We are so excited to have Patrice Karst join us today to share about her picture books!

Patrice Karst is the bestselling author of The Invisible String – over 1 million copies sold! – The Invisible Leash, The Invisible Web, You Are Never Alone: An Invisible String Lullaby, and the co-author of The Invisible String Workbook. She is passionate about spreading her message of love across the planet. Born in London, England, she now lives in southern California and is the mother of one grown son, Elijah. Patrice invites you to visit her online at www.patricekarst.com.

The irony is that I literally fell into the children’s book world.

I had started off writing and publishing adult books (Spiritual and Self Help): GOD MADE EASY and THE SINGLE MOTHER’S SURVIVAL GUIDE.

I had no inclination or even interest in writing for children.

That all changed when my son was in pre-school and as a full-time working single mom, he cried when I had to drop him off at school.

One day, I told him what was obvious to me: that we were connected all day long by an Invisible String made of love.

The moment he heard of this wondrous, magical, all-connecting String, his separation anxiety vanished into thin air.

Soon all of his classmates wanted to know about the Invisible String.

And I knew that I had something special.

I sat down one day and wrote about THE INVISIBLE STRING as a children’s story. I knew nothing about book dummies and formats and 32-page limits and plot point changes and character analysis and all the stuff that I finally heard about through SCBWI (The Society of Book Writers and Illustrators), which I joined many years later.

But as they sometimes say, ignorance can often be a good thing.

I did not think about it, I just wrote it, and thank the good Lord I did.

I went to a very small publisher that I knew and presented him the story.

He liked it and published it in 2000.

It did quite well for many years (with very little distribution, marketing or advertising), but then it exploded about ten years ago by sheer word of mouth, and even more so when an amazing new publisher (Little Brown for Young Readers) launched a paperback version with new art in 2018. It then became the go-to book for the pandemic, and honestly, shows no signs of ever slowing down. We just hit the big milestone of a million copies sold, and it has been translated so far into 15 languages.

Used by the military, foster agencies, adoptive families, grief groups, hospitals and hospices, the prison system, therapists and social workers, teachers, rabbis, pastors, librarians, gift-givers at celebrations of love like baby showers, parents on the first day of school, and loved ones on Valentine’s day, it is a book to bring comfort for loss and separation and to bring joy at the understanding that love transcends time and space!

Adults buy it for each other too!

It seems to have a grace and a destiny that is more than anything I could have consciously conjured up.

It is all way bigger than me, and I am just a lucky, blessed woman.

I think it is a tangible concept for an abstract idea and a universal truth that we all need to remember.

It has one page that deals with grief, but it has turned into one of the top books for children’s grief all over the world.

As a hurting little girl from an unfortunately abusive childhood, the concept of realizing that you are never alone could have helped me and brought me much comfort. Maybe, on some spiritual level, it is the book that I wrote for my own “inner child.”

So what, then, is my advice about writing a picture book?

First off, there are a million places where you can learn all the “proper” stuff to do.

But I say write about what matters to you passionately, what brings you utter joy to write about, what world you want to hang out in deeply for a long time to come.

To me, there is no other way to do it.

See it come alive, and how does it make you feel?

Write a book that thrills your being, and you will never regret it.

The rest is up to the book gods and karma, destiny, grace, and plain old good luck.

Hard work helps too, but without the above, all bets are off.

Good luck, and happy inner writing travels.

The world of picture books is MAGIC!!!

Love,

Patrice Karst