A Twitter Pitch Turns Into A Book Deal

A children’s picture book can start in a surprising place: a string quartet performing a concert for plants. From the NCRA conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, we sit down with Tonnye Fletcher, a veteran educator who spent 17 years in second grade before making a big career shift into the K to 2 music room, and that pivot becomes the spark for a deeper conversation about creative risk and staying open to change.

Website: spotlight4success.com

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Tani Fletcher

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company. I am Devin Pentosa, your host. We are here in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, at the NCRA conference. And we are here joined by our special guest today, Tani Fletcher. Tani, nice to see you today.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Hi, thanks. Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Tani joins us. She is a uh uh primary school teacher at Whiteville, Whiteville primary, and uh that's part of Whiteville City Schools. Uh we're so happy that you're able to join us today.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

And uh I understand uh we're gonna talk about some of your experiences, and I believe you have a book to share.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

I do, I do. Very excited.

Choosing Elementary Teaching And Music

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Wonderful. Can you tell us a bit, uh Tani, about your experience? What um what led you to decide to become a teacher?

SPEAKER_01 0:53

I think I always knew I wanted to teach. The question was what and who? Okay. Um so I went through a few different options of that. I thought about teaching high school band because I was a band geek in high school, and then I thought about drama. Um, and eventually I landed back on elementary education because everything that I loved I could teach in the elementary classroom. So I could do drama, I could do music, I could do writing, I could do poetry, I could do all the things that I loved. Um, and so that's how I ended up in elementary.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

And then I transitioned to music later. So now I'm actually a K 2 music teacher. But I did second grade for 17 years.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Wow, that's great. Well, you love the little ones.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

I do, yeah, yeah, they're a lot of fun.

Joining The Kid Lit Community

SPEAKER_00 1:41

That's wonderful. Um Tani, can you tell us a bit about your journey of uh becoming a music teacher in K through two and like what led you to write the story you're gonna share with us today?

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Yeah, so 17 years in second grade were wonderful, but every now and then you have a really tough year, and it was a really tough year, and it also just happened to be the year that our music teacher retired at the primary school, and I thought, oh man, that would be a really nice change, a really nice shift. And so I went to my superintendent and I said, Am I qualified? And he said, Yeah, you are, and I said, Well, I'd love to try this, talk to my principal. I said, if I'm terrible at it, can you put me back in the classroom? If I'm not good at it, can you put me back in the classroom? And I've not looked back, I've been in the music room for 11 years now. Wow, so yeah, I do love it, and um I've always loved music and all things music, and I've also always wanted to be a writer uh back in the day when I was maybe middle school. I'm gonna show my age a little here, but I was actually writing episodes for Fantasy Island, if you remember. What? Really? Not really, but yes, I was trying.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Wow, that's great.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

And started some novels and different things. So I've always wanted to write. Um, so I joined um kind of the Kid Lit community, we call it, in 2020. Okay. Ahead of the pandemic, not knowing what was coming. And um, so I joined Twitter and got really involved in the Kidlet community. And so from 2019.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Wait, can you explain to the audience what the Kid Lit community is?

Rejection And The Pitch Contest Breakthrough

SPEAKER_01 3:19

I can, yes. So the Kid Lit community is just a broad term for everybody who writes literature for kids. Okay. So picture books, um, chapter books, middle grade, and young adult. Wonderful, as well as board books kind of fall into that category of kid lid. So in 2020, I came in to the Kid Lit community and started working really, really hard, taking all the classes, joining the groups, and um entering contests, doing everything I could do to learn the craft. I'd been working at it for a while, but I wasn't very good at it, and there was so much I didn't know. Um and so I was doing all of that, learning so much, making so many new friends and acquaintances, um, doing every free webinar and class that I could possibly do and writing. Writing, writing, writing a lot. Um, and then in I want to say maybe July, there was an agent, and I had already started querying way too early, wasn't ready to query, but I queried, which just means sending your book out to like agents and editors to see if they're willing to buy it. And um, so I had been doing that for a while. And then this um agent posted on Twitter at the time, um, she posted this concert for plants that had happened in Barcelona in June, so it's right after that, and she said, I would love a picture book about this. I don't know what it would look like, but I really think this is a cool story, and I was like, I think this is a cool story too. So I watched the video like you can watch it on YouTube, it's it's amazing. So I watched it over and over and over, and I thought, okay, I could do it this way, I could do it this way, or I could do it this way. So I did it all three ways. I wrote three different versions of the same story. Um, I wrote a totally non-fiction expository, um, and then I wrote this book that we have in front of us, and then I wrote one that was kind of taking one plant from the nursery to the concert, home with the healthcare worker. Um and polished those up, got them as good as I could get them, sent them out to this agent who said she wanted this story, and she said, Yeah, no, yeah, no, not what I was looking for. I don't know what I was looking for, but this is not it. So I said, Okay, um, that's all you can do. You say okay, and you just try again. So I set them aside, and then later on there was um what we called a Twitter pitch contest, okay, and that's where you just send like a little quick blurb, a tweet, um, and you kind of fit the whole little mini summary of your book into a tweet. And then if they like it, I mean it's random, like whoever happens to be on, whatever they happen to be looking for, if they have time to scroll, but um, if they give you a heart, that's an invitation to submit to the editor or the agent. So I did that in February of 23. And um Winsome Bingham from Raycraft hearted my pitch and sent me a message and said, Send me this book. I want to read it.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Oh, look at that.

Inside The Book Music Plants Hope

SPEAKER_01 6:33

And um, yeah, so I said, Okay, and I did, and she um called me after she got the full manuscript, and she said, This book is beautiful, it has musicality, it has rhythm, it's lyrical, and I want to buy it.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Oh, that's great. Yeah, oh that's wonderful. All right, and uh now can you show us the book? Uh sure, that'd be great. Yeah, love to see it, Tani.

SPEAKER_01 6:57

So, yeah, this is it.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Music Plants Hope.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

And how does that start?

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Well, it begins actually with the string quartet walking onto the stage. So this is a concert for plants, and so the very beginning, there's a prologue that kind of grounds you into what's happening so you don't just kind of be jilted into it. Um, and then the very first lines begin footsteps on the stage. The string quartet enters in their black and white. They haven't played for an audience in months. Butterflies may feel their bellies, but their bows are rosined and they are ready to play.

Where To Preorder And Closing Thanks

SPEAKER_00 7:40

Very nice. Very nice. Music plants hope. Uh, again, this is uh by uh Tani Fletcher, and we're so happy that you were able to join us today. Now, how can people find out more about your book and uh look at ordering your book?

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Yeah, so if you're here at the conference, you can go visit Gigi's bookstore, um, which is right here on the premises. But if you're not, I'm sad that you're missing it. But um, we are available on all the book buying places Yahoo, Barnes and Noble, um, yeah, all those places. Bookshop if you're into supporting independent bookstores, which I love. So bookshop.org gets available there. You can also visit my website, and all the places to pre-order the book are um listed there on my website on the Music Plants Hope page.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

Okay. Well, thank you once again, uh Tani Fletcher. I appreciate you joining us today.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Thank you. It's been a joy, pleasure. Thanks.