Tracey Sullivan: One Manuscript Away From Understanding a Father

By Brian Wish

Tracey Sullivan is the author of the children’s book series, Tebow Tails. The picture book series focuses on a group of canine best friends that live in the beachside community Barkington Bluffs. When they band together, there is always spontaneous fun and adventure which leads to them learning a life lesson. Inspired by her real-life dogs Tebow and Casper, Tracey builds a world rooted in themes of friendship, overcoming shyness, patriotism, and imagination that delights young readers.

Tracey holds a master’s degree in elementary education and accounting from the University of South Florida and the University of Florida. Before her path to authorship, Tracey spent five years as a Math Professor at St. Petersburg College. She and her husband, Bob, have two grown children, Scott and Jessica, and live with Tebow and Caspar in Clearwater Beach, Florida.

In this episode, Tracey and Bryan discuss:

• Tracey’s father, and the impact he had on her life
• The value of education and the joy of teaching
• The behind-the-scenes work that goes into writing children’s literature

The show is shared on the following platforms: 

• Soundcloud

• Apple Podcasts 

• Spotify

Transcript:

Bryan Wish:

Tracey, welcome to the One Away Show.

Tracey Sullivan:

Hi, Bryan, how are you doing today?

Bryan Wish:

Good. How are you?

Tracey Sullivan:

Awesome. I’m doing great. Thanks.

Bryan Wish:

Well, I’m thrilled to have you on, and it’s been a joy learning about you and your story and your work. What is the One Away moment that you want to share with us today?

Tracey Sullivan:

I would say the One Away moment that I would like to share is my dad passed away a year ago and he was an incredible person, an entrepreneur, and he also was a voracious reader and writer. His impact with me about writing was critical because I just grew up with it. In fact, one of the things after he passed that I wanted to make sure that still existed his manuscript he wrote about every book he read from the early 1990s. And there’s a couple thousand pages of it. It wasn’t a review of the book, it was literally a summary of the book, but course a summary is always going to have that person’s perspective even in the summary. So it’s fascinating and it’s all handwritten and it also correlates with what… he even said this when he was alive… of a time in his life, what was going on in his life, because a lot of times in a personal life/ cultural life that’s what you would also choose to read, because he had these best sellers in the nineties, two thousands, up to last year, he was reading up until his death.

Tracey Sullivan:

So it’s pretty fascinating. I still have the written manuscript in a box and I hope to get that published someday just in his words and even in his manuscript, not even typed up, since it’s so authentic and real. So that was a One Away moment. It changed… and also of course the perspective of life is short, life is precious, realizing how much you actually learn from your parents of being reflective.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah. That’s so special, Tracey, to have that as a representation of your father.

Tracey Sullivan:

Exactly. You could really see his brilliance and passion and that it could be a collective just for people to even decide which book they would like to read. It’s just amazing.

Bryan Wish:

Totally. Now as his daughter, when you’ve gone through that manuscript and kind of gone through his work and summaries, is there anything that you noticed or that stood out to you as you were going through it?

Tracey Sullivan:

Yes, he really tried to keep his opinion of the book out of it. He very much kept it on one page and it was basically descriptive summaries without his actual opinion. You can’t really tell when you read any of the manuscripts on any book if he liked the book or he didn’t like that, he kept it very true every time. And he also sometimes had notes, almost like a journal note on the side, sometimes of what was going on that day or time in his life. So, if that book was ever published it would be very critical to keep it in order of the date that he wrote the summary. So it’s pretty fascinating. I don’t know. I don’t know. It would be book summaries within a book. I don’t know if there’s anything out there like that.

Bryan Wish:

Well, it sounds like a very objective way to do it.

Tracey Sullivan:

Yes. He was very good at that. He was the editor of his high school newspaper and his original degree was in journalism. And then he always, he wrote op-eds for the Tampa Bay Times for years on the side.

Bryan Wish:

Totally. And Tracey, you care so much about education yourself and educating kids, was education always the value of your father? I mean, what about do you think your father made him so interested in being well-read and educated? How did he instill that value in you as well?

Tracey Sullivan:

He instilled it from the very beginning, both of my parents, that we just didn’t have choice in education. And so you grew up with it so we didn’t think anything on that… it was just always… and on a side note, my father was the first one in his family to get a college degree, and sometimes bordering on getting a high school degree. So to him, that was a huge deal. But I honestly think he was just born with that desire of constant knowledge and constant learning. He never shied away from it. So I think he was born with that gift of to keep just the precociousness and curiosity in his own family for generations, and he was the first family to get a college… and then again, two masters along with it.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah, well, it seems like it was a very big part of your childhood. And when you say you didn’t have a choice, what do you mean? How did that arise?

Tracey Sullivan:

He just instilled that his children… I’m the oldest of four… we’re going to go to college. It was no matter what, how, we were going to get there and go. So it was just instilled from us, it wasn’t like we felt like we had to be rebellious on that, it was just part of the plan because he was a role model for it, both of my parents were role models for that and role models for education, reading and writing.

Bryan Wish:

Sure. So through this value right of education that your family really worked so hard to instill in you, made it a priority, how did you see that value come into your own life after observing it and also seeing it enacted, how did you pick it up for yourself?

Tracey Sullivan:

I think maybe, I look back and it’s interesting, my mother has told me now she thinks I look the most like my dad and act like him and everything. So that came after he passed away. She didn’t tell me that particularly as I grew up. I think it became a desire because all through my childhood and early adulthood, he always had this entrepreneur vision along with getting a further education. It just went with him. And so I kind of had the same thing. I went to University of Florida, got a finance degree. When I got out, I graduated, I worked in Miami at Florida Power and Light, had a really good job, moved back to where I came from, the Clearwater area, and I could not… this is in the early eighties… it was a tough job market. So I thought, “How am I going to get a job here?”

Tracey Sullivan:

I went back to college, worked, part-time, went back to college and got my degree in accounting. So that’s how I got a master’s. And then when I had my first child, my son Scott, I really thought, “I’m glad I have the accounting background but I really still want to work with kids.” Because my original major at University of Florida was child psychology, but I kind of was talked out of that. And so I thought, “Oh, okay, since I’m a female I don’t want to be just a teacher. I’ll do the business thing.” And I liked it, but as I got older, I thought, “How can I pursue and really start to work with kids?” And that’s how I wound up getting my master’s in education. So here I am feeling like my dad, I mean he kept going on every time he had this trajectory change it would also require some other level of education to get certified or whatever.

Tracey Sullivan:

And then, so I got that and I had the kids and I taught at elementary. And then later on I wound up teaching at a college, St. Pete College, but that was actually in math because the good news is all the education I had from the accounting and the finance qualified for me to be a math professor. So that kind of came in handy. So you can never… education is always… it could only be a win-win, because you’re never going to lose that knowledge. You might be able to use it somewhere else, everyday life or just that. So that’s what my parents always said. So that’s kind of how he had a huge impact, and it was more… I wouldn’t call it post humus, but when somebody passes away you really get into this reflective mode in your life.

Bryan Wish:

Totally. So it seems like your dad has brought on a lot of reflection and I want to go back to teaching in a second because I think there’s a lot there with kids.

Tracey Sullivan:

Right, right.

Bryan Wish:

But I guess when your father passed, what else, it sounds like this manuscript was profound, you thought a lot about your father and how you grew up with his value of education which influenced your life, anything else about your dad that you think is worth sharing here in terms of how it’s made you reflect on your life or how it’s perhaps influenced how you’ve moved forward as a wife, a mom, just curious what you have as you’ve kind of-

Tracey Sullivan:

I think my dad had a passion for life, fun, joy. I mean, everything wasn’t perfect. Like some things my dad did that I didn’t want to repeat with my kids in some ways. But he was a phenomenal grandfather. And unbeknownst to me, I did not know until after he passed that he had been writing, emailing back and forth with my daughter for several years. And they weren’t just brief emails. They were long emails, because my daughter, Jessica, happens to be an excellent writer too, and an expressive writer. And so I had no idea. I was like, “What?” And that came out because I asked Jessica, I was the one that assigned to do his obituary, and so I asked my family do you guys have any thoughts about grandpa or dad or whatever, and my daughter said, “Oh, well, I’ll send you all the emails grandpa and I went back and forth with.” I had no idea.

Bryan Wish:

Oh wow.

Tracey Sullivan:

It was basically about religion. I had no idea. So it’s fascinating also when somebody passes away also how things come out that you didn’t even know. So my dad had a huge influence about the joy of sports. He loved sports. He loved sports, his family, his grandchildren, books, and he loved politics. I would call him an expert on the founding fathers. Fascinating. And he was a maverick. He did something nobody in his family had even done yet. And he’s got all kinds of stories. I’m not sure if they’re all true. I don’t know. I mean, I’m sure they were true, but they got better over the years about how he even went to University of Florida with a penny on his pocket. But he did not go originally there. He had a football scholarship to a college in Mississippi. It was called Hines Junior College. But he broke his collar bone after his freshman year so he couldn’t really play anymore, and then he wound up at Millsaps Junior College and then somehow he wound up at University of Florida to get his degree. Well, he got an engineering degree at UF.

Bryan Wish:

Wow. I love what you said about being a maverick. He seems like-

Tracey Sullivan:

Oh, he’s a maverick. He was a maverick.

Bryan Wish:

The type to go first and blaze a trail.

Tracey Sullivan:

Yes. And I always said, I said, “Dad, you’re like Madonna, you change your…” He bought into… I’ll call it a CPA client book… eight years ago when he was 75 and he loved it. He always said, I’ll tell you another, I forgot, this reminds me, he always said that he could never imagine not working.

Bryan Wish:

Sorry, can you say that one last sentence [inaudible 00:14:39], he could never imagine what working?

Tracey Sullivan:

Yeah, he could never imagine not working.

Bryan Wish:

Could never imagine… Well, it seemed like he… Oh, go ahead.

Tracey Sullivan:

He said he would be bored out of his mind.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah. Well that’s great. I mean, I see in the conversations that we’ve had, I know you’ve had more conversations with people I know, but how much you care to learn, but not just learn yourself but also sounds pass down that knowledge to others. And it seems like your dad through the notebook or the manuscript, the emails with your daughter, there was a desire to pass down that knowledge and education.

Tracey Sullivan:

Yes, yes. He definitely had that part of him. Basically on any topic, he could have a very knowledgeable conversation. And I forgot to mention, and I’d say I learned a big thing from him, work hard, play hard. He did not. He also thought as hard as you work, he loved to travel. He loved to watch any sporting… his favorites were the Gators, the Lightning, the Rays and the Buccaneers. I mean, he held the original Buck tickets, he was part of the original for years, because he lived in Tampa. So he just followed that and over time he decided he would rather watch it on this big, huge TV he got in his man cave, bigger than the whole room.

Tracey Sullivan:

So he would sit… yeah, so he decided I’d rather just hang out here and enjoy myself with the air conditioning and I can go get food whenever I want or whatever. Yeah, so he had an incredible sense of humor. He’s probably one of the funniest people I’ve ever met in my life, because he was so smart. He was so witty. He just really did. But sometimes it would be like, “Okay dad, maybe we’re going a little too far.” But yeah, no, he had an incredible sense of humor too.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah. Well it seems like a very special cherished, influential, transformative relationship for you and making you become the person you are. So not to shift too quickly from your father-

Tracey Sullivan:

Yeah, yeah, that’s okay.

Bryan Wish:

… and shift to you, you’ve taken on, I think, an incredible career yourself, right, educating students in the classroom, writing books about history and all the right things to educate kids and how they need to grow up. So I kind of want to hear from your perspective, what about teaching did you find such a love and joy in? I mean, from what you were talking about why you taught math, but it seems like it was so much beyond the subject matter. It was about how you practice. So I’m just curious from your angle what teaching means to you?

Tracey Sullivan:

Well, I found that teaching is a passion that’s not particularly for everybody, because it’s just something that I feel like you desire to do and you just have this desire to pay it forward to them to try to help them gather the knowledge that they would need to be successful, happy adults or find happiness and success in life. And like you said, this great question, when I taught math at St. Pete Community College, I felt like it was always much more than math so many times. So especially at a community college sometimes, you do so much more than math.

Bryan Wish:

Tell me more, like when you say there’s so much more than that, give that some meaning.

Tracey Sullivan:

Well that it would be students would ask, well, for one thing most people don’t like math, they’re terrified of math. So they would say, “Well, you’re not your typical math professor,” because I didn’t particularly, I guess, look like the classic… what they deemed… as the classic math professor. I didn’t have a pocket protector, maybe that’s what it was. So I would say, “Well, this is something that you guys need to get your degree. So we have to get through this.” And they’re like, “Well, we’re not even going to use most of this stuff.” And I said, “Well, the more abstract you get, you potentially… but geometry you use it for careers, for tile, for construction geometry is a huge part of construction jobs.”

Tracey Sullivan:

And then I said, “And you know what, just look at it like it’s going to keep your mind going and math is just a different language. It’s literally like learning Spanish or Chinese or something because it’s literally a different language.” And I said, “Once you get the words, you’ll be able to put it to, a lot of times, every day life.” I go, “I bet everybody in here, almost everybody, knows how many average miles per gallon.” And they’re like, “Yeah.” I said, “Well, that’s fractions.” And so I try to bring it to every life. And then we would talk about, they would get into social work. You kind of become a psychologist, a social worker. There were some women, one woman one time came in and she was beside herself because her boyfriend was abusive and threw away all her math books and all her stuff, and she was beside herself and she was spending the night in her car.

Tracey Sullivan:

And coincidentally, I had just been in a tennis tournament that the funding was going to go to this nonprofit organization called Hope. And I said, “You know what, I have this.” And so she went to it. And I said, “You don’t need a book. The semester’s almost done. You’re following this. You already have an A, you just take down the notes and you’re going to be just fine.” I didn’t want her have to buy a book or worry about that. And so she went to that and a week later she came back and she said, “Oh my gosh, this has saved my life.” They set her up with clothes, they set her up to get back on her feet. She was on her way. So those are the kinds of things, and that had nothing to do with math. So those things did happen, and I had some things that I had to really guide these… I had blind students.

Tracey Sullivan:

I had a lot of veterans, a lot of VA, a lot of veterans that were going on… one guy had done eight tours in Afghanistan… and they were incredible, and they were trying to now become paramedics and this is one of the math stuff they had to take. And then we would talk about their… I asked them, I said, “Well, why did you keep going back?” He goes, “Because we wanted to help the people. It wasn’t just because… we wanted to get that infrastructure, we wanted to help build schools.” So that again was not about math, but math led to the conversation because they had to take it.

Bryan Wish:

I see.

Tracey Sullivan:

So as much as I wanted to teach them about math or help them get their… I’ll call it help them get their degree or certification… I learned so much from them every time, every day.

Bryan Wish:

Well, it seems like it was this application to life that you were able to install in them that was more than the subject matter, but then also what you were able to take away from them and their life experiences as well. It was this mutually beneficial relationship.

Tracey Sullivan:

Oh, it was a lot of times. And some I had in that, and then also at that particular college they have an awesome administration. So they definitely, they didn’t hire professors not thinking, not believing and trusting them. So if there was some other, maybe other issues, they were very supportive. So that always also made the job you were able to really teach and you knew there was places for them to help them go get help. Nothing to do with math, but other places.

Bryan Wish:

Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Tracey Sullivan:

No, no, that’s it.

Bryan Wish:

You speak very contemplatively in a very beautiful way where you’re giving a lot of intentional thought to the experience.

Tracey Sullivan:

Ah, thanks again.

Bryan Wish:

More of a compliment. With yourself, right, it seems like you were able to see changes in the students that you were able to help and what you were doing was impacting their life beyond the classroom.

Tracey Sullivan:

Yes.

Bryan Wish:

When you look at your own life and you look at what the students taught you, maybe besides just their own life experiences because of the work you did, where do you think you changed or evolved the most as a person from entering a classroom all those years?

Tracey Sullivan:

I would say a day in the life of a teacher/educator/professor, whatever I would call it, let’s say an educator, literally you learn something every day about society, culture, and yourself every day. And so I would say that’s a huge… I learned a lot about myself and it made me even more… I wanted more longevity. I wanted to put it in writing so that if I wasn’t here, that something would still exist that I could put in a book to keep it going for what my time has taught me about the passion for paying it forward. Because I really look at teaching as a pay it forward kind of an occupation, and writing. It’s very cathartic if you’re writing something, a memoir, if you’re writing something about your life, because you’re also journaling, which is always really good. It’s like your own private counseling and your experience with that can definitely help someone else. And then I transformed it. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be writing children’s books.

Bryan Wish:

Well, I wanted to build on that and talk a little bit more. I mean, it sounds like teaching was this gift, as you said, it’s like to give away and educate, but it seems like you’ve taken so much of what you learned in teaching to say how can I… being an author is about, to me, expanding that impact. Expanding your ability to-

Tracey Sullivan:

Yeah, that’s a great way to put it.

Bryan Wish:

… to drive influence and make change beyond the classroom or your traditional vehicle to do that. What gave you the idea that I should write children’s books or I need to expand my way of helping the world? Because you do it from such a heart-centered place.

Tracey Sullivan:

Yeah, I think that, I really started thinking about that more when my own children’s friends came over, because I was sitting back as a parent and watching them and I thought, “Wow.” It just really kept saying these people are very smart. They’re very clever and witty. And so what I started doing, when the first book I wrote, it kind of came out when I got the boxer, and I would ask, I would go around and literally interview these kids, they probably wanted to hide from me, “What do you think about this?” Because I wanted their perspective because they were still in the early college years, but they still had young personalities in their own ways. I just wanted to feel out their thoughts about it. Not about that, about ideas, or does this sound like what a kid would say because the characters are dogs, but they’re kind of representing also young kids. Or you know, mid-

Bryan Wish:

Go ahead.

Tracey Sullivan:

… they’re talking about, so that’s kind of how it evolved. And I thought, well, I basically collected children’s books, was introduced to it really strongly by my cousin who got her master’s in education and had come down to stay with me. And I was taking a class in literature and she’s like, “Well, let’s go to Barnes and Noble and I’ll show you some books that I read with my fourth graders.” This is years ago. And so we went and I was just amazed and I learned a lot from her about the Caldecott, what that was all about, Caldecott winners, and Newberry award winners, the differences of all that stuff. And so that’s kind of how my love of children’s picture books came into play. But I was really fortunate because my mother was really into all, everything she could, Winnie the Pooh, Where the Wild Things Are, every Dr. Seuss book known to mankind, all those books.

Tracey Sullivan:

So I carried over that to my own kids for a long time. I had every book. I could have opened up my own Barnes and Noble. I don’t have them all now of course, but yeah. So yeah, so that carried into one big thing, how can I, like you said, allow you to have an extended impact, like you said, and put together having an education background with my love of dogs or pets… it doesn’t have to be just dogs… and put that all together, and that’s kind of how it came about. It just evolved. I never thought it would really come to fruition.

Bryan Wish:

So Tracey, I’d love for you to share, I think it’s so hard… I guess, let me step one step back… it’s so hard to take a full body of work and think how do I bring it together in a way for an audience and then make an impact and do it in my own unique personal life? Just to even go on that journey it’s bravery, it’s courage, it’s scary. Like you’re swimming in the deep end. And so I just want to applaud to you because I know you’ve taken the leap a couple times now. Tell us, for those listening who don’t know you, tell us about the works that you’ve created or I should say unearthed and brought into this world.

Tracey Sullivan:

Yeah, unearthed. Well the first, as I got going I knew that I definitely [inaudible 00:31:28] came to me with dogs, the beach, water, because those are things I grew up with. I grew up in Florida, born in Florida, I currently live on the water in the Clearwater beach area. And so I knew I could incorporate that. And so I think when you’re writing, you’ve really got to keep touch with things that are very relevant to you also to make it authentic, even if it’s fantasy. I’ll give you an example of that by JK Rowling, I’ll do that. But I think that that… and I thought, and then of my love of picture books, and I have written so many and from teaching over the years and love them and I have my favorite authors, my favorite style, so I think that’s what came and it just came together and to create the story of the… because I’d gotten a boxer… and this boxer, I didn’t boxers liked the water that much, and the boxer we have he loved to go on the jet ski, loved to go on the boat.

Tracey Sullivan:

And so I thought, “I’ve got to write a book through this dog’s eyes.” And so that’s kind of where that started. And I tried to make it, so the style that, the way that I write even now, is like for example the current book, A Weekend With Shaggy, that’s in the process of being illustrated and published, is there’s a dog, there’s a mini sheltie and a Rottweiler in it. But I wanted to make sure, I researched mini shelties, I researched Rottweilers, even though I know these dogs as pets, I also want to make sure I was staying true to their breed. And so, there’s a lot of research that actually goes on behind the scenes when you write a children’s book to make it authentic also to kids. Like if a kid, say an assignment, a teacher said, “Oh, let’s pick a dog that you want to do research on, a report on.”

Tracey Sullivan:

And they picked a boxer. And in my story, in the series, the Tebow Tails series, and they researched the boxer and they’re like, “The boxer doesn’t act like that at all.” And kids are so smart about that. They would tell you that doesn’t make… that’s not what a boxer would do. And of course the dogs are talking, they know the dogs aren’t really talking, but they would know about traits of them to make it authentic, to an adult too, or a parent, a grandparent, a teacher. So there’s a lot of research that goes into the book. So when I start writing, I will research about the characters in the story to make it accurate, but it’s also kind of fantasy at the same time.

Bryan Wish:

Well, that’s why, yeah, and I remember when we first started chatting you telling me about how much research goes into this process. You wouldn’t know, you’re like, “Oh, it’s a kid’s book and I can make it up.” And it’s like, no, it takes a lot of upfront work to tell a true story which is fascinating.

Tracey Sullivan:

Right, like when I did… there’s Tebow Tails Parker’s Pride, and it’s kind of the story about them all getting, the character of dogs getting together for 4th of July and celebrating that and doing what you would do with friends, and also doing what you would do patriotically or fireworks and everything. So a lot of research went into that book to make sure I was writing it historically accurate, like the story of Betsy Ross and how that got going. And then you have to choose it in a very, I wouldn’t call it simplified particularly, but the most descriptive least amount of words. So you have to really kind of… you have to make it true. Like really say an example, Betsy Ross, it was more of a… there was fact with the bet Betsy Ross thing but it also was a folk tale within it.

Tracey Sullivan:

The legend is George Washington went and visited her at the seamstress shop, but they don’t really know specifically did George really do that. So you have to there… so in Parker’s Pride, you have to say the legend of Betsy, you can’t… because you don’t want these kids to think everything you’re saying in that story was fact. You could say the facts within it, but there’s parts you want to clarify for them. So that’s research and then you have to pick and choose. This is a book, how far can you really go in a mini history lesson with also the dogs are having fun. You’re kind of teaching them about history within the fun of the book. So, that’s my style. That’s my style of writing a book, and not just if it’s going to have a lesson with it.

Bryan Wish:

Absolutely. When you talk about, Tracey, you write a book and it seems like you have not codified way, but I think a fluid way of building material and putting work into the book that makes sense and have an impact on kids, but also in a way that’s authentic to you. Beyond that, when you think about, let’s just say your impact, when you think about if I’m a kid or I’m a parent reading your books to my kids, what do you want the kids to walk away with, the parents to walk away with, from your message and what you stand for as a person? What’s important to you out of what you’re writing?

Tracey Sullivan:

Yeah, I want them to feel joy and think, “Oh, I want to read more.” Not just about my stuff, about other books, to give them an opportunity. And I also think an opportunity just to have an interaction with their parent, grandparent, educator, librarian, whoever it might be, because children’s books are meant to be either read aloud, read with their peers, or especially an adult, or they like the book so much they would go and pick it up and read it again. Even though they know the story, they have that joy of, the element of surprise is going to… they like that joy of that or even the illustrations or whatever. So the impact would be to create, to add to a joy of reading, to add to learning about something and also to keep it innocent. I think the impact today in today’s culture, just society and technology, just to keep a hard written impact of joy and knowledge and keep some kind of innocence to give to them.

Bryan Wish:

I like that. It’s pure.

Tracey Sullivan:

Yeah, yeah. To have freedom of thought and not have the pressures, because I do believe the joy of a book should be… when I say freedom of thought, that they’re really just being engaged in a book and being in the present instead of having all the other stuff. Everything doesn’t have to be this intense moment. And just providing them freedom from thought, innocence, and innocent moments, and naturally give them natural encouragement to read, because if they like a book, they’re going to go want to read another book. And if you experience good books, or just books that you like from a child, especially the impact is huge for younger children.

Tracey Sullivan:

I mean, they’d say that a parent… really your IQ test or your thing, the impact of how you approach education usually happens at kindergarten. So at a very early age for the rest of your life. So I think for that, and I mean honestly, you could read a children’s picture book to some of my… when I was teaching college stuff. I mean, I told them sometimes if I had a class was rambunctious, I’ll call it, I’d say you guys are not any different from the kindergartners I’ve taught, most of you. Because they were worse, because these are adults. I had some fantastic stuff and I had some… you never know as the chemistry of a class that can change up too.

Bryan Wish:

Absolutely.

Tracey Sullivan:

Yeah, it changes. It would change. And that was always, it was every day is different when you’re teaching, when you teach, every day. You can start off with plan A and then you’ll have to go to plan B, because you’re dealing with humans. You can only… you know? So yeah, and I hope that would be my, what I would wish from writing or teaching or speaking is to encourage the joy of reading. And usually almost everything you read, even when the swing of children’s books having less words and things like that than back in the 1950s, sixties, seventies, the illustrations these days are so fabulous. The talent out there that, just that the kids even love to look at the books because of the pictures are also an added thing. But my books have words, a lot more words than also pictures, but that’s just my style. So yeah, so that’s kind of what I hope for.

Bryan Wish:

And I’ll say as a reader myself, I read your book with my mom in Florida, Tebow Tails, and about the flag and the importance of the flag. I mean, I love how you state, you’re teaching kids such thoughtful lessons at a young age and what it means to be, let’s just say, a US citizen.

Tracey Sullivan:

Right. Yeah, that particular book, there’s a fine line because of today’s, what’s going on, but that’s me. You know what I mean? That’s who still that I would want to just give them like, okay, this was what it was meant to mean symbolically of a flag without trying to… and I thought in the meantime you could give them a little history lesson within it in general. And most of the kids around the United States can relate to having fun on 4th of July. That took research. I literally did, okay, what do families do? Basically, what’s the top things they do on 4th of July? And so that took… and I had to like, okay, I’m going to pick the top five, because you only have such limitations on that and make it and then hopefully the illustrations will show it.

Tracey Sullivan:

And so I try to, and then everything, and especially Tebow Tails, evolves around water or the beach and all that, or Dog Bone Island, so I try to incorporate what people that live on the beach, what do they do? Or not live on the beach, but go to the beach for 4th of July. So yeah, so that took research. I have another book that I wrote basically, or researched, during COVID and it’s called, it’s goes back to Tebow Tails, it’s called A Pirate’s Life for Me, and it’s about an adventure going to, Tebow going to Key West and his adventure there. And I’ve been to Key West many times so I could take my own experiences but incorporate the state bird of Florida. And there’s truth in, I think it’s the mockingbird, somebody’s going to say no, it’s the… whatever the bird is in Florida, it’s this little black bird.

Tracey Sullivan:

And this is true, at the place that we’ve stayed in Key West over the last three years, this mockingbird does not like Tebow. So when he goes for a walk, you could have the other dogs walking around and going out for a walk, and this bird every time would come out of the tree and swoop down and clip his back just to say, “Hey, I’m here.” I mean like territorial, and he did it the next year this is probably the same bird in the next year. And so it’s kind of funny and they are the state bird of Florida and that is their personality. And I had to look, what’s the personality the traits of this bird and they’re very territorial birds. They don’t like it when somebody comes in and this is their tree, this is their area and they’re going to let a human or something know.

Tracey Sullivan:

So I just thought that was kind of funny. And so I could put it in the story that this bird, I called her Maggie, and Maggie and Tebow can be friends coming more at the end because she decides, “Okay, this dog is, this guy’s okay.” And she can help them solve this, whatever they’re going to do in Key West. So those kind, but you’re introducing… I love to be able to introduce things that they could take away from it as well, no matter you read it. The state bird of Florida is such and such, or Key West for example, Key West, there’s roosters and chickens everywhere in Key West and it’s a felony to do anything to them. They’re free range. They’re everywhere, because they came from Cuba. And so back a long time ago in the early 1900s it became a law you cannot do anything to these boosters and chickens.

Tracey Sullivan:

So they’re everywhere and it’s just part of the life out there. And so it’s an unusual law that you’ll get in trouble if you mess with them. And somehow I’ll put that in the story, some kind of unique facts within the story of this pirate treasure thing. So that’s kind of my style. It’s just my particular style of writing.

Bryan Wish:

Totally.

Tracey Sullivan:

And I would say to tell any author it’s okay to have your own style. Create, don’t be afraid that that’s your style.

Bryan Wish:

Sure.

Tracey Sullivan:

Be true to yourself within it. Because I’ve tried to, sometimes if you try hard to become something, it will fight you. You’re fighting with yourself, like that doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t, you know, so.

Bryan Wish:

Well, Tracey, I have so enjoyed this conversation. Unfortunately I have a hard stop in like 30 seconds, so.

Tracey Sullivan:

That’s good. That’s fine.

Bryan Wish:

But I have so enjoyed this call and recording. I’m excited to send people to your work website and share with our community on our socials and when we rebrand. I’m so excited for you, to be a part of your journey, and thanks for such a special time today.

Tracey Sullivan:

Thank you. You and your team are awesome and do incredible work with the authors. So we’re lucky to have you guys.

Bryan Wish:

Oh, thank you.

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This post was previously published on ARCBOUND.COM.

 

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