwi conference. Great time and a must for anyone interested in writing for kids.

4th Quarter with Hiccup Mummy

Meegenius just sent me the stats for the last quarter of 2012 (Oct, Nov, Dec), and The Hiccup Mummy sold 704 copies! Not too shabby for not spending the time or money in marketing the book like I should.

Lets make the goal of the 2013 last quarter 1400+

A New Home For my Writing!

Welcome to the new and improved place to connect with my writing! After several years with my writing homepage being Alleywolf.com I've decided to change directions a bit. Partly to save money... after all, I do have a family to support and sites like Blogger and Facebook are free, so why not?

You'll find my blog broken into four parts; Home, Mateo Hellion, Freelance Writing, and Screenplays. 

The home page will be the main focus of the blog with my updates and thoughts, and it will serve as the main connection to my children's writing. This is an exciting section for me because some really cool things are taking place with my children's literature, including a recent 5 book deal with Meegenius! After the Hiccup Mummy was published by Meegenius in 2008 I kept my contacts and continued to network... and it paid off! Meegenius has decided to publish a 5 book series titled "Owen the Pirate" and better yet, Jessika, my illustrator for the Hiccup Mummy was given the green light to do the art for Owen the Pirate... like I said, COOL STUFF!!!

The "Mateo Hellion" page is dedicated to my adult horror work that is published under my pen name. This is another area that I'm very happy with. My novella, "He Only Takes One" was recently accepted with Blood Bound Books and is set to publish soon as part of a double feature. I also have a self published novellete available on B&N titled "Dropped Calls", as well as other works in the horror genera underway.

For those of you interested in freelance writing and seeing what I've been up to on the side, feel free to visit the Freelance Writing page. I have a strong standing with Elance and I've been focusing on writing scripts for web commercials, explainer videos, and white board videos. I'll be sharing the finished videos on this page.

Last but not least, I've decided to create a screenplay page to network and share a few of my screenplay projects. I enjoy writing screenplays and you may be surprised to see how different this type of story telling is.

So... That's it! Welcome to my writer's blog. I hope you enjoy. Happy Reading

Chris