(light upbeat music) - Ever thought of writing a children's book?

Mary and Roslan Fichtner have done it 18 times.

A horse named Rusty was their initial character.

Now they've branched out into other characters, always preserving and promoting the Western lifestyle and culture.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS.

This is "Wyoming Chronicle."

(light upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for "Wyoming Chronicle" is made possible in part by Wyoming Humanities, enhancing the Wyoming narrative to promote engaged communities and improve our quality of life, and by the members of Wyoming PBS.

Thank you for your support.

- I'm very pleased to be hosted today by Mary and Roslan Fichtner, who are a mother and daughter children's book team.

Mary does the words, Roslan does the pictures, and it's been a successful series.

How many books overall have you collaborated on to this point?

Here we are in June of 2024.

- Well, I was gonna say 17, but it's actually 18 now because we'll have a brand new book out in about a month, four weeks.

- To coincide with a big event in Wyoming, you told me.

- Yes, Frontier Days (laughs) in Cheyenne.

- And that's proved to be a successful popular venue for selling your books.

- We started out out in the field with a little canopy tent and actually had Rusty there with us out by the Indian Village the first year.

And we did so well that we just kept moving closer to Old Town, and now we have actually a little spot in Old Town, and we have people come every year to get the new book and- - Yeah, Roslan, you said that you have developed a loyal repeat audience at Frontier Days.

- Yeah, I would say almost the majority, we get a lot of new customers every year, but the majority are cute little families that tell us we're their first stop every year to get our new book.

And it always just makes us smile 'cause the kids almost know the books better than we do.

They're like, "Oh, this is my favorite one because Rusty goes and does this," and "I like the cowboy in this one," and they're always so cute to see the kids and how much they love our books.

- Well, now you've both mentioned the name Rusty.

Mary, who's Rusty in your books?

- So, Rusty is a horse that we owned for many years, and he was just our safest, most well-rounded, best personality.

He was just your all-around guy.

If our show calves got out, Roslan would choose him to jump on bareback with just a halter, and he was just dependable and just cutest face you've ever seen and, so.

- So when you went into producing books, Rusty was your first primary character.

- Yes.

- And you've given him a full name, which is- - Rusty the Ranch Horse.

- Rusty the Ranch Horse.

And then he's part of a, to use a term that is completely authentic to the world of horsemanship, but may not be all that familiar with everybody, Rusty of the Remuda.

- Rusty's Remuda.

- Rusty's Remuda.

- Yeah.

And so a remuda is a Spanish word, of course, for a working herd of horses, and it's what the cowboys would get up in the morning and pick their ride for the day from the remuda.

So it's basically a herd.

And I've since started calling it Rusty's Reading Remuda as a little herd of readers of Western books.

- There are just so many details of the books that are included.

One of them is an actual brand.

- [Mary] Yes.

- So I mean, this is a physical representation of Rusty here, and there's the- - Yes, so this is the- - There's the RR brand.

- brand.

- [Steve] And maybe, we'll... - [Mary] Yeah, double rocking R. - I was thinking that a lot of people who ever read a children's book to a child, had a children's book read to them, who have a way with words, who read other books, thinks, "You know, I like children's books.

I bet I'd like to try that."

What brought you to it and how did it begin?

- We have four kids, Roslan has three brothers, and we read to them their whole childhood.

And we really liked Western books because we're a western family.

We had horses and rodeo and things like that.

So we really, there wasn't a lot of Western books.

And some of the ones that we found were not authentic verbiage.

I mean, it's a culture.

- Interesting.

- So we have our own terms for things and our own way of talking and explaining things.

- And if you saw something that wasn't right, you tell it right- - The kids would point it out.

- Interesting, yeah.

- And so I just decided that I wanted to do some really authentic Western books.

And, so we have this really special niche, right, because we sell to people in the Western culture that know the difference.

And a lot of them tell us, "Wow, this is awesome."

I've actually had contestants at Frontier Days look through them to see if they felt like they were authentic and they've bought one every time.

- Every time.

- Mm-hmm.

- Did you expect that at the beginning or were you thinking maybe your audience might be wider or different or just... - Completely unexpected.

I was totally thinking we're gonna sell to the culture that didn't know about it.

And of course now when I look back, that's silly because they don't know the difference- (Mary laughs) - Yeah.

- as much, so.

We do some, but most of our clientele is Western, rodeo, ranch, farm, agriculture people.

- You hit upon that idea of Rusty as a character right from the beginning.

Your first book was a Rusty book?

- Yes, there's just so much to learn from horses.

And we just decided that we wanted to share some of the things that we have learned from so many horses that we've fallen in love with over the years.

- Not only did you ride Rusty and other horses at home, but you're rodeo competitor.

- Yeah, I rodeoed ever since I was little, and I did high school rodeo, and then I rodeoed for the University of Wyoming as well.

- You did?

- Yeah.

- So what were your best events?

- Well, my favorite was breakaway roping.

I really miss it.

It's such a blast.

But I also did barrel racing, yeah.

- So much of those sports depend on the horse, not just the ride.

Was Rusty a rodeo horse or... - I didn't rodeo on him.

I did growing up a lot 4-H and FFA, and that's what I used him for.

And I always got lots of compliments on him 'cause he always had the sweetest face.

And I would just be hanging out on him and people would be like, "Oh, I just wanted to come say hi to your horse."

And so he was always pretty special from the beginning.

- Well, the role that you play is absolutely vital, again, thinking of the idea, the notion that people have, "Well, let's do a children's book."

I'm not saying there's an absolute checklist or formula for children's books, but I think there's a general expectation, I think, that they're gonna have illustrations, suitable illustrations that go with the story.

And I talked to one other person, sort of in your field, who said, "Yeah, I did some children's books, and I never even met the illustrator.

We were matched up by somebody else, and I was satisfied enough with it."

But that's not the case with you.

Did you think Roslan was your illustrator from the beginning, or?

- So, that's the number one reason that I self-published, because I did wanna pick my illustrator, because I had met a couple people who had been published and they didn't love their illustrations and to be honest, nor did I.

And it's kind of a crazy story because Roslan was very young in high school and was still just really getting her art skills developed and so I actually hired a different illustrator who did about five illustrations for me.

And she, very good artist but she wasn't around horses her whole life and there was just some things that were off.

And Roslan, you know, kind of brought it up, and right, it was interesting on the timing because she had just started a watercolor class at Natrona County High School.

And I don't think she was two weeks in when her teacher emailed me and said, "This girl has some serious watercolor talent."

And then I said, "Hey, will you illustrate the books?"

and she said, "I thought you would never ask."

So, but honestly, it was literally that quick of a turnaround, so I said, "How perfect could this be?"

I didn't know if I wanted to, you know, pressure her with that or have this whole thing going on when she was only a junior in high school, but it's literally been the best thing I could have ever done.

- I'm so glad you mentioned that.

But my wife's an elementary school teacher and I said, "What should I ask?"

And she said, "Ask about Roslan's art teacher."

- Yeah, she was one of my favorite teachers I ever had because she saw this in me and helped develop it.

And I think that's what makes awesome teachers so amazing.

- So here you were as a kid and you knew about horses and you also could draw them.

That's a great, a fun combination.

- Yeah.

- It must be.

- It is really fun.

And I've always loved art.

I've always been an artist ever since I was a little kid.

And I've always wanted to be a fashion designer or a professional artist and just kind of all fell together.

And a lot of the things that people love is that we are a mother-daughter team, and that's what's so cool about Wyoming is people always wanna support other Wyoming people and family and, so.

- If you talked about self-publishing and having success at it, for those who might not understand the differences between the two, when you say self-published, that means you aren't doing what?

- I just did the entire process myself.

- So you aren't submitting it to an agent or a publisher- - No.

- or something like that.

You're finding someone who would print the book physically.

- Yeah, that's pretty much, and it is an extremely, it can be a difficult process.

Of course, I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning on small things, but you learn as you go.

And I'm one of those people that just jumps in and figures it out, and then I fix the mistakes and on we go.

But yes, I definitely wanted to be in charge of my illustrator, what I wanted it to look like.

And Roslan, you know, she not only was familiar with horses, but she was extremely familiar with Rusty.

And she can paint his face exactly like he looked.

And- - So when we see Rusty in the book, that's what he looked like.

- Yeah, it's just remarkable.

It's so neat to be able to have this person that I can, I mean, we're already so connected anyway, right?

But I can't imagine having an illustrator, which I know some people do, like even overseas.

There's no way to me that I would be able to really communicate with them what I wanted.

And when you do a children's picture book, honestly, I write the words but it's really about the pictures.

So it had to be how I wanted it or I was just never gonna be satisfied and she just kills it every single time.

- Thank you, Mom.

A lot of publishing, when you get hired an illustrator, a lot of their illustrations are done digitally, which a lot of times they turn out beautiful, but I think currently it's very rare to have hand-painted illustrations.

And so I sit here and hand-paint every single one with watercolor.

- Well, you're holding a few of them now.

Show us this, for example, the one on top.

This is from the book that's coming out here in a few months.

- Yep.

- And that, I think, I hope it's obvious that that's someone's tender loving hand-painted art.

I mean, digital artwork is incredible.

I mean, you probably could approximate that, but that's not how you do it and that isn't how you wanna do it.

- Yeah.

- Exactly.

- Tell me a little more about this collaboration.

You've written the book, and do you say, "Make sure we get an illustration of this."

Or you might say- - Yeah.

- "Boy, I think I could really do a great picture with this.

How would you think?"

Because I don't know how many illustrations you have in your hands there now, but is every one of these gonna be in the book?

- Yeah, this is all of my originals from the book of "The Cows Are Out."

- "The Cows Are Out."

- And, (chuckles) yeah.

Sometimes there is something that my mom says, "I really wanna capture this on this page"- - Yeah, that's true.

- but kind of leaves it up to me on how it happens.

But for the most part, she is very trusting and lets me come up with the pictures.

My favorite picture in this "Cows Are Out Book" is when the cows are eating in the garden because it's always a joke at our house that when our cows get out, they destroy my dad's garden.

(Mary laughing) That's what he spends all of his time doing.

- They head right for the buffet.

- So... - Yes they do.

- Yeah, it's pretty fun.

- Here they are.

(chuckles) - So that was something we really talked about wanting and then I kind of just came up with how it was presented, so.

- So, Roslan, when you're illustrating a book in which Rusty isn't the main character, is your technique different, your style different?

You're trying to make it not look quite so much like a Rusty book?

- Yeah, it's really interesting looking back at the first couple of books we did 'cause you can see my progression as an artist for sure.

And Rusty, I have people bringing it up to me all the time and ask me about it.

I paint him and then I do a dotted outline for him to make him stand out from the other horses.

And so if we we're going to do another Rusty book, I would do that again.

And so far, all of our other characters, I've just done with a normal outline just to keep him a little bit more special in the books.

- I don't know what level of training you've had other than that or since then, but your art must be different now from it was when you were a high school kid.

- Yeah, it is a lot different now.

It's my goal to become a professional full-time Western artist.

At Frontier Days, I bring a lot of my original works that are very separate from the books.

They all focus on cowboys, horses.

I love Old Western-themed stuff.

I even paint some Native American art.

I've sold a lot of originals of a white buffalo with a Native American on a horse.

People love that painting.

So I've kind of expanded into my own voice, I guess you could say, with my artwork.

But I just love the Western lifestyle and culture, and I like to celebrate that in my artwork as well, and I do it all in watercolor still.

Just this year, I've branched into some pastels, but I'll have a lot of artwork with me at Frontier Days, and I wanna start going to some more shows.

- We actually have sold quite a few of the originals from the books.

So a lot of people were so excited.

They got an illustration, the actual original illustration.

Some bought it with the book to hang on their kids' wall- - [Roslan] Yeah, that's true.

I forgot about that.

- and things like that.

So it's just been amazing to watch the whole thing transpire past what we had ever planned.

We really didn't, a lot of this, we never saw where this was gonna go.

It just went.

- So this is the original, you paint in that size.

- Mm-mm, yeah.

- And how much revising do you have to do in your art?

Do you just get this picture of the cow with the carrot pretty much the first time out?

Or did you paint it ten times?

- (chuckles) Yeah.

Usually, I get it done on the first one.

Sometimes, I would say it's pretty rare I'll repaint one.

I think I repainted only one illustration in this book, and I would say that's pretty typical for me.

I spend a lot of time up front drawing so that by the time I'm painting, that's the goal, so that I don't have to redo it.

But- - You now where you're headed.

- if I do need to, I won't let it go if I'm not in love with the painting because I want the book to be really great.

So if I don't love it, I will redo it.

- And that is something that I wanna say that is remarkable about Roslan, is that she, I didn't even know she ever redid one, to be honest.

She's just gets it, nails it, and she's just gifted at that.

And I've been told by many artists, I'm the writer, so I don't, not good at painting or drawing or anything, but most people tell you watercolor is the hardest medium because it's not forgiving.

It's there, you can't fix it, and that's what works for her, and she's just outstanding at it.

And also paints from her head.

I know a lot of artists have to look at something and then draw it, but Roslan just does it from her head, so.

- Thank you, Mom.

- And it's a point worth noting, I think, that you live in Cheyenne, you live in Salt Lake City but just for the time being, right?

- Yeah, yes.

- [Steve] What's about to happen?

- I am excited to get back to Wyoming.

Growing up here, I really miss the wide open spaces, and I'm excited to be back.

And I'm not sure where in Wyoming that's going to be yet, but it'll be somewhere.

(laughs) - So you don't sit side by side very often working?

- No, mm-mm.

- Well, we happen to be in Casper today where you are here together for another good reason, but.

So you weren't breathing down her neck, make that blue or something.

- Not even.

(Steve laughs) And I definitely knew I didn't wanna do that.

So I think even when she was still in high school and we were home together, I just left her alone, and she would paint and then show me.

And I don't know that there's ever been an illustration that I said, "I want you to redo it."

Overall, she just always blows my mind to be honest, yeah.

- That's a great pairing.

What about your writing process through the years now?

The first Rusty book was what year?

- This was the first Rusty one, "Rusty Under the Western Skies" in 2017.

And I don't remember why we, I had several ideas, and I don't remember why I went with this theme first, but we did the kind of the "Star Wars" thing where we did the story of Rusty as a baby last.

So that one then was our last Rusty book.

I don't know if we're done with the Rusty yet, but this was the first one we did about him dancing in a storm instead of going in the barn.

And Roslan came up with, this is what I'm saying, remarkable.

She decided to put a little meadowlark on every page.

And that's our state bird, as you know.

So, boy, people love that because the kids love finding the little meadowlark.

- Was that just in this book or do you do it always?

- I haven't done it in every single book- - [Mary] Some.

- bust most of them.

- But more than one.

- Yeah, most of them have a little thing to look for.

- Okay, then.

I just can imagine a really fun thing for a tiny little reader- - Yeah.

- Oh, they love it.

- to be looking for, yeah.

- They love it.

- They love it.

- Yeah.

- And the "Rusty Goes to Frontier Days," the cow dog, I always say, has to go along, right, for the adventure, so he's on every page.

And that's a really cute one 'cause he's up to trouble on a few of the pages.

And one book has a raccoon on every page and one has chickens.

And the other thing that we did in this first book that we, it's wild 'cause we really didn't know what we were doing, but we have metaphors on the pages about how storms smell and sound and look and feel.

And since that time, I've had teachers be like, "Oh my gosh, metaphors are the best."

And rhyming.

And rhyming's hard.

You have to be good at it because a lot of people say, poor rhyming is very, very bad.

- It sticks out, doesn't it?

- Yes, so the rhyming is important and- - Especially in the written form.

We've all heard music where if you read the lyrics, you think, hmm, but the musician can blend it somehow.

- Get away with it, mm-hmm.

- I remember reading the occasion of the death of the great playwright Stephen Sondheim, fantastic songwriter and lyricist.

There was a picture of him there, and he had two big rhyming dictionaries right there beside him, and I remember sort of thinking, well, but then I thought, "Why wouldn't the greatest guy in the history of this field have a rhyming dictionary with him?"

He wants to make it absolutely right.

Do you use tools like that when you need them or are you- - Yeah, no, I do.

But a lot of times I know I want a certain word, and so I might have to move it to the middle of the sentence because it doesn't work at the end because of the rhyming.

And so there are times when I'm looking up what rhymes with this, 'cause believe it or not, sometimes your brain can't come up with something and you look at it like, "Oh, (slaps) I forgot about that word."

- Of course.

- Yeah, so.

- Sure.

- But I use a lot of freedom grammatically, I would say.

That's what else is fun about rhyming.

I can cut a word off and put the little, (clicks), you know, or cut the front of it off, and you can make it work on rhyming.

- Sort of almost make a new word if you needed to.

- Yes, yes.

I love that about Dr. Seuss, and so I try not to go too far with that, but with a lot of Western words, a lot of them are slang, so I can get away with things like that sometimes, and it just makes it fun.

- I guess you could be safe to say, if it was good enough for Dr. Seuss, then I'll go ahead and try it myself.

- Exactly right.

- Yeah.

- Is that someone that you read and read to your own kids and admired?

- My favorite, yeah.

- One of the greats.

- Yeah, my favorite, for sure.

Yep.

- The new book called "The Cows Are Out," many people who've lived in the West know exactly what you mean by that.

- Yeah.

(laughs) - Was it a typical sort of process compared to the others?

It took about the same amount of time to do and... - Somebody saw a video, it might have been Roslan, of a family and, you know, it basically said our cows are out and the kids were all running with random, a bucket and a rope and these funny boots on and, you know, their hats flying.

And we just laughed our heads off 'cause we're like, "Yep, anybody that has cows."

And so honestly, it was my husband's idea for the story.

He's like, "You guys need to do one about the cows getting out."

And immediately, I have a lot of people give me ideas, but typically I just really, you know, you have to love what you're writing, so most of them are mine, but I absolutely love that idea because we had lived it so many times.

And when I told Roslan, she was like, "Yes, we gotta do it."

So it's just fun and funny and it's a great one.

- So about a year, maybe a little less, from the spark- - A year, I would say.

- to the book, which you're saying before Frontier Days, and you're working with a printer- - Yes.

- who prints it the way you want it.

- Yep.

- And I've looked on Amazon and there the books are.

- Mm-hmm.

- How does that happen?

- Actually, my printer puts them on there for me, so I had a couple choices.

I researched a lot of where to get self-published 'cause there's a lot of choices, and they were one of the big ones that can give you a lot more for your money.

And then they put us on Amazon and some of the other platforms.

They do that for me.

- Would you say you sell more books that way?

Or more in person that... - Oh no, there's absolutely no comparison.

We sell so many in person.

- Really?

- Totally.

They wanna pick them up.

They love meeting us.

They like to hear the stories, and we've made so many amazing friends and fans.

And honestly, my husband built us a beautiful book stand that is like, you know, an A-frame.

It's tall.

And when you get these books on there that people stop at the colors.

They don't even know what it is.

They're like, "What are these?"

Her bright colors are what pull people in a lot of times.

And then we talk to them about the stories and Rusty and, gosh, we just have such a great time talking with people.

And I just think online, it's not the same.

- You've expanded beyond publishing.

We've noticed here as well these, what would you call it?

- [Mary] That's Rusty the Plushie and then a cowgirl doll.

- And this looks generally, this is a fair, considering it's a plushie, a fair representation of Rusty.

- Yeah?

- Yeah, I would say the coloring- - The coloring.

(chuckles) - is pretty similar.

I mean, it's definitely a cartoonized version of him.

But yeah, we try to keep them somewhat accurate to how he looks in the books and then in real life too.

- Now, you've told me that he's no longer with us, right?

- [Mary] Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, we lost Rusty.

- He lived a long good life with you, I presume.

- Yes, he did, yes.

- But you might bring him back again and tell another story.

You're just not sure.

You've had other ideas.

- I do have a lot of ideas rolling around in my head.

- You still have the fire in the belly.

You're not out of ideas.

- Yes, not even close.

- Not even close.

- I have so many.

I just kind of, I get to the point where I have to go, "Okay, what should we do next?"

- One of the hot-button discussion issues in today's world is artificial intelligence.

- [Mary] Yes.

- I would assume that you could probably give an AI application some instructions and it would probably turn out a 12-page rhyming book about a horse.

But that's not what you do and never have any intention of doing that and think your way is always the best way.

- Absolutely, we'd never do that, no, because you can't replace someone's heart and experiences that you write on paper and the life that you've lived and the way that you want the words to come out.

Honestly, to me, it's a big part of what our books are.

It's from our heart, it's from our life experiences, it's from what we have lived and our passion about keeping the Western culture alive.

- You've got 18 books down and I hope you do at least 18 more.

- Yeah, I think we probably will.

- Good, (Mary laughs) and Mary Fichtner, Roslan Fichtner, thanks for being with us and best wishes.

- Thank you very much.

(light upbeat music)