Educational graphic novels and comics. These are naturally engaging to kids and especially effective with reluctant readers and even kids with reading difficulties such as dyslexia.
Interactive adventure / fantasy books for children. Those books where you get to define your character at the start by rolling dice, and then you have to take decisions that send you to different outcomes. I used to love those as a kid and I'm not sure they're available anymore.
Many of the settings I incorporate come from my own experience visiting those countries and locations. All the geography in my graphic novels is as accurate as possible, right down to actual landscapes, street scenes and even signs in foreign languages. For my Darwn book, all of the natural settings in the Galapagos Islands are photo referenced from my own research visit to those locations.
They are fundamentally important. People DO judge a book by its cover, and the more impactful that cover is and true to genre, the better. Same goes for the title, which needs to balance being as informative as possible with having the correct font and style for the genre. Basically, both cover and title have to shout out what genre the book is in.
Colouring my artwork. More than difficult, it's very tedious and time-consuming. Yet it is very important because its part of my particular style, and therefore it's integral to my brand.
It showed me all the mistakes I made! Each new book has taught me a new process to improve not only content but also style, pace, design and efficiency.
I've been writing full time since 2018, when I quit my full-time job in conservation to dedicate myself to being an author. I was inspired by the story of how Hernan Cortez, the conqueror of Aztec Mexico, burned all his ships once he'd landed his army in Mexico. With no option but to go forward, the army went and conquered Central America. By quitting my job and safe zone, I had no option but to become successful as an author. What inspired me to write what I write is the notion that I'd be more effective as a conservationist for nature by writing educational books about real-world issues like climate change than I would as a scientist.
Keep your readers turning those pages. Make sure you understand the basic structure of story telling, if you write fiction, or know what problem your readers need solving, if you write nonfiction.
