After 5: Local writers publish children's titles

Every writer has uttered it: "I've always wanted to write a book."

If not, they've thought it.

But good intentions only take one so far. A handful of area hopefuls have looked the publishing world right in the eye and accomplished their dreams to publish a book.

Springfieldian David Harrison, former owner of Glenstone Block Co., is perhaps one of the Ozarks' most prolific children authors, with 70 titles to his name. Roger S. Baum was an investment banker before he began writing his own adventures in Oz, a continuation of his great-grandfather's legacy. And Sherry Cook, a Missouri State University marketing professor, has hit it big as a co-creator of "Quirkles," the early elementary science education series.

Reaching out to children is a common theme among them.

"When you have read wonderful children's books in your own childhood and aloud to many, many children, you can't help but imagine what it would be like to be a published author yourself," says Louise Jackson, author of middle-school and young-adult historical fiction. "Put all that together and you have a writer."

Jackson, of Springfield, grew up with the double influence of a storytelling father and a mother who was an aspiring writer and taught English.

Veda Boyd Jones, Joplin author of 33 children's books, decided back in 1982 that she could write something better than the romance novels on the market at the time. Her fifth effort at a manuscript was published. With success in the romance market, her children encouraged her to write something for them. She started with magazine work, which led to children's books.

"My degrees are in history," says Jones, author of "George W. Bush (Major World Leaders)" and "Nellie the Brave: The Cherokee Trail of Tears" and about 40 other books. "It was natural for me to write biographies and historical fiction."

Many writers say they're compelled to get their thoughts onto paper.

"I write because I can't avoid it," J.B. Cheaney says on her site, www.jbcheaney.com. The Bolivar-based middle-grade fiction writer published "The Middle of Somewhere" in 2007 through Knopf Books for Young Readers.

Jones describes her writing as you might expect from a word artist: "It's like watching a movie in my mind," she says. "Except I'm the director and the scriptwriter, if not the actor, and sometimes I'm that, too.

"I tell characters what to say and how to move, and then they take off. I'm just writing down what they are doing," she adds.

Baum's Springfield-based Toto Too Inc. distributes his series "The Oz Odyssey."