Short version:
          
I write. I speak. My name is Brian.

Longer version:

I was born a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away (from Texas). Fast forward to a couple years post high school graduation, and after one of the more traumatic childhoods a kid from the Chicago suburbs could have, I decided to write.

While I spend most of my time writing for very young children, I have also written for other audiences. The two books I now have available on Amazon are a young adult book titled Summer of Sharonaand a book about everyone’s eternal need to belong titled Purple Ducks.

I have been writing picture books for about ten years and before that I dabbled in music writing. I wrote for numerous publications across the U.S. including the Arizona Daily Sun, the Long Island newspaper The Island Ear, the Bismarck Tribune, The Oklahoma Eagle and many Texas papers including The Vibe, Music News Magazine (for which I also wrote a monthly column on the DFW area hip hop scene), Jam Magazine, Funky Times and the Stockyards Gazette. I also wrote some of the first music reviews to ever appear online, this was even before the internet existed.

About the same time I wrote for the above publications, I also did record promotion for some Fort Worth based rappers. The Left & Right Shoe MC’s were the first rappers from the Dallas-Ft. Worth area to receive airplay in Paris, London and Liverpool nightclubs. I also helped them attain some press as they were mentioned in Billboard Magazine and Dance Report Magazine.

My desire to write for children arrived about the same time as my son Ezekiel. I have been actively subbing my picture books to publishers (and some agents) for seven of the past ten years. I’ve done things the hard way, always going for the top. I’ve always subbed to the best book publishers and refused to submit to magazines. Subbing to magazines has been suggested to me numerous times by some very talented writers but alas, I have been stubborn. If you want to write for children, I suggest you begin breaking into the magazine market first. I was given that good advice but as I said, I was stubborn. It’s a good thing for you, as a writer to have something you have written published. Don’t languish in the “unpublished” zone like I have for so long.

I have years of experience and know what to do and what not to do when it comes to writing and subbing picture book manuscripts, but I wish I could have learned years ago, the right way to do all of this. It has taken years of being in a talented critique group (two past members now published), years of being a member of SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators), years of corresponding with authors and interviewing them, years of subbing, getting close to sales and being rejected, to learn all that I have. I hope through this website and through my picture book talks, to impart some of my experience and knowledge with you.