Anything that gets kids reading deserves an A+. Maria Dismondy decided to roll the dice, leaving behind her secure teaching job for the world of being a writer. And it has paid off for her in spades. Not only selling thousands of copies of her books but also spreading a positive message to over 20,000 students. Her latest book, Buddy the Bucket Filler, is now for sale.
Links:
Her Website: https://mariadismondy.com
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@cardinalrulepress
To get these episodes sent directly to your inbox, visit https://totalmichigan.com/join
Transcript
I don't know if it was so important to getting people to buy my book, but it was getting the message of the book into the world. If you look at the current society and things that you'd like to change. I think one way you can do that is by educating youth and gearing them in a different direction. that is one of the biggest advantages is helping our youth do something different. So you don't see what we're seeing.
Cliff Duvernois:Hello everyone and welcome back to Total Michigan, where we interview ordinary Michiganders doing some pretty extraordinary things. I'm your host, Cliff DuVernois. And this introduction is going to take me a minute. So just sit back and relax. We got an award winning author with us today of 11 books, and you probably know some of the books. Some of our early ones, actually a "Juice Box Bully, Empowering Kids to Stand up to Others", as well as "Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun". Which makes me just want to try that. Okay. Having the courage to be who you are. And of course she's here talking about her latest book, "Buddy, the Bucket Filler". And she's been featured in the Detroit free press NPR, Fox News, Time, and the list goes on and on. She owns her own publishing company. And if she wasn't busy enough with her husband and kids. She's running a non profit. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the show, Maria Dismondy. Maria, how are you?
Maria Dismondy:Great. Thanks for having me. That was really fun. And if I was having a bad day, I would just need you to say that one more time.
Cliff Duvernois:I'll have this on audio so you can listen to it as many times as you want. Bad day play. Yes, exactly. All right, let's talk about you. What do you want to know? Where are you from? Where did you grow up?
Maria Dismondy:I grew up in Michigan in Canton, Michigan. Okay. And then I went to Michigan State University. And, then now I'm in Novi.
Cliff Duvernois:So what did you study when you went to Michigan State?
Maria Dismondy:Elementary education and English as a double major. And I thought I was going to be a teacher for my entire life.
Cliff Duvernois:What made you think you were going to be a teacher?
Maria Dismondy:because I played teacher. My, all the time when I was little and I loved it.
Cliff Duvernois:Everybody's playing house. You're playing school.
Maria Dismondy:I was playing school and I loved it. And I loved children. And I thought that you went to school and you became something. And that's what you did for the rest of your life.
Cliff Duvernois:So you get out of college. Now, did you actually become a teacher?
Maria Dismondy:I did and I loved it. So I taught for 11 years and that's where I went on the journey of writing a children's book was when I was in the classroom.
Cliff Duvernois:Oh, interesting. Okay. Now, had it always been your thought to write a book?
Maria Dismondy:No, no. Apparently I don't have plans. They just Come to me. Come to me! No, I, I taught in Plymouth, Canton and my classroom was super diverse. I had a lot of, Indian American students. They were so kind. Their families invited me to their home for dinners. They gifted me saris, these beautiful gowns. They would send in food with their children to give to me. I mean, there were just these amazing humans. And so I always, when I chose books to read to my students, I wanted to make sure I was representing the whole picture of my classroom. And it was really difficult in the year 2006 when I got this idea. A lot of books that talked about courage and these character traits featured teddy bears and dinosaurs and cats. There wasn't a lot of realistic fiction at the time. And I thought, huh, maybe I should write a book that talks about courage and is from the perspective of a real human child and has a diverse classroom. And so that's what I did.
Cliff Duvernois:So your first book, "Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun". So I got to ask the question because I was reading up on "Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun". Is that semi autobiographical?
Maria Dismondy:Semi. Yes. it, this is my hair and we're at the end of summer right now. It's huge. And yes, I was teased for my big hair. I was teased for the weird foods that I ate, which I still do. yeah, it really, it, it sparked the inspiration for the story. It really did. I was teased for who I was and I tried to change to, make other people like me and that didn't work because I am who I am. and so yeah, that's where the story was inspired from, definitely. And my mom really did give me "Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun" for lunch and I loved it. and she had to duplicate it, but the reason she gave it to me initially was because she didn't have any bread. So she thought, okay, well, I'll put my leftover "Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun" and she'll eat it. So quirky.
Cliff Duvernois:Oh, I love that. So you've had the idea for "Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun". You put it together in a book. Sales take off. You have gotten a lot of love for this book online. I checked Amazon and it's like 2, 900 plus four and five star reviews.
Maria Dismondy:Yeah, it might be around. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, it's interesting. I think teachers and families just connected with the character because she is in this situation where someone's being unkind to her. And then that person needs help. And she knows the right thing to do is to help him. So I think people can connect with that. And again, like I said, in 2006, when I wrote it, 2008, when it was released, there weren't a lot of realistic fiction books. So it made a name for itself. And even today, after writing 11 books, I don't think it's the most well done book of mine by any means, but it's still selling more than any other title.
Cliff Duvernois:Were you really prepared for the reception that you got from this book?
Maria Dismondy:No, I was not and My dad was mad that I quit teaching, that I resigned from teaching. Because he said how are you gonna have health insurance? And I said, I'll figure it out But I started to realize gosh I can write and speak at schools and I can make an income that is very close to what I was making as a teacher and do less work. And at the time we were starting a family and so I just took the risk which It's a big risk. And, my husband believed in me. So that was, helpful. We were living in a one bedroom home at the time. And, I found out I was pregnant right when the book was about to come out. So it was a big risk to do this and to leave that income. But we did it.
Cliff Duvernois:And you talked before about speaking engagements. And I know that you've been to a lot of schools talking about your book. How important was that to getting people to buy your book?
Maria Dismondy:I don't know if it was so important to getting people to buy my book, but it was getting the message of the book into the world. That was my goal and I'm not really sure how people bought the book. Maybe they heard about it from their friends. We have surveyed people and word of mouth has always been our number one answer on how people find our books. But, right before COVID, I had a really busy, lineup the year before. And I think it was in four weeks, I was in front of almost like 15 to 20, 000 children speaking in schools with the message of these books. So that to me is Whoa, I know the world is really big and people get overwhelmed. What can I do to make a difference? But I really felt the needle moving when I was going into schools.
Cliff Duvernois:Yeah, if you're talking in front of 20, 000 people, that's a lot.
Maria Dismondy:And little people like little friends who are growing up and who are going to be our leaders and they're going to be raising other humans and they're going to be shaping our world. So it just felt really important to me and I love my job.
Cliff Duvernois:When did you start doing the speaking engagements?
Maria Dismondy:First book in 2008. I started doing the speaking engagements in 2008.
Cliff Duvernois:And where did the idea come from? For doing speaking engagements come from?
Maria Dismondy:Being a teacher. yeah. So I had been a teacher sitting in the room when authors had come in. I was part of helping to find authors. And I saw the crazy prices that we were paying. And, I thought, I could do this for a lot less because I'm not as experienced, but I can totally do this.
Cliff Duvernois:And what was it like going out and giving that first presentation?
Maria Dismondy:it was scary, but I'm not afraid of risk. I got the adrenaline going and everything. But, I think the hardest part is I like to get feedback. And so I have to like mentally prepare myself for constructive feedback. But that's what really helped me to become the speaker I am today is from those teachers giving that feedback to me.
Cliff Duvernois:And so you've got Spaghetti in a Bun out there, and you've got 10 other books that are out there. You've reached, you've released the, what was it? The pink tiara?
Maria Dismondy:Yeah, Pink Tiara Cookies for three, a lot of them are from my personal experiences. So I grew up in a neighborhood and it was the three of us. There was three friends. And one always felt left out and it seems as though, I have my own children now, it seems as though I can see that threesome is like a, is a tricky, it's a triangle. So I guess I take my own personal experiences and put them into these realistic fiction stories.
Cliff Duvernois:Where do you say to yourself? Hey, I think this would be a good idea for a book.
Maria Dismondy:I actually do my research. And I look to see if there's anything like it out there. And I make sure that if there is, I'm doing it differently. And really the goal is that there isn't anything out there like that. And that's when you release it,
Cliff Duvernois:And between all these books and the speaking engagements that you're doing, just a ballpark number, how many of these speaking engagements do you think you've done over the last, what, 15, 16 years?
Maria Dismondy:Yeah. I'm not sure what the answer is. But, if you take 10 years and I was doing about 60 a year. Whoa. huh. Nice. Yeah. That's a lot. Yeah. It was really tiring too. I actually, I got to the point where I was like, Ooh, I'm tired. This is tiring. And, I said I wasn't going to do them again. And so I, it's been about two or three years that I've done speaking like in school speaking engagements, but I recently got an offer for a school that was two miles from my house. And I said, how can I turn this down? So I'm back in it.
Cliff Duvernois:Yeah. Very short commute there. Yeah. Nice. I'm back. And on top of all of this, as you're going about and releasing these books. At some point, you decided to start a publishing company.
Maria Dismondy:Yes, again, not in the plan. So I hope people are hearing the theme in this. don't plan out your life because, you can have these awesome detours that you go down and they take you to great places. yeah, I really. I was getting tired of the limelight. me, me, me, me, me, like that's not who I am. so I thought, what if I could teach others and give this gift to others? And so I started Cardinal Rule Press. I don't, I think the year. I'm not going to be able to give you the year. Maybe 2015, 2016. And people submit their manuscripts to us and we have a team of individuals who look through them. And we decide what we're going to publish. And so it's really great because I'm allowing other people to use their voices and experiences and get those messages into the world.
Cliff Duvernois:And your latest book, Buddy the Bucket Filler. So talk to us a little bit about that.
Maria Dismondy:Yeah. So again, I was walking, the dogs, we have two dogs, and, I was telling my husband about a mentor friend of mine and, she was a publisher as well. And she had called me about some technical issues she was having. And we were talking and she just said how she was tired and she was thinking about retiring. And she wasn't sure what to do with her publishing business. So I'm telling this story to my husband. Husband as we're just walking. And he said, you should buy it. And I was like, I don't have enough money to buy a publishing company, And he's you don't pay for all at once, you take out a loan, you buy it. So I bought it. So I bought her company. So the bucket filler books are, from Carol McLeod. She used to live in Michigan and now she lives in Florida. And so in July of last year, I bought her company. She retired. And she said, you know what? I think we should do a book together. And so that's where this book was born.
Cliff Duvernois:And what's the idea behind the book?
Maria Dismondy:Yeah, so bucket filling is the idea that Carol, got many years ago at a conference. She was inspired that we all walk around with these invisible buckets. So I actually want to turn to the page that shows you what kind of You want to imagine as you're going through life. So here we are. We're at a restaurant. You can see all these invisible buckets. So everyone has this invisible bucket and there's hearts and stars when you're feeling good. You've got good thoughts and feelings. And sometimes your bucket is empty and that's when you don't have those good thoughts and feelings. So the whole concept around bucket filling is that when you do and say nice things to others and to yourself, you're filling your bucket and it's full. So it's a visual for children. And when you're not kind to others, you're dipping into their bucket, and you're taking those things away from someone. And if you're not kind to yourself, you're taking things away from yourself. And then there's also a lid, you can put a lid, those are like the boundaries we can set for ourselves and we can help others to set as well. Carol, her and I both published our first books around the same time from the same publisher. So we have known each other for years. And the bucket filling concept went crazy. And, her books alone have sold 3 million copies. Nice. Yes. And so that's where we, she said, I want to write a book with bucket filling. And I said, you've never written a realistic fiction book. So let's combine my craft with yours on bucket filling. And that's where this book came in.
Cliff Duvernois:Absolutely. Love that for our audience. We're going to take a quick break to thank our sponsors. And when we come back, Maria is going to continue to dazzle us with the life of a writer and all the goodies that comes with it. We'll see you after the break. Are you enjoying these amazing stories? Michigan is full of people that are doing some pretty extraordinary things. If you want these amazing stories sent directly to your inbox, head over to total michigan.com. Enter your email address and get them today. What are you going to get? I'm glad you asked. First, you're gonna join our awesome Michigan community Second, you will get an email that includes the top five interviews from the show sent directly to your inbox. Third, you're gonna get exclusive behind the scenes information about the show. There's a lot of things that are happening to grow this movement beyond the confines of just a radio show and a podcast. You'll get advanced notice of upcoming guests and early access to their interviews. Now to get all these goodies, just head over to total michigan.com/join. Enter your email address and join our awesome community today. Hello everyone. And welcome back to Total Michigan, where we interview ordinary Michiganders doing some pretty extraordinary things. I am your host Cliff Duvernois. Today, we're chatting with award winning author. Maria Dismondy. Just real quick, I have to give a shout out to the people at Charlin' Used Books in Frankenmuth for allowing us to use their place to record today. So make sure to show them a little bit of love when you're going through Frankenmuth. Maria, so before the break, we were talking about Buddy the Bucket Filler. and, you were actually telling me some interesting facts actually about the book, and I want to make sure that we capture those for the audience. So, if you would... Share with us those facts.
Maria Dismondy:Yes, I think it's important to note that the book is actually set on a cherry farm in Michigan. So both the author and I, Carol and I both grew up in Michigan and live in Michigan. Well lived for her. And yeah, so we thought it was really important to bring a part of Michigan into the story.
Cliff Duvernois:Now, is this bringing Michigan into your stories? Is this something unique to this book, or has it been a theme throughout your other books as well?
Maria Dismondy:No, it actually is unique to this book. And, as authors, we like to add what we call an author's wink into our stories. It's something special. So actually, my dogs are in this story. And if you purchase or go to the library and get "Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun", there's a cardinal that's hidden on almost all the pages. So those are author winks. A couple secrets to share with your audience. Ooh. And what does the Cardinal stand for? traditionally a Cardinal is a, reminder of someone that you lost and, yeah. And so I always loved Cardinal. So I put it in my first book and I named him a company after them.
Cliff Duvernois:And if you didn't have enough on your plate already, here we go with the nonprofit. Talk to us. What is the nonprofit? What is it about?
Maria Dismondy:many years ago, my girlfriend and I met Keys. We started Making Spirits Bright, and we just knew that we were blessed in our lives. And we wanted to do something for others. And then life we worked on it for a couple of years. Life took off took over. We put it aside. And so more recently, I just said, you know what? I want to bring this back, but I want it focused on books. So Making Spirits Bright is a non profit here in Michigan. And we are dedicated to getting books into the hands of children who don't have access to stories. A lot of times you hear them called book deserts. so we're trying to Go into those deserts where they don't have books and fill them. And we're right now, I, we're partnering with some really cool partners in Detroit, two different partners that I can't mention yet. But if you check out non, our nonprofit, you'll find out soon, but we are doing book donations, book drives, we're getting books and we're sorting them. And we're don't, we're distributing them and it's really great.
Cliff Duvernois:So you just give away the books.
Maria Dismondy:Yes, and I'm hoping that we can also provide tutoring with that. So I'm just in the beginning phases of redeveloping it, and it literally keeps me up at night. And I can't stop thinking about it, and it's joyful. So you said You said something, around the fact that as if you didn't have enough on your plate. I, I thrive on these things. And they bring me such joy. It's not, it doesn't feel like work. And so you talked about, the whole podcast is about, and the whole show is about ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Like these people aren't doing them to be extraordinary. They're doing them because they, they feel this joy. Doing these things certainly.
Cliff Duvernois:Yeah, and that's actually the next question that I want to ask is because you do have a lot on your plate Yes between writing books, publishing books, your nonprofit, you've got three kids,
Maria Dismondy:three kids, two dogs, a husband, who's awesome. Yeah, but I have a team. I've built a business with a team. And so I'm not alone. And volunteers with the nonprofit. And, a focus, right? So I've core values and anything that kind of is outside of those core values. It's easy to say no.
Cliff Duvernois:So then how did you go about putting your team together?
Maria Dismondy:slowly but surely, I, the first distributor that I worked with said, tell me about your team. And I said, there isn't a team. And they said, you can't be doing this by yourself. And I said, Oh, I am. And at that point when I got off the phone, I was like, maybe I shouldn't be doing this myself. So I started with a virtual assistant. And then it just grew from there. But everyone that I work with is remote. We have some interns from U of M, Michigan State, Ohio State right now. and our team, no one on our team is full time. So everyone is doing what brings them joy with Cardinal Rule Press. But then a lot of my team members are also running side gigs too. These creative businesses of their own.
Cliff Duvernois:Got you and how has your experience with the virtual assistants been going?
Maria Dismondy:Good really good Yeah communication. I think it's hard to be a team where you're meeting on Zoom. But that's all I've ever known and it works for me as a mom because I'm always there for my kids. I'm at home when I'm working and
Cliff Duvernois:So one of the things that typically comes up, especially if you're building a team, because I'm starting to understand now how your book business is being structured. Some of the hardest things to do is when you first get that first assistant, because you're so used to when you're doing everything yourself, you can control everything. Oh, yeah. Then all of a sudden now you're bringing somebody in. So the first question I got for you is I know that there's a key difference between hiring a virtual assistant. In the states versus overseas. Yeah. So you said you've got assistants that are at U of M and Ohio state. so clearly you're in the U S.
Maria Dismondy:No, I have some out of the country as well. Oh, interesting. I do. The first virtual assistant I ever hired. She's still with me today, Lisa May. And she's in the Philippines. And the reason I hired her is because I had a friend who was already working with her for many years. So I brought lisa May onto the team. And I have trust issues and, she's a loving, caring person. you're an entrepreneur. We all have trust issues. She's a loving, caring person. And I make a lot of mistakes in my life. I never went to school to be a business owner. I've made so many ridiculous mistakes. So when I bring on team members and they do make mistakes, it's like a no brainer to me. So I'm not one of those people who's Oh my gosh, they made a mistake. They're a bad hire. So it's been easy for me in the fact that, when people make mistakes, it's okay. But I have hired a few people that haven't worked out. Because, once again, I'm having to learn all these things through podcasts and through audiobooks. Like, how do you, how am I supposed to be a business owner? how do I run a non profit? so it's all education, learning, and trying, trial and error.
Cliff Duvernois:Hey, experience is a great teacher. Sure. When you're going out and getting your first VA, the lady that you hired from the Philippines, Lisa May, what were some of the responsibilities that you gave her?
Maria Dismondy:Areas that were my weaknesses. So spreadsheets and, numbers, things that I really didn't have in my wheelhouse. So taking my strengths, keeping my strengths with me. And then giving her my weaknesses.
Cliff Duvernois:And what are some of the other jobs and tasks that you've come up with along the way? Because I usually, when I talk to an author, spreadsheets doesn't come up. No. And it's all about the words. It's all about paper, pencils. So.
Maria Dismondy:Well, because if authors want their books to sell, you have to market. And marketing includes spreadsheets. Stop. Stop. I know. Marketing is a big part of it. Marketing. What is this? I know. Yeah, I've had a lot of really good mentors along the way who've taught me that writing is a business. And if you're doing writing for a hobby, that's wonderful, but you might not sell books unless you're one of these amazing people I'm looking at like James Patterson or something.
Cliff Duvernois:Oh, that, that could be a whole other podcast right there. I don't even want to. Yes. Don't even want to roll down that road. Yeah. I admire his success. I will say that. I'm not putting him down. I admire his success. Do you think that there's any advantage to writing children's books over adult books?
Maria Dismondy:I do, because I think that you're really connecting with our future. If you look at the current society and things that you'd like to change. I think one way you can do that is by educating youth and gearing them in a different direction. So I do. I think that is one of the biggest advantages is helping our youth do something different. So you don't see what we're seeing, like warm winters in Michigan.
Cliff Duvernois:Oh, my goodness. And one thing I noticed, too, is that you chose not to do, not to have a pen name. Correct. You used your real name. Correct. why did you make that decision?
Maria Dismondy:I don't even know, but going back, maybe I would have done a pen name, actually. What's the advantages of that? so then people don't know me when I'm out in public or at the grocery store.
Cliff Duvernois:you're kind of out there. If you take a look at your Amazon author profile and everything else, you got pictures and Facebook
Maria Dismondy:and, or when my son Googles me, he learned how to Google. And I think like second grade, he's mom, I Googled you and there's a lot of pictures of you out there. So that's, I think probably even to protect my children too. So if you notice on my social media, my kids are not featured anywhere. I think there might be one picture out there that I'm still trying to take down from a podcast interview I did. Early on, but I just made it a point that I want their digital footprint to be their own. And I don't want it to be developed by their mom. So that's another reason a pen name would have come in handy.
Cliff Duvernois:What has been some of the, most effective marketing that you've done?
Maria Dismondy:It's huge. It is so big when it comes to, writing books, marketing. And one of the biggest things I think we were talking about it, was word of mouth. And so we did surveys. We've done a lot of surveys with our readers. How did you hear about our books? word of mouth. The big question is how do we get people talking about your books? So we give books away. All the time. We're very generous with our books. We provide free programming for schools and for teachers. So they, come on and they hear our author panels and they hear our authors reading stories. We have our books for free on YouTube. So we're not stingy with our books and people start talking about us because we are generous. Another way is grassroots marketing, so social media. We don't pay for a ton of ads. We just started doing Facebook ads a few years ago. But besides that, we're grassroots style. We're just posting and authentically sharing and, trying to get people to connect, with our books.
Cliff Duvernois:And that is one of the things that I did notice when I was going through your website and taking a look at your books. Is that it seems like every book that you have written below that you have a bunch of pdfs free that are free, given away so the one of them was, I think it was for the Juice Box Bully. There was a thing called the promise.
Maria Dismondy:Yeah. Yeah. Oh, good memory, Cliff.
Cliff Duvernois:See? See? That's great. Yes. It was like the promise, and I think it was something where like a kid would read that, sign it, Hey, I promise I'm not going to be a bully or whatever it is, and sign their name to it.
Maria Dismondy:And classrooms use it all the time. And we have our reader's guides that are free, because teachers do not want to spend their own money on all these things and they do because they're amazing.
Cliff Duvernois:It's not only money, but it's time as well.
Maria Dismondy:Money and time to develop all of this. So yes, we develop lesson plans around all of our books. At the beginning of all of our stories, we have questions for parents and caregivers on the copyright page. So I know I'm really tired at night. I usually check out around 7 38. But if I'm reading a book to my child, I can go a little bit deeper. And I don't have to think of the questions because they're here for me. So in all of our books, we provide questions to ask before, during and after reading. Because it's great to read a story. But if you want to take it to the next level, questioning with children is huge. So these are just some of the things that we've done that have worked to get people talking about our stories.
Cliff Duvernois:I'd also think, too, that would be a great way for parents and kids to engage with a book, rather than just read it and say, okay, night night, you actually...
Maria Dismondy:Yeah, the stories start to come out when you ask questions. oh, how can you connect with the character? Like in The Juice Box Bully, how can you connect with the character? Oh, some school said something to me today. And I felt like they were bullying me. You just never know. And those questions correct. They help engage the adult and child.
Cliff Duvernois:So I'm loving the creativity for this. And what you're doing is unique because I haven't seen that before. Where did the idea come from?
Maria Dismondy:This specific idea before, during and after I did it as a teacher. I don't know. I learned it as a teacher that when you read to children, you should ask questions before, during and after. I don't know who, maybe my teachers at Michigan State University. I'm not sure.
Cliff Duvernois:but to actually incorporate that into a book.
Maria Dismondy:I don't know. maybe I'm not sure. I wonder if Dolly Parton's Imagination does that. They might do that. I don't know.
Cliff Duvernois:So I gotta ask, what is Dolly Parton's Imagination?
Maria Dismondy:Dolly Parton has this book system where she sends a book to the child to children ages, 0 to 5. One Book per month until they're five years old. And my children were part of that. And I don't know if she did before, during and after. All right. but I also think a copyright page is pretty ugly. And so this kind of jazzes it up as well.
Cliff Duvernois:Yeah, it is. use every page that you can. It's all real estate. It's all real estate. It is. It is all real estate. so what's next? What is next? I know you just came out with Buddy the Bucket Filler.
Maria Dismondy:We have some really great titles coming out next year that we're super excited about. A story about choice, that's a little girl and, a military family story. We have some really great things coming up. Another one, a foster family. And Yeah, and it's so cool because I can curate these books by simply saying to our acquisitions editor, we need a book about foster families because there's not enough books out there that are quality books about, what children go through and what does the family go through. And so his eyes are open looking for these things.
Cliff Duvernois:Just the fact that you have an acquisition editor is a testament to how much you've learned.
Maria Dismondy:Yes. Yes. Kudos to you. Thank you. What is next? I believe in growth. And so this year, I have been traveling to different trade shows. And Thank you. Given that we're really small, it's been scary. I said I wasn't afraid, but it has been scary and intimidating being with some of these really big publishers at these events. But, I went to something called the ABA, American Booksellers Association, ALA. Those are librarians. I'm expanding. That's next level for me.
Cliff Duvernois:Maria, if somebody is listening to this interview and they want to get your books, they want to check out more, especially all those like yummy free resources that you give away with your books as well. Where's the best place for them to do that?
Maria Dismondy:I say go to our website. Support a small business. However, if you have a bookstore in your area, you should always go to your local bookstore. I think supporting these indie bookstores is really important. And yeah, our website has all those free things on it. And if you don't have access, you don't have the money to buy the books. You go to your library because libraries are amazing, or you go on YouTube and you can hear our stories.
Cliff Duvernois:Maria, thank you so much for taking time out to chat with us today. Really do appreciate it. I thank you Cliff. And once again, I do want to give a shout out to the people at Charlin's Used Bookstore and Frankenmuth for letting us film here today. And as usual, you can always roll on over to total michigan. com click on Maria's interview, and get all the links that she mentioned above. We'll see you next week when we talk to another Michigander doing some pretty extraordinary things. We'll see you then.
