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The Port Moody Public Library White Pines Local Author collection highlights local authors, poets, and illustrators in our community. Every month, we will interview and feature one of the authors from the collection on the Library website.
The featured author of this month is Kristi Nielsen.
Author of the Month: Kristi Nielsen
Kristi Nielsen was born in Alberta, and since then has lived in nine cities in three different provinces. As a child, she won many prizes at the Edmonton Exhibition for her art. She first published in 1996 with her adult non-fiction book, Getting Unstuck: Personal Change from Survivor to Thriving. Now a grandmother, her passion for writing and illustrating children's books has been revived. In 2018 she published an astonishing nine books!
Her Books
Getting Unstuck: Personal Change from Survivor to Thriving
An inspirational book that looks at the challenges in our lives, and provides solutions and strategies that will help you get your life on track and achieve the life you really want.
Time Out for Patches
The story of a young girl and her mischievous pet goat, Patches. Patches is constantly causing trouble in the Tri-Cities by climbing on and eating things he shouldn’t be. He makes such a mess of the neighbourhood that he’s sent to a petting zoo where he’ll make less trouble. But Patches can make trouble anywhere!
If Cows Were Blue
A whimsical story that reimagines the world with blue, flying cows; polka-dotted, floating horses; and bungee jumping whales. Allow your imagination to soar as you think about what other things you could change.
Cool facts about her books:
Kristi wrote nine children's books in 2018, many of which she wrote for her grandchildren. In Time Out for Patches, Kristi connects her childhood to her grandchildren's. Patches is based on the pet goat Kristi had when she was a child, and the trouble that he would get into, only some of which was exaggerated for the book. The community and street names are from Port Moody and Coquitlam, where her grandchildren now live.
Did Kristi always want to be a writer?
Kristi has had a knack for writing since she was in high school. She received high marks in her writing classes, and her teachers encouraged her to pursue it. However, it wasn't until Kristi's children were toddlers that she began to write stories again. While Kristi had some of her non-fiction work published in the 1990’s, it was when Kristi started reading to her grandchildren that her writing took off and she started to have her work published.
What inspires the stories in Kristi’s books?
Her grandchildren. When her granddaughter was one, Kristi would read and share stories with her. During these interactions, Kristi began to feel a pull to create something that she could connect to this new generation. One of Kristi's first picture books, Yellow is Better, is inspired by her granddaughter's love of the titular colour.
Kristi adds in elements from her own life, as well as a love of the outdoors to her picture books; setting them on the plains of Alberta or the streets of Port Moody, and including Canadian-themed animals like moose and Canadian geese.
What is the most challenging part of writing picture books?
"Having to reign in the ideas." Writer's block has never been a problem for Kristi. She has so many ideas and will often get carried away. She has found that some of her books start getting too long, and she has to cut them down in order to engage her young readers. In If Cows Were Blue, Kristi had originally included more animals but had to cut some out to keep the length down; and in Where's My Bus, Kristi cut out two hundred words after hearing the book read aloud.
What is the most rewarding part of writing picture books?
"When I see a group of children listening to my books being read aloud." Kristi takes her grandchildren to the StrongStart program in the Tri-Cities, where the teachers will often read her books to the group. Kristi loves seeing the children react to the stories and watching them get so excited about what they're hearing.
How many hours a day does Kristi spend writing?
Kristi can write one of her picture books in one or two hours. It is the illustrating that takes the most time. Kristi makes each page digitally using Paint and Photoshop to create the illustrations. This process usually takes twelve hours a page and three hundred hours for a full book.
It is a very different process when Kristi is writing a non-fiction book. She will spend five hours a day writing and will often have to go back and read what she has written many times. "You want to provide value so you have to be thoughtful of how you’re going to present the information and engage the reader."
What motivated Kristi to write her non-fiction book Getting Unstuck: Personal Change from Survivor to Thriving?
Kristi had gone through some major life transitions and felt that her experiences and knowledge provided her with something that was worth sharing. She wrote Getting Unstuck with the mindset that if she could help just one or two people with her writing then that would be enough. Kristi first self-published the book in 1996 and sold thirty-five hundred copies in one year. Kristi rewrote Getting Unstuck and published it again in 2018.
What is Kristi working on now?
Kristi always has ideas for new picture books. Now that her grandson is older, she would like to start writing more books for his age group. Currently, she is focusing on books with more educational content, one of which is a book about different kinds of vegetables.
She is also working on rewriting one of her non-fiction books originally written in 2008. The book focuses on the baby-boomer generation, touching on retirement and looking at what people want during the later stage of their lives.
What advice does Kristi have for new writers?
"Do it because it’s fun! You have to love it and have a passion for writing!" Kristi warns that if you're only writing to make a profit, you may end up regretting it.
About the White Pines Local Author Collection
The Port Moody Public Library created the White Pines Local Author Collection to highlight and support local authors, poets, and illustrators from our community. We launched the collection in May 2019 with 12 inaugural authors. Learn more about this collection and how you can become a White Pines Local Author.
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