The Untold Secrets of Writing Best Selling Childrens Books

Ever wondered how the most successful children's book writers get their ideas? The answer may surprise you.

Most children's books are based on the same exact story - good versus evil.

Ex. Harry Potter vs Voldomort. Cinderella vs her wicked stepmother. Pinnochio's conscience vs. outside influences.

Next we add a protagonist and an antagonist.

Ex. Don't we love it when Harry Potter and Malfoy get into it? Or when Hansel and Gretel turn the tables on the witch?

Finally a best selling story needs conflict and a big problem that the main character needs to overcome.

Ex. If Harry lets Lord Voldemort come back without a fight, the fate of the magic world could be at risk.

Ex. If Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire don't outsmart Count Olaf then their fortunes and their lives might be at risk.

Most inexperienced writers spend so much time thinking about the setting, the scenery and the color of their characters hair that they forget that the plot is what editors and their audience is looking for.

Hogwarts is a wonderful school. But who would care about it without Harry Potter and his friends.

The castle in Sleeping Beauty would just be another castle in the middle of nowhere without the princess and her prince.

And the three little pigs houses could have been made of snow, cotton or peanuts for all we would care without three clever little pigs and a wolf.

Kids love it when good triumphs over evil. Give them a story they can cheer over.

Also spend time really getting to know your characters. Create a history for each character, even if most of their histories will never see the inside of your book.

Your characters must seem real. Your audience must be able to relate to them and really care about what happens to them.

That in a nutshell is how you write a best selling children's book. The editing, minor scenic details and hand wringing anxiety can come after you finish the book.

Caterina Christakos is a published author and children's book writer. Learn how to write a children's book in 30 days or less at: http://www.howtowriteachildrensbook.com

Summer Vacations: 7 Universal Laws for Survival

Summer vacations - what better topic could there be for a mental health column than one so likely to separate you from your own mental health?

With that notion in mind, here are 7 Universal Laws for Summer Vacations.

The Law of Preparedness: It's been said that "prior planning prevents poor performance." Planning for a vacation is one of those interesting paradoxes of life: the more you plan, the more room there is to have fun.

The Law of Plan B (or C, D, etc.): If it's good to plan, then it's also good to have a back-up plan, sometimes more than one. What are you going to do if they have lost your reservation or your luggage? What are you going to do if the amusement park or other attraction you have traveled so far to see is closed for the day?

The Law of Good Time: Sometimes parents, and not just men, measure the worth of a vacation by how fast you can get from point A to point B. Sorry to disappoint you, but being able to say "we made good time" is not the mark of a good vacation.

Instead of asking "how fast can we get there?" ask "in how many ways can we make this a very good time for everybody?" Being able to say "we had a really good time" is the outcome you want. Remember, the point is not to make good time, the point is to make good memories.

The Law of "Are We There Yet?": If you are traveling with small children, it's important to remember that their concept of time is very different from ours. As a matter of fact, their perceptions and concepts of most things are very different from ours.

When it comes to state lines, time or any other conceptual area, we have to put it in terms they will understand. Several years ago my wife came up with the "finger approach" to understanding time. A finger equals one hour. So if a trip took five hours, then it was a five-finger trip.

The answer to the question "how much longeeeeeeerrrr!" then became two fingers if it was two hours. I still haven't figured out what fingers have to do with time, all I know is that it works.

The Law of Traditional Obligation: If going to the same place at the same time to see the same people works for you, then by all means go and have a good time. If you are doing it only out of drudgery and obligation, perhaps this is the year to break with tradition and begin a few traditions of your own.

The Law of Pace: Many families tell me they feel as if they need a vacation from their vacation when they return. One reason is that many folks try to schedule their vacations just as they do the rest of their lives, which results in stress, irritation and disappointment.

If your vacation goal is to see as many people, places and things in as few days as possible, you need to change your vacation goals.

For that matter, why have goals on vacation anyway?

Slow down. Perhaps even stop. Enjoy a slower pace.

I know I'm starting to relax when I wonder what day it is, and then realize it doesn't matter.

The Law of PRP: PRP stands for "Post Reinforcement Pause," which is a fancy psychological way of describing what it feels like to get back to the normal routine after lots of good stuff.

Some folks struggle with feeling a little down as they get back to normal life after a vacation. One way to handle and prepare for this is to schedule something fun two or three weeks after you get back.

Having something to look forward to always helps.

Jeff Herring, MS, LMFT, is a marriage and family therapist specializing in working with teenagers and their parents. A nationally syndicated relationship columnist and speaker, Jeff is also the founder and CEO of http://www.ParentingYourTeenager.com, where you can subscribe to his free internet newsletter "ParentingYourTeenager." E-mail Jeff at jeff@parentingyourteenager.com

Belief, Designed For Life!

Liam says to Joe; "where is your God now, when life can be made in a laboratory"?

Joe says to Liam; "it couldn't have happened, but for the presence of God".

It was a short debate involving two non-scientific people, but wasn't it interesting?

While Liam set out to demolish Joe's faith, he was left with a simple retort that quietened him. In this case, the non-believer lost because he had nothing substantial to believe in.

And the believer, far from a theologian, won the debate because he had.

While the above centred on religion, can't it be applied to belief in anything?

There is not a court in the world that can change your belief, should you insist on it, whatever about changing your physical position.

Whether you are locked up or executed even, the will can be more difficult to break than the life.

This has been the case since we began, but appears more vulgar when weighed against advances in civilisation, in its negative state, anyway. There would be no war but for this primitive remit.

With everyday, more civil matters, it is belief that drives everything that is driven with speed, and is more potent than desire.

Most people know someone that gives 100% focus and attention to what they do. They often suceed.

Indeed, if we bring the process further back, not much in time but in our time and pre-birth situation, something kept us going.

Call it innate or a component of our primitive remit; something powerful gets us to our first breath. And it wasn't easy, even if we forget it.

A lot of us know people with such single-mindedness or focus that they appear oblivious to most other matters, and sometimes crazy.

This is the raw side of it, as we can only zoom in on one hundred matters with one-hundredth attention.

Love and its implied blindness are helped by such conviction. If it is not believed in, then failure is more possible and less attention to it will reflect in its result.

Those that use conscious or sub-conscious tools such as affirmation are at least, devoting more time to it.

Many "believe" that self-belief can be cultured, and it probably can but is more difficult for some and dependent on the circumstances.

Someone with fifteen kids, for example, cannot with good conscious become a "new me" too easily. Well not to the extent that a single person can, so there will always be variables, and always be hope, hopefully.

Such family bound people can at the least, take smaller steps towards the bigger picture. A long-term plan can be initiated and five minutes a day towards it, can surely be found.

That person in a crisis, lifting many times their own weight, can do so because the weight itself is not their primary issue and some body chemistry will come to help. This is another component of culturing, and why culturing is possible.

So Joe is more content and secure in his belief, and Liam is insecure and argumentative. No one can really say that either is right. Well they can! But what will work for the individual?

"There must be some benefit to belief, I believe".

About The Author

Seamus Dolly is at www.CountControl.com

How To Get Rich Giving Away Something Free

The best of all worlds is to have a product you can give away free and still make money. That world exists. The product need not be expensive or elaborate. It can be something simple - a sticker with a happy face, a pen with a logo, or some other intriguing item.

This marketing approach is excellent because you can give the product away, charging the recipients only a nominal fee for postage and handling. If you price your shipping fees correctly, you can make thousands of dollars a month.

So how do you let people know about the gifts you have waiting for them? The best way is by placing classified ads in national magazines, an enormously successful method. Small classified advertisements in such national publications as Popular Mechanix, and The National Enquirer produce excellent returns on such items, National publications such as these sell millions of copies each week or month. Even a tiny return from this kind of large readership means thousands of dollars in your pocket. One advertiser noted his ads have generated returns of seven times the cost of the classified ad. Other advertisers have done even better.

To put together your own ad, begin by studying the classified ads in these national publications. Study every issue you can find.. Note the ads that show up issue after issue. These marketers have created a money-generating format, and they're taking full advantage of it.

Study the long-running ads. Note that they're short, but they contain a nugget of appeal that makes you want to send your money immediately.

Now try drafting your own ads. write several versions that you can try in different national publications. The ad should be simple but hard-hitting. You want the reader to respond immediately. Use the words that create an attractive picture of your product for the reader.

You don't have to charge much for your giveaway product. Aim for high sales volumes at low prices, a proven technique in this market. If you come up with an ad that grabs reader's interest, the money will flow your way.

If you cannot find any good freebies to give away and earn money, you can visit http://www.best-internet-businesses.com to get some freebies. Then simply give them away -- you will earn income from them.

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Julia Tang publishes Smart Online Business Tips, a fresh
and informative newsletter dedicated to supporting people
like you! To find out the best online business opportunities,
and to discover hundreds more proven and practical internet
marketing secrets, plus FREE internet marketing products
worth over $200, visit: http://www.best-internet-businesses.com
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Passion with Purpose - The Winning Combination

The power of Passion

Passion is an extraordinarily powerful spring. Without it religion, history, romance, and art are useless. Likewise, Public Relations too becomes completely deflated without the essential ingredient of Passion. It demonstrates avowed belief, everlasting appeal and steadfast loyalty. So why does passion become so much more important in the business of public relations as compared to any other service industry?

To convert others to your way of thinking, being a believer first is essential. It is then that you can take a convincing stand with people of different attitudes, perceptions and sensitivities. It is necessary to have an obsessive faith in your client's business & philosophy and your own organizational vision to be able to transmit it through written and spoken word such that its effervescence is delivered undiluted.

Whether it is body language of a PR professional sitting across the table, a written document, or a presentation; it is passion which communicates. Without passion, there is no story to sell!

In a PR agency, passion must become a management mission ? an everyday task taken on by the Organizational Head, Team Leaders and Managers ? allowing it to spread infectiously throughout the entire organization. Percolating down the agency, passion must show even in the most mundane tasks that the organization does.

The zeal of purpose

"Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose." In a self-made organization, one that emerges from the grassroots, where the milestones for the first few years are just survival, with time, the purpose often gets diluted. This usually occurs due to a lack of sound fundamentals, or the lack of attention to basics.

Starting on the right basics is more than half the battle won. When we started Blue Lotus, we began on four founding principles; firstly, to have complete focus on the client's business goals and not the money that the client was paying. Money would be only a by-product, we said. We believed that if we did our job well, there would be enough and more of the by-product to go around. Secondly, even at the starting block we decided that Blue Lotus would be co-owned, where each person would share the benefits of growth and the responsibilities commensurately.

The next founding principle was that of fomenting creative-friction continuously in our people. We argued that creativity was not the intellectual property of any one person, and unless we encouraged a healthy friction, we would stagnate. The fourth principle and most sacred belief that we drilled into ourselves was that of maintaining the highest standard of ethics in all our professional transactions.

For an organization to have common purpose, a vision of common destinies is essential. Common purpose is easy to maintain when you are a small organization working out of a single location, but as the company grows geographically and numerically, this common purpose very often gets diluted. To ensure that the organizational purpose maintains its purity, it is necessary that enough time be spent with each new inductee, to ingrain them with the organizational principles, beliefs and ethos. Revisiting this purpose frequently is also critical to ensuring an unadulterated sense of purpose over decades of organizational life.

In a public relations consultancy, the need for a stringent adherence to its purpose can frequently be the deciding factor in its success. One not only needs to zealously believe in the purpose of your own organization, but also in that of your clients. And to align oneself to the vision of client organizations is not always an easy task. Perhaps this is where a due-diligence of the clients is a useful tool in ensuring that you do not sign up clients with viewpoints conflicting with yours. The courage to say NO to potential clients without a culture-fit to your own beliefs can help make the organizational purpose stay vibrant and alive despite of the growth or geographical spread.

Passion with Purpose - a winning combination

Even singly, these two, passion and purpose are extremely potent tools to build sound agency basics, but used together ? it can make the agency completely unassailable. Firm belief in your organizational vision and using the tenets of Passion and Purpose are only a start point. To make ensure a working model, this vision must percolate from the top and carried forth in every action of the organization.

The advantages of starting from the grassroots cannot be understated. It is like having a blank canvas, lots & lots of paint and your creativity. Let not your passion to colour the canvas use up all the paint, and neither let not your purpose to paint, curb your creativity. Using a judicious mix of the two, think as Da Vinci would before he painted the Madonna or Michealangelo would before he changed a block of stone to into a stunningly life-like image of David.

Let this guide you and you will not only see your agency grow and flourish, but you will see a haloed aura about your organization that attracts people and clients to your business.

N.Chandramouli, the author, is the CEO of Blue Lotus Communications Consultancy, a knowledge based public relations agency headquartered in Mumbai. He can be reached at mouli@bluelotuspr.com.

Help Your Kids Learn More About Managing Their Personal Economy

Remember when cash was a tangible commodity in all of our personal economies? As kids, we went to the bank, shopped with our parents and frequently watched them pay with cash. Now with cash on the endangered species list, today's kids see their personal economic situation much differently. As we enjoy the convenience of charge cards, stored value cards, debit cards and ATM cards, the challenge of teaching kids about an invisible commodity like money is magnified. If you're searching for ways to teach your kids more about what makes up their personal economy, including the importance of saving and how to set and reach their financial goals, here are some practical tips.

Give kids an allowance - If you give your child an allowance, try tying their allowance to responsibilities like feeding pets, taking out trash or cleaning their rooms. Of course, the level of responsibility and the amount of the allowance should be tied to the children's ages and abilities, and your own financial means.

Help kids build up their personal economy by establishing savings goals - Work with your kids to create a list of why they should save and things they want to save for ? big and small ? then help them prioritize it. Ask them to put three stars next to the things they want most, two stars next to the things they would like and one star next to those that are least important. Have them categorize the items as most expensive to least expensive. You can help them use these ratings to choose what they want to save for by focusing on the three-star items they want most and determining how much they think they can save.

Help kids find a place to keep their savings - It's a good idea to keep savings and spending money separate - perhaps in labeled containers. By attaching a picture of that "something special" to their savings container, kids can keep their goal visible. They could use different colored wallets for savings and for spending money or ask if they would like to open a savings account at your bank while keeping spending money at home.

Help kids track their progress. Let's face it, kids find saving boring (honestly, so do a lot of adults). You can help build and maintain the excitement of reaching a personal economic goal by making a savings thermometer and coloring in the sections as money is saved. Post your child's progress charts in visible places and celebrate their progress. It's important to make saving money fun and rewarding with many celebrations along the way.

Encourage kids to avoid spur-of-the-moment spending. While most kids have good intentions for their savings goals, their plans are often derailed by impulse purchases - like that hot new toy. Here is some advice you can give your kids to keep them from getting off-course:

• Leave money behind - Bring only a small amount of money on shopping trips to help avoid impulse purchases.

• Don't forget about your savings goal - Carry a picture of what you are saving for and compare it to anything you are tempted to buy.

• Be a bargain hunter - Wait for the item you want to go on sale and watch for coupons.

• Don't rush into purchases - Avoid buying anything you see for at least two weeks. Add it to your "wants" list and then prioritize it against the other things you want.

• Ask for help in securing money - Parents can help keep your savings in a safe place if you think you will be tempted to spend it.

Once your kids establish a saving pattern you'll find they take great pride in striving for and reaching their financial goals. You might even consider matching their savings after they prove they are serious about putting away an agreed upon amount. As with anything else in life, your children will find determination and patience are rewarded, and the payoff for reaching their personal economic goals is worth the challenge of getting there.

About The Author

Sandra N. Salter specializes in business and personal finance issues and she is also the owner of American Express Financial Advisors Branch Office in New Jersey. She focuses on providing comprehensive financial planning services paying close attention to the long-term financial health of their clients, building customized financial plans that help clients achieve both short-term and long-term goals. The types of services she offers clients include: Income Tax Planning, Saving and Investing for Retirement, Working with Retirees, Financial Strategies for Small Business, Domestic Partner Planning, Risk Protection Planning, Estate Planning, Charitable Giving , Investment Strategies for Education , Asset Allocation and Comprehensive Financial Planning, among other areas. They can be reached at sandra.n.salter@aexp.com.

You Can Meditate Right Now

Why Should You Meditate?

What if you could close your eyes, then open them a few minutes later and be relaxed, alert, and able to think clearly? Meditation can do that for you, and it's easier than you might think.

Documented Benefits of Meditation

Less anxiety.
Decreased depression
Reduction in irritability and moodiness
Better learning ability and memory.
Greater creativity.
Slower aging (possibly due to higher DHEA levels).
Feelings of vitality and rejuvenation.
Less stress (actual lowering of cortisol and lactate levels).
Rest (lower metabolic and heart rate).
Lower blood pressure.
Lower cholesterol levels.
Higher blood oxygen levels.

A Simple Meditation To Use Now

Don't think meditation has to be difficult. Try this simple technique, and you'll see results in minutes. Get comfortable, close your eyes, and tense up your whole body. Then breath deeply through your nose as you release the tension from every muscle. Feel each part relaxing, watching for parts that may escape notice, like a tight jaw. If you still have tension somewhere, tense up that part again, then let it relax.

Let your breathing fall into a comfortable pattern, and pay attention to it. Be aware of your breath as it passes in and out of your nose. Though your mind will wander endlessly, all you have to do is continually bring attention back to your breath.

Is your mind is still too busy? Try naming the distractions as a way of setting them aside. Try, for example, saying in your mind, "itchy leg," "worried about work," or "anger," and then immediately return attention to your breathing.

Do this meditation for five or ten minutes, or for 100 breaths. When you open your eyes, you'll feel relaxed, and your mind will feel refreshed. You'll be better prepared for any mental challenges. Why not try it now?

Steve Gillman has been studying brain improvement, concentration, creative problem solving, and related topics for years. You can visit his website, and subscribe for free to his Brain Power Newsletter at: http://www.IncreaseBrainPower.com/newsletter.html