Friday, February 2, 2018

My Second Children's Book - or, When Two Worlds Collide

You know the old writing adage - Write what you know? Well, I decided to do that this time, and here's the end result. My second children's book!



And here's the proud author.



And here are a few links with info about the book and the publisher.

How to Read Scratch Computer Code:
http://childsworld.com/shop/show/6944

The Understanding the Basics series:
http://childsworld.com/shop/show/7085

Some info about The Child's World:
http://childsworld.com/about


When the idea for this book was presented to me, I couldn't pass it up. Here was a chance to write about something I knew a lot about - programming. Although Scratch is a language I was only familiar with and had never used before, it was very easy to learn, and my own knowledge of programming concepts guided me along the way in my research.

I suppose it was inevitable that my two careers would collide. I've been in the software business professionally since 1993, but I was using computers long before that. And writing even before that, since elementary school. When I first starting using computers, one of the things I loved to do was talk to people from around the state on BBSs (bulletin board systems, the precursors to the internet and the WWW as we know them today). Many of my early stories were posted on Drag-Net, a BBS run out of Burrillville, RI. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on who has read them), only a couple of those stories survived. Unless the SysOp somehow manages to resurrect the BBS server someday. ** hint hint, John, if you're reading **

If I have one lesson to pass along about this strange journey I'm on, it's this - never give up on ANY of your passions. You never know when they might come to fruition. And they may even become intertwined someday in unique ways.

More to come, so stick around!