In my latest book, Steven the Vegan, a group of children visit a farm sanctuary where Steven shares with his friends the reason he doesn’t eat animals. Farm sanctuaries are places where farm animals go to live out their lives, free from the slaughter house destiny that plagues their species.

Part of writing a convincing story is research. I wanted to research farm sanctuaries and find out more about them. That led me to the Kindred Spirits Sanctuary in Ocala, Florida. The Sanctuary encompasses 36 beautiful acres. There are about  150 sanctuary residents. The animals living there are called residents, because that’s what they are. The residents receive around-the-clock care, carefully controlled diets, spacious barns, and green pastures to graze.

I am planning a visit to the sanctuary very soon, and hope to meet some of these amazing residents. According to the care taker, each of the residents has a unique personality, and their special needs are seen to. I cannot wait to get there and meet some of the residents.

Sometime research can be fun! Check out The Kindred Spirits Sanctuary and learn about some of their residents.

Here we are at the third and final Easter egg in The Tale of Eartha the Sea Turtle. Unfortunately I don’t know who to credit with this one. I recall someone telling me this, but I don’t recall who.

In the story, people gather on the beach to see Eartha’s release back into the great wide ocean. One of the people on the beach, has a camera, and dark hair. Yup, you guess it, that’s suppose to be me!

The book is based on a real rescued and released sea turtle and I was there for the release, so it’s only logical that I end up in the story. Well, that’s it for official Easter eggs.

Wait? Did I say official Easter eggs? What about unofficial Easter eggs? Here are a few other truths about the illustrations.

• Moonfeather was based on a real Lakota woman who taught me about Native American Spirituality. Consequently, our cat Kota’s real name is Lakota.
• The bunny on the last page with Moonfeather is a tribute to PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The bunny symbol on products usually means they are not tested on animals.
• Jolly Roger is the name of a real loggerhead sea turtle that was at the Loggerhead marinelife center with Eartha.

So, will my next book have Easter eggs in it. Most likely, but I’m still not sure what they will be at this time.

I hope you enjoyed this series, and you enjoyed the book.

It’s been over 12 years since I’ve seen my friend Ron, the illustrator for Steve the Vegan. We had a great time reminiscing, working on the illustrations for Steven’s book, and some new ideas and concepts. We worked on design ideas for the cover, and we think we came up with a great concept. He did some work on a new character for a new book I am writing.

We also discussed topics regarding a web comic, and an interactive story book.

Watching Ron work was incredible and brought back memories of watching him doodle in class. I wanted to share that experience so I recorded a video of him drawing Steven. Even though I have known him since childhood, I am still amazed at his artistic abilities.

Success. Story time was great. Joe, a volunteer at the LMC read the book and I was amazed at how captivated the kids were. One little boy kept standing up to get closer to the book. Afterward his mom purchased a copy and he wouldn’t give it to her to have it signed. He loved the book. It made my day.

The LMC staff was very helpful, and I was invited back for another story time / signing combo. One thing Cindy noticed was how much more brighter and colorful my book was in comparison to other sea turtle books.

It was a great experience and another high point in the whole “first book” experience.

Tomorrow, January 23rd, at 11:30am is my first book signing and meet and greet. It’s being held at the Loggerhead Marinelife Center in Juno Beach. I’ll be giving out free coloring pages, bookmarks and more.

Prior to the meet and greet there will be a story time for kids where the book will be read by an LMC volunteer.

I have to admit, when I started the process of writing the book I never knew I’d be doing a book signing, much less selling as many books as I have. It’s been a great experience and I am grateful to the Loggerhead Marinelife Center for their participation.

On another note, (Break out those wallets) recently the LMC was inundated with many “cold-stunned” sea turtles. You’ve probably seen it on the news. They could really use some donations to help replenish supplies and to continue the care and rehabilitation of their residents. Please reach into your hearts, and your wallets and give them a hand.  If you’d like to make a donation, you can do it here.

I’ll post some photos of the story time and the book signing after the event.

As promised, here is Easter Egg number two! If you haven’t followed the Easter Egg trail, be sure to read the first part of this series.

When the illustrator was drawing the pages where Eartha is rescued by a boat he asked me, “Did you want to put a name on the boat?” I received his email question while I was watching the Discovery Channel show, Deadliest Catch. On that show is a boat called the Cornelia Marie. Without hesitation, I replied back to the illustrator … “Name the boat, Lucinda Marie”.

Lucinda Marie is my wife Cindy’s true given name. From the beginning she had been by biggest supporter in the writing this book. Whenever I got frustrated or disillusioned, she would be right there to offer inspiration and support. Now not only is she the wife of a brilliant children’s book author, but she is forever immortalized as a marinelife rescue boat.

This being Easter egg number two, that can only mean one thing. Our third and final Easter egg will be revealed soon.

Do you think you know what it is?

First let’s define what an “Easter Egg” is. According to Wikipedia, an Easter Egg is defined as the following.

A virtual Easter egg is an intentional hidden message, in-joke or feature in an object such as a movie, book, CD, DVD, computer program, web page or video game.

Many movies and TV shows, like Lost, have hidden images and messages in them. When I wrote the story of Eartha, I had no intention of including any Easter Eggs. But as I started seeing the illustrations, the first Easter Egg came to mind.

There are a total of three (3) Easter eggs in The Tale of Eartha the Sea Turtle, and I will reveal one of them now.

The book is dedicated to the memory of my father-in-law, Ken DuCheney. I really liked Ken, he was a lot of fun to be around. He was always good for a laugh, whether intentional or not. Considering he welcomed me into his family without hesitation, he’d have to have been a great guy.

The image of the dedication (shown below) includes a sea horse, and five (5) fish. Each of these actually represents a member of the family. Ken, is represented as the sea horse. The larger of the five (5) fish is his wife, and my mother-in-law, Pat. The other four fish represent their children, Kenny, Steve, Lori and my wife Cindy.

So, there you have it. Easter egg number one. I’ll be posting the additional Easter eggs later on.

I was recently talking to a collegue about web hosting, and the expression “99.9%” up-time came up. He was adminant about having a solution that had 99.9% up-time due to the crucial need for his site. I told him 99.9% really doesn’t mean much, and he disagreed. We looked at the hosts “promise” and noticed that the 99.9% up-time was within one year. This means that in any one year his hosting will be up 99.9% of the time. So, let’s break that down…

There are 365 days in a year. There are 24 hours in a day. This breaks down to 8,760 hours in a year. If we go by hours, 99.9% is 8,751. That means that his site could be down for 9 hours in any given period of 365 days.

Break it down further to minutes, and that’s 540 minutes. Most people can’t stand their site being down for 5 minutes. So 99.9% up-time means that if his site is down for 1 hour, they (the host) are still within their service agreement.

Even if the agreement stated 99.9% up-time per day, a day is 1,440 minutes. 0.1% down-time is 14.4 minutes a day.

In the end, he understood what I meant. Sometime we need to look beyond the promise to the actual math.

Okay, I know we all hate math, but the truth behind this is … think of all the things in our lives that are promoted as 99% effective. Perfection may be unattainable, but it doesn’t mean we should stop trying.

Class dismissed.

2009 was an interesting year. I think I did more traveling in 2009 than I have in any other year.  I’m not sure I’ll be doing the same amount of traveling this year, but its still too early to tell. There were also some milestones.

Yellowstone National Park

In May 2009, my wife Cindy and I went to Yellowstone National Park. This trip was planned almost a year in advance. We hire a personal guide for two mornings, and were up before the sun both days to see the wildlife. I cannot express how incredible this was. Never before in my life had I seen such a variety of animals in the wild. From bison to long horn sheep, to the wolves and bears, Yellowstone was definitely the pinnacle of travel destinations in 2009.

Nixa, and Branson Missouri

In June I surprised my family by showing up in Missouri. Only my brother and my sister-in-law knew I was coming. My nieces and my parents had no idea I was coming to visit. The first surprise was when my brother took Claire to the airport to pick up a “business partner”. Her statement “There’s Tuca!” made both my brother and I laugh (Side Note: My Missouri neices call me Tuka (Tooka) because when Alyson was young I’d chase her saying “Tickle Tickle Tickle” and she’d reply “No Tuca”, so the name stuck!) When we arrived at their home, so one was there, so I hid in Alyson’s room with my back to the door, while sitting in a chair. She walked in freaked out as I turned around in the chair. Next, we went over to my parents house. My brother announced to them, “You’re not dying.” Then, I walked into the room. I think it took about a minute before they realized I was standing there. It took longer to convince my mother she wasn’t dying. I spent time with my nieces at Silver Dollar City, and White Water Rapids theme parks. Alyson and I did the cave tour at Silver Dollar City.

Las Vegas / Grand Canyon

October was a lot of fun. My brother-in-law and I met my brother in Las Vegas. I hadn’t been to Vegas since 1990 when I attended a Comdex convention. The three of us spent several days there, we say Ray Romano and Brad Garret. I took one day of the trip to take a tour of the Grand Canyon. It was a combination helicopter, boat, and land tour of the Upper rim of the canyon. The helicopter tour was amazing, and I also got to walk out onto the Grand canyon Skywalk. The skywalk is the glass horseshoe shaped bride with a glass bottom allowing visitors to look straight down into the canyon. It was a great trip.

Travel wasn’t the only thing that made 2009 interesting. I finally published my first children’s book, and wrote a second book. The entire process was very intricate and frustrating, but I know I have learned from any mistakes I made. Cindy and I made several trips to the Loggerhead Marinelife Center, as well as the Green Cay Wetlands. We also attended a seminar on speaking to animals at the Panther Ridge Conservation center. We  got to meet Isabella the baby Jaguar, and attended a fund raiser for the center.

Although the economy hit us pretty hard, and the future of many aspects of our lives are still uncertain, I still think 2010 will be a great year.

Stay positive, and enjoy the new year.

Usually a new years resolution is to lose weight, exercise more, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Well the truth is, I have lost weight, and I will continue to lose weight as I am exercising more. So then, now what? Usually those are the resolutions people pick? I, on the other hand, usually state my new years resolution as thus, “My New Years resolution is to not have a new years resolution.”

My New Years resolution is to not have a new years resolution.

That statement in itself usually negates in own standing, so in one fell swoop I declare and fail at my resolution avoiding the deep regret that follows sometime in February when I realize I failed. Take that destiny!
But this year I thought about what I could resolve to do. Be a better husband? Are you kidding me, I’m an awesome husband, you could ask my wife if I let her speak to you. So maybe this year my resolution should be about me. (After all it’s my blog dammit!) Why should a new years resolution be something we just don’t want to do? Why not pick something we want to do. So my new years resolution for 2010 is … to write more, read more, and do more of the things I love to do.

My new years resolution for 2010 is to do more of the things I love to do.

I love writing, I love reading, I love nature photography, I love caring about the animals in need. These are the things I should resolve to do more of. Now, doesn’t that sound like a prelude to a great year?

So this year, don’t resolve to do something you loathe. Resolve to do something that makes you happy.