Welcome to The Bookcase.

I'm your host, Shawna Richards, a sometime writer and a longtime reader.

I invite you to join me as we explore The Bookcase and celebrate Virgin Islands authors and talent.

Each week on The Bookcase, we'll introduce you to a local author and learn more about them and their work.

A storyteller lives in each of us, and I am so excited to give our homegrown storytellers a chance to tell their story.

Tonight's selection from The Bookcase When Storm Winds Blow.

And I'm honored to welcome its author, Rick Grant.

Rick.

Welcome to The Bookcase.

thank you Shawna Thank you so much for joining us.

So your book, When Storm Winds Blow, is this a first book for you?

Is this your introduction into the literary market?

No, this is actually my fourth children's book, so I've been doing this for some time.

I think I started writing to publish back in 2016.

Prior to that, I just wrote for fun.

Now it's like it's purpose driven.

So this is the fourth one.

Is writing your passion?

It's always been a passion of mine from a young boy to just write.

I started writing poems in school.

I think my first one was about Sabrina, which my mother was going to have a baby and she had to be called Sabrina.

And so this poem, I end up having a brother.

It was fine, but that was the start of me actually.

Just writing.

you say this is your fourth book?

Yes.

And all of your books are children's books, and we've spoken to you before.

You were on our inaugural season of The Bookcase.

Have you found your niche in children's literature?

I think I have.

It's fun.

It's it comes easy.

And I think the being able to write for children gets to empower them.

So, yes, I think I've found that niche.

In your Bio you talked about wanting to support literacy.

Why why is that so important to you?

Literacy is all around us.

You can't do anything in life without being literate, literally.

So the stop lights, you have to know.

You have to be able to read signs.

So I think being able to give children a foundation just in general and then help them build and giving them books that they can see themselves in is really exciting for me.

So when you were growing up, did you see children in books that looked like, you?

No so funny story, the Britannica Encyclopedias Were one of the first books that my parents had in the house, and literally it was black and white.

It yeah.

So I didn't see myself.

Let's not age ourselves, I know.

I didn't see myself in books at all, but I read for purpose like it was for school.

It was a research so know some many, many, many years after being able to give children that where they're seeing themselves in books is really exciting for me.

When you tell a story or think that you want to tell a story, what is your motivation?

Empowerment.

Empowerment.

For them to be able to connect the dots in life, whether it's careers, whether it's preparing for a storm, whether it's where people live, just being able to connect the dots for themselves and being able to put it down and come back to it a couple months after and still feel a sense of empowerment just by reading.

So this is your fourth book?

Yes.

How many years between publishing this one and publishing your first?

How many time?

How much time has passed?

So the first three literally, I wrote one time, but I didn't publish them until like a year or two after.

And then this one, When Storm Winds Blow is actually it came out of Irma and Maria.

I was actually preparing for the storm.

I was washing dishes, literally washing dishes.

And the title came to me When Storm Winds Blow.

Now, you shouldn't do this at all.

But I stopped preparing for the storm.

I started to document all the things that I was doing to prepare for the storm.

And then the storm hit.

And I consequently just kept writing and writing and writing.

So it comes out of a love and just a sheer inspiration for whatever is happening around me at the time.

And that was a good process for me.

So would you say that being able to focus on something else kept you from worrying about the storm?

It did because I spent that whole couple of hours just trying to figure out, okay, so now I'm playing games.

I'm not playing games.

Power's out.

I was just really just documenting what was happening so that I could have a well-rounded product.

When you're writing, where do you draw your inspiration from?

From around me.

Whatever is going on at the time, I really pull it in on that and I look at how I can translate that to what a child would probably be processing.

In a couple of years or even at that moment.

So how do I get to take the adult experience and not water it down, but just make it more relevant to a child?

With your title When Storm Winds Blown.

Does it relate to an experience that you may have had as a child and something that you wanted to maybe normalize or take away the fear from as an adult?

So yes and no, because so I grew up and I'm going to age myself.

So Hurricane Hugo, but I didn't get to experience it because I was in Tortola at the time.

So I didn't really hit Tortola I heard about this storm, but it was just rain for me.

So taking that experience that I had that I really didn't I really didn't experience.

And then fast forward now to as an adult experiencing Irma and Maria I can connect the dots.

And that was really the goal.

And it didn't start out as a goal.

But once I got into the writing process, I was like, Yeah, this is going to be the goal.

So once you get into the book, you realize there's a storm tracking sheet in it.

You can kind of track the storm and then the storm questions.

So it became more of a teachable tool as just a reading book and it was really good.

So since your focus is on literacy, do you pay a lot of attention to vocabulary?

Do you pay a lot of attention to the words that you use to make sure that they're age appropriate?

What's your target audience?

So I like rhyme.

So when I write, it just automatically comes with it rhymes.

And then once I go back, I'm like, Yeah, this were maybe a bit too big, or I could try to find another word.

So one of the examples is in this book I use the word ghut and we spell gut g-h-u-t, which is the British version of it or gut like your actual stomach g-u-t or there's the gutter for the house.

And once I was finished person like I didn't recognize that there was literally different versions of this one word.

So that's kind of like the process where making it makes sense.

And even adults are like, I didn't know that.

Yeah, when I, when I read it, I was like, Oh, I didn't know that.

So your target audience is kindergarten.

Kindergarten.

So I think it's like six to 6 to 11.

Yes.

you know, do you have young children who read your books and will say, well, Mr. Rick, I don't know about that.

So I was reading this particular book to some teenagers a couple of weeks ago for summer camp.

And we were talking about the categories of storms.

And I said there were like five.

And he was like, no sir.

there are like six.

And I was like, Oh, I learned something today.

So, yes, there have been children teach me once.

I teach them just by reading.

So, yes.

Do you have any tips for people who want to write who And we're going to I want you to answer that and then I want to talk a little bit more about your publishing journey.

So just write like get the thoughts out of your head, put them down, and then a couple of weeks after to go back and just finesse it and put it down again and just get the thoughts out.

It's not as hard as we think it is.

So just write.

But how easy is that for you when there are just so many distractions?

There's social media, There's there's, you know, 24 hour news cycle.

There are just so many things going on.

How do you block everything out just to be able to write?

Make writing your escape, actually.

So a lot maybe like an hour or 2 hours a day where and probably that's a bit much, but like 2 hours a week where you literally just pour into whatever you're writing and then that will help you to come back to it every single time.

Every single time.

So just write.

Do you write at a set hour every day?

Most of my writing, comes in the evening, actually.

Like once I get home from work and I'm detoxing from the day and it's just a let's, Write, write, write, write, write!

So, yes, that's a good way to detox.

Yes.

To shift your mind into something else.

What about publishing?

Do you work with a publisher or are you self-published?

So I do work with a publisher.

His name is Mario Picayo, and Mario has been doing the Governor summer reading challenge.

So he knows the industry.

He can find me the best printers and he's really good with finding me illustrators.

So I've use the same illustrator for all my books and he's made the process fun and not as taxing as it can be.

I would recommend either one.

Self publishing, you're kind of like more involved, so you have to literally do your own editing.

You have to get your illustrators, you have to you have to do all that.

If you had the time.

Yes.

If you don't just bring somebody on board and trust them, you have to trust them.

So trust is a very important part to this process, trusting someone to bring your vision to life.

Yes, especially with the illustrations, because it can be interpreted differently and just by one word could shift the whole drawing.

But so once you explain your concept, they're the ones that can draw.

They're the illustrators, so just trust them.

So for your, for publishing.

So you say you work with the same illustrator.

So do you have a relationship now with that illustrator or are you all in sync that when you send something, they get it right away?

in sync, kind of sort of, yes, because it's still a matter of translation.

So where she lives in Cuba, things might read differently or look differently.

But once you send your vision and you kind of explain it thoroughly, you can get it on the first try.

So it's just been a really fun process.

So how do you share your vision?

Do you all communicate by email?

Do you sketch, draw, take photos?

I did not sketch at all.

I write, I write.

That's my thing.

I write.

And then based on one these, I would take pictures so she can kind of see the vision that I have for it.

And I send them to her and she draws.

So I write.

She draws.

What inspired what made you think now is a time to tell this story, When Storm Winds Blow?

Why now?

That's a good question.

So once the hurricane happened, I thought it was like, okay, let me get this done now.

And I realized that there was more specific time that needed to be on it.

I just knew I needed to be done.

So once I had done the whole process and they shared it, I recognized that it's going to transcend year after year after year.

So it was almost like delayed but never denied it because it will sit on a bookshelf literally somewhere for years to come.

So I was really happy that I stuck to it and had that experience.

What I liked about When Storm Winds Blow is that it's really a generational story.

It's a multigenerational story because you see the parents, you see the children, you see the pets, you know, you see the family.

Was that important to you?

Yes, because I grew up with a mother, father and brothers with one brother, actually.

So the brother who is not the brother who is not Sabrina.

Yes.

So sharing that through my experience and I know not all families look alike, but really giving children a visual of what they can aspire to was really important for me.

Is there a favorite passage from When Storm Winds Blow that you can share with our audience?

Oh, definitely.

When Storm Winds Blow, heavy rains and storms sometimes pass our islands between June and November, when they pass, they leave us with a lot to remember before The Storm Winds Blow.

We must take time to prepare.

We each have task to get done so we can be ready for the storm without fear.

We fill our cars with gas and visit the grocery store to shop.

We buy water, canned food, ice, batteries and even a mop.

We go to church and pray for safety before, during and after the storm.

The weatherman gives us updates over the radio, television and online so we can stay informed.

We secure our houses and cover up all the valuable things.

We put many things in large storage bins.

We help our neighbors, family and friends with whatever they need.

We even collect books for the children to read.

And that section was really good for me or my favorite because it shows us how we prepare.

So this is all the things that we do.

Kind of taking a child on that journey.

Mm hmm.

So and what I liked about When Storm Winds Blow is that it takes us through the process.

It takes us through not only getting ready for the storm, you see the children being involved and getting ready for the storm.

But in a sense, when I read it, I felt that there was, you know, an intentionality in allaying fears during the storm like, you know, we're all together.

We'll be okay.

We've prepared.

We've done everything we can.

And then at the end, there is the beautiful rainbow full circle moment.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Was was that the vision that you had in your head when you set out to write it?

So yes and no, because it just came so the words came for us.

So it was a matter of I wanted a full circle moment and it was really the preparation, the during, the after to really, as you said, alleviate the fears of what happens after.

So of course, at the end of every storm, there must be a rainbow even in life.

So that was important for me to put and include in it.

When you were writing, I noticed, and I noticed in reading it that there is a flow to your words which you define yourself as a poet.

I would call myself a poet.

Yes.

Excellent.

Self-acclaimed poet.

So you're a poet who writes children's books?

Exactly.

Mm hmm.

Do you see yourself doing more poetry in the future?

Definitely.

So.

Though, this is my fourth book, what I recently did was I translated this into Spanish.

Nice.

Yes.

And that's a first for me.

So and that in itself was a process to be able to give a Spanish speaking person an English book for them to translate it, which is really cool.

And being able to relate the whole story.

So after this, I do want to do what's called a, affirmation alphabet, which really empowers children through the alphabet journey, words that will just give them a sense of belonging and understanding.

So I'm sure there's a few more books left inside of me somewhere.

Did you work with a translator?

I did.

And how did you find that translator?

She was excited about it.

Like she had way too much fun than I did because she was able to take the story and give it back.

So that person that was speaking Spanish could be included.

And that's really what I wanted for this book, for a level of inclusion across the board.

I got a recent question to turn it into patois I was like, okay, we could look into that.

So that might be a fifth or sixth project that comes.

But it was, and especially when you consider that we have a growing.

Yes.

You know, Haitian community, community.

So that was fun having her work with me to make it make sense for her to make it make sense for children.

What was it in working with the translator?

What was the hardest challenge?

There wasn't a challenge.

So actually, one of the things that she pointed out was when she read it with the ghut, she translated that to be the gutter for the roof.

I was like, Oh, I didn't include that.

But it should have included that we clear the guts, right?

But I was talking about clearing in the guts in the road.

Mm hmm.

But she translated it initially to clear the gutter on the house.

So that was pretty cool for me to see the level of translation that she would do based on her own experience.

Do you speak Spanish?

I do not.

So you're a Google Translate?

I'm Google Translate.

You have to figure out how to speak it in order to read it.

Possibly.

But no, I do not.

only English.

Are you planning to translate any of your other works into Spanish?

I am.

I'm going to go back to the first one, which is When I Grow Up.

And I want to get That one translated to Yes.

Mm hmm.

So when you connect with your illustrator, your translator, your editor, all of the people involved in bringing your thoughts to completion.

Is all of that done through your publisher or do you have to go out and find these people?

That's done through the publisher.

So I communicate with him and give him my vision.

I send him and he connects the dots for me.

So I just write.

That's all I do.

Mm hmm.

That's all I do.

So you said that you have more children's books in you, but right now you are working on your affirmation alphabet.

Yes.

What's the... What's behind that project?

So I think that we need to be able to reinforce positivity in our schools and our children.

So just giving them affirmation cards, because as adults we see the importance of affirming each other.

So why not start by affirming children and as simple as the alphabet so each word will have a affirmation for them.

Okay, so I'm Shawna start with s What's the affirmation for S or have you gotten that far in the alphabet?

It would be super.

Oh, I like that.

Superb.

Yup What's the hardest letter in your affirmations?

I know it's Q and Z. Mm hmm.

It's like ]trying to find a word And I have, like, Z.

Like you can have zeal, but it's trying to find a word.

And then because I still want it to rhymes, I kind of want to get the whole alphabet rhyming.

So the word has to kind of connect with the one before.

And yeah, so that's been a process, but been a good process.

So that's your newest challenge?

yes that's my newest challenge Mm hmm.

are you a full time writer?

Well, I write for work.

Well, yeah, so do I. I wouldn't consider myself a full time writer.

More like 80, 80%.

So you say, you come home after work and writing?

Creative writing Is your detox.

How do you.

How do you balance the demands of work and life with Just creative expression and I would call a challenge, but it's a thing that you have to work through because formal, writing for work is so different because you're still bringing about a point, you're making a point come across.

But then with children, creative writing is more fun.

So you get to play with words and switch it around.

But then with the writing for work, you really have to focus on the point that you're trying to convey.

So it's similar, but not the same.

But it's still brain work.

It's still brain work.

So when you're not writing, what are you reading?

Currently, I'm reading Spare by Prince Harry.

I was and still am a fan of his mom, so being able to experience life through his writing has been a whirlwind of a journey for me.

So that's what I'm currently processing.

Okay.

And would you encourage anyone who thinks that they have a storyteller in them to also read other people's work?

Definitely, because you get to see it through their eyes and perspective.

Like life is a story.

One big story.

And we tell those stories differently.

All right.

So you'll be inspired by how somebody else tells their story, and then you can be inspired to tell your story.

So definitely read other stories so that you can share your story.

So you've you have established yourself as a children's author, but there's so many more stories to tell.

Do you see yourself maybe doing young adult or writing in any for any other demographic?

I want to do a quote book at some point, like just quotes that have helped me.

or thoughts that come to my mind that I translate into quotes So just a small, little handy quote book that people can have in their bags just to empower them and motivate them throughout days.

When Storm Winds Blow, is there anything that you said, I don't want to cover this.

No.

So it was just a story that needed to be told and needed to be told.

And so because I experienced it and I know that we're going to continue to possibly experience it, it was a story that needed to be told.

Yes.

What is the what is the key message of When Storm Winds Blow that life is going to have storms and there's always going to be a rainbow at the end of a storm.

It's just about how you prepare and how you go through the storm that helps you to get to the end of the storm.

During the storm, you know, and during the storms that we've all experienced as people living in the Caribbean, is there any experience where you've said, I have to write about this and did that find its way into When Storm Winds Blow?

So no, because it literally came from inspiration and they said I was preparing for the storms.

And so it wasn't a, oh, storms are coming.

Let me sit down and do this.

It was oh, wait, it just came.

So I literally stopped and once I did it and I put it down.

The zeal to finish it was more important to me because I recognized that it was a story that needed to be shared and one that will continue to be shared for time to come.

So it was a kind of after you had experienced it and you saw okay, so I saw what I was able to create.

I now needed to share it with others.

So When Storm Winds Blow is obviously about, you know, hurricane, hurricane preparation, hurricane, you know, recovery In growing up here in the Caribbean, what storm what experience with a hurricane has impacted you the most?

So I know, it actually it would've been Irma & Maria really impacted my family in the BVI because they were like locked out and shut up for a couple weeks.

I didn't lose my house, my home in Saint Thomas at the time, but it was the rebounding for me that was a lot more impactful than the actual storm.

Being able to rebuild your home literally help community members.

around and about you That whole experience, I know it was treacherous for many, but it was the after that was really important and really impactful for me.

And I think that's the challenge there.

You know, we put so much effort into preparing and not really having a sense of what comes what comes next.

What would you say to a child who is reading Storm Winds Blow a child who is sitting down with their with their parent or guardian reading your book, I would tell them not to fear These are natural disasters and they come, as the book said, specific time of year.

And once you have your family and you've done all the preparation, you can make it.

It'll be fine.

Yeah, you can make it.

So that's the key message of this book.

It'll be okay.

Okay.

A-Okay.

So for people who are thinking, you know, we we always try to encourage our homegrown storytellers for people who are thinking, who are listening to you and you've written four.

Yes.

Children's books and are now preparing to do an affirmation alphabet, how would you say to how would they find their own inspiration?

How would how would you direct other people to seek their own inspiration?

So it has to be that thing that's bugging you all the time, that every time you try to ignore it, you have to go right back to it.

Because again, as a child I wrote as a child and as adults, I wrote poems and then I wrote one book just in my cell phone.

So it was a reoccurring something like, Are you going to do this?

Are you going to do this?

So once it's a reoccurring bug in your ear, literally just follow that dream.

Who were your early readers?

Who reads your work before you even send it out to the publisher?

Is it mom the brother who is not Sabrina who reads your early work?

So I use principals and teachers and children and I share it with them so that they can give me a sense of is this working for me?

Should I add anything.

So my godchildren get to read the first draft, just literally paper drafts and they, especially with this one, helped with the well, can we add this?

Can we add that?

Can the hills be this?

Can we see this?

So I do have a circle of readers that they would read even before it gets to the publisher.

So people you trust I trust that really give their input on it.

And that's a really good process because they literally a roundtable and I give them copies and they get to read and markup and no don't use this word, use that word.

Can you consider this?

So that's a good process.

Are you the writer who sits there on the laptop?

Are you pen and paper?

You talked about writing in your phone.

What process works best for you?

I'm a cell phone writer a cell phone writer?

I, I admire the dedication.

is that thing you on the bed you just typing away or you're at the beach chilling out and something comes to you.

Yeah, I'm a cell phone writer.

So When Storm Winds Blow book number four.

What?

Apart from the affirmation alphabet, what can we expect for book number five?

So I want to do a book about the holidays, actually like Virgin Islands holidays that really explains from January to December, the holidays that we celebrate and the meaning behind of them.

So I kind of started already.

I have all the holidays documented.

Again, it's just a how do I get it to rhyme, right?

Yeah, And rhyming is important because you, Rick Grant, are a poet.

I am a poet.

You are a poet who writes children's book.

Well, thank you.

Thank you so much Rick for joining us.

It's been a pleasure to learn more about our local talent Rick Grant and his book, When Storm Winds Blow.

All the books featured on this program can be viewed on our website at WWW.WTJX.ORG We appreciate your support of our local authors and we'll see you next week when we take another book from The Bookcase.