Writing a children’s book with my daughter is the subject of this Wait What Really OK episode, Alphabet Animal Adventures Across America: A Book From Both of Us. Below are the episode art, the episode player, a short video, the episode chapters and the full transcription.
Released on September 25, 2026.
Listen to this episode here or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, Pandora, iHeartRadio and Spreaker. The whole show, Wait What Really OK, is on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora and iHeartRadio.
Writing a Children’s Book With My Daughter
I haven’t done a Wait What Really OK in a while, and what I’m sharing is the most proud thing I’ve ever been a part of. My daughter and I have released a book from both of us. It’s called Alphabet Animal Adventures Across America: A to Z with Friends, Foods and Places to Go.
Three and a half years ago, I was working in my office. She came in and said, “I want to write a book.” The same day, she came back in and said, “I want to write a book with you.” We can absolutely do this and we can absolutely do it together.
The vision was hers and I was along for the ride.
If you have a child, what’s something that you could create together?
The book, the characters and where it is available are on the Alphabet Animal Adventures Across America page. It is available as a Kindle edition and a paperback on Amazon and as a paperback at Barnes & Noble, and it is listed on Open Library and Goodreads. It is published by Dadau Publishing.
Alphabet Animal Adventures Across America Short Video
A short video on Alphabet Animal Adventures Across America: A to Z with Friends, Foods and Places to Go, the children’s book my daughter and I wrote together.
Episode Chapters
- 00:00 Writing the Book Together
- 12:22 Illustrations and Honorable AI
- 18:01 Publishing the Book
Writing a Children’s Book With My Daughter: Full Transcription
The full transcription of this Wait What Really OK episode, in the order it was recorded. It is also available as a text file and as a WebVTT caption file.
Song:
Wait What Really OK. With your host, Loren Weisman. This is a fully licensed theme song for the show about stuff that makes you say, Wait What Really OK.
Loren:
Writing the Book Together
I haven’t done a Wait What Really OK in a while and what I’m sharing is the most proud thing I’ve ever been a part of and bypassing any album, any song, what I did as a drummer, what I did behind the scenes as a drummer, what I did as a music producer, TV, the consulting, the strategy, the communication, the speaking. All of that to me pales in comparison to what I just put out with my daughter. My daughter and I have released a book from both of us. It’s called Alphabet Animal Adventures Across America: A to Z with Friends, Foods and Places to Go.
There is nothing I’ve ever created in my life before and I’m sure nothing after that will have the meaning that this does and the story behind it and the elements that just make it into one of the most amazing experiences that I’ve been able to have creatively with my daughter.
I Want to Write a Book With You
Three and a half years ago, let’s just jump right into it. Three and a half years ago I was working in my office and in my office I had at that office in that house I had some posters of some of the other books and my books on the shelf and my daughter knew even at that age that I worked with other people and I helped them with their books as well as writing mine. She came in at one point and said, I want to write a book and I thought it was just the coolest thing. Then it was I want to write a children’s book and we talked about some of the children’s books that we read together and the stuff that we’ve enjoyed. And it was a fun conversation.
She took off, she was doing other things.
Being busy.
And the same day, I think it might have been an hour later, she came back in and said, I want to write a book with you. And that was one of those tear-jerking moments, just thinking how cool that could be. And I said, absolutely. Let’s. And then it was unfortunate because it was the immediate follow up of, oh, well, we can’t do that. Well, this is too much. Well, I can’t do this. Well, I can’t. We can absolutely do this and we can absolutely do it together.
And we talked for a little bit right before I had to get on another call. After that call though, before she went to bed that night, I said, we’ll start the foundation of this book this weekend. We’ll start it on Saturday morning. And she asked, what’s a foundation? We’re just going to write. And I said, I want to show you a little bit of what I do with other clients and what I did with my book.
Laying Out the Foundation
And we’ll do that together.
She was interested. So fast forward a few days, we’re at a Panera together, and I laid out a little this Excel sheet and then this notepad next to it. So the Excel sheet was on the computer and there was a notepad next to it. And I began to draw ideas and then ask her, okay. What’s this book going to be about? What are we going to do for a theme? I wasn’t trying to turn her into a client by any means. I wasn’t trying to go too complex, but I wanted to give it a foundation of something that had the validity that we could create. Not, you know, crazy, proper formatting, but something to give a base to teach her. How to build, how to build pieces, how to stand out, how to just amplify the creativity and also at the same time not feel bound to a structure, but allow a structure that could help her to create.
So we talked about different ideas and we talked about animals. And when she was even before she was born, I used to go to this bookstore.
The Animals From A to Z
And at that bookstore for a number of weeks before she was born, I got a different animal there each time and brought it back to the crib in the room that she would eventually have. And it was A through Z. And we named all these animals, me and my ex-wife, and we named these animals and we had them there for her. And she kept them for many years. She still has some of them. Some of them are in storage, some of them, who knows where they are. But there was something about those animals and we talked about that. And she had this sort of raised bed with it was like a higher bunk bed with this space underneath and all these animals for the animals from then and the new ones and so we talked about an animal theme and we talked about naming each of the animals.
Then the alphabet concept kept coming up. The concept of, okay, where do we make it a little bit more with an alphabet book? And we looked at some of the books that she read and we came up with this idea together. This was not me leading her. It was her being guided with an idea of how to find the creativity that was in her. This is so much her and I love that and I love the creativity of it and in some ways while I was kind of opening ideas or you know orchestrating directions it was her who drove. It was her who created. The vision was hers and I was along for the ride.
Arnie the Alligator in Atlanta
So what she came up with and what we decided together was that each animal, it would be the, you know, A, like A for alligator. And we named, you know, we named Arnie the Alligator, which was the first animal that I got. And it was named after my grandfather on my father’s side. And then we said, okay, where’s Arnie going to go? And we looked up a map on the computer and we started seeing this theme and she began to say, okay, well you know, let’s have it go to different names, A to Z in this country. I thought that was cool. I was a little concerned about some of the weirder letters, but we got through that. So our first set and we spent probably the better part and it was fun, it wasn’t work, but we spent the better part of I’d say three to four hours on Arnie the Alligator and that he would end up going to Atlanta, Georgia.
And where was he going to go to? An aquarium.
And one of my favorite no, I won’t say one of my favorite, my favorite aquarium is in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s this beautiful aquarium. If you haven’t been and you’re through Atlanta, try it out. You might like it. And from there, this theme began and then we kept adding to it.
Foods and Places to Go
What else can be a letter? And I said, I don’t know. What do you think? She came back and said, food.
And again, my strategic mind was like, okay, we’re going to get kind of funny with the Y’s and the Z’s, but no, let’s do it. This is creative. Let’s do it. So it ended up being apples for Arnie the Alligator in Atlanta.
And then it was a theme of different places. And I brought some of that. I said, but you know, we could find different places for museums, to places for kids. And my daughter immediately picked up, oh, these are where we can show them places where they can go, and if they’re traveling, they can visit to these places. I love that concept. It was beautiful. So we began to have the template.
And so that was why we spent a whole bunch of time going back and forth. Figuring out what we were going to do. And then, in that template, we built the whole book off of that. There was another part as we talked about the illustration part.
Hiding the Letters
She loved the Where’s Waldo and the elements of trying to find things in pictures. Can we do something like that? Can we hide something? I said, absolutely.
And we thought about it together and I proposed to her, I said, why don’t we hide the letters?
So on the Arnie picture, we’ll hide an A somewhere for people to find. And we did that.
Not Now Doesn’t Mean Never
It ended up being a long process. A lot of things happened. A lot of stuff happened with my health. I was away for a while. I’m still dealing with certain health issues that I’m working my way back from. And during this process where it got longer and longer, and then when I was away, we were doing certain stuff by FaceTime and the phone. And there was a negativity of, we’re never going to have this book happen.
And I explained to her, I said, not now doesn’t mean not never or doesn’t mean never.
And I told her that the smallest seeds that we plant, the smallest elements that we do each day can add up, can compound, can bring us to this next level so that we’re there. We don’t know the date. We don’t know how we’re going to do this quite yet. But we can do it one step at a time. And these little steps occurred.
A Place for Every Letter
And then on some visits we said, okay, what’s the location going to be? What’s going to be the background? What are going to be some elements that maybe the characters would wear?
What should be happening in the background in some of the places that are a little bit more surreal or challenging or okay, we can’t find, you know, we had a little trouble with Y.
And as opposed to a particular location, it ended up being Yvonne the Youthful Yak spooned yummy yogurt yapping away in Yuma, Arizona. So Yuma became the point.
It was hilarious at times and going back and forth and finding the different elements of what we could create. And then what we switched around. Getting into some of those back pages and the end of the alphabet, it became a little bit challenging. And figuring out, going, okay, what you know Z, okay, well zucchini, that’ll be kind of easy. But X was a challenge for a bit. And we were both looking up things of what would be X or V and not in trying to get to, okay, we need to check this off the list.
Time Spent Together
But this one day when we spent a whole bunch of time with the letter V and eventually the vulture that we had and naming the vulture and where the vulture was going to be, it was time spent together that was amazing. It was time spent together that was loving. It was time spent together that engaged us. And it connected us. And it wasn’t for the end result and the end all be all. It was an experience in the moment for that moment, for many moments to come, as well as for a goal to be completed down the line. And that made it even more fun.
Picking the Words
As we got to the point where everything was written, and the way that it was written, we picked words. I helped to put together the final sentences, but we would pick words of how we would structure the sentences, of feelings. So for example, Bertram the Bashful Bear bit into breathtaking blueberries.
And you know, it was everything from words that kids would recognize to words that they might not have heard of before, words that would challenge them, and words that, you know, could offer them something to go, okay, I’ve never heard that word, to then listing these real places and following the legal parameters of how we could list them and what we could show in the background and what we couldn’t, to some words to know. We added words like nimble, opulent, polite, quirky, remarkable, selfless, just to name a few, for a younger child to potentially connect with as they ask and they can see it in the back of the book. We hid some other items besides letters.
My daughter liked the letter concept, but she wanted to have some other things back there.
Illustrations and Honorable AI
And then in the last stage, it was creating what we wanted for an illustrator.
And for that illustrator it was the descriptions of colors, of tones of what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it, what we wanted in the backgrounds, what we wanted in the foreground.
And what ended up happening, the one part of this book that was AI but to me is honorable AI, is one that we mention it on the front, on the back and everywhere. MyStoryBot is something we used for the illustrations.
I tried throughout a two to three month period to try to find an illustrator for this. And I didn’t have that much luck. There was one illustrator, there was a lot of talk, there was a lot of excitement, there was a lot of this, and then, you know, handing off the idea, going, this is what we came up with, this is what we’re thinking, and then being handed something back that was just. They hadn’t read the page at all that we sent them, and they just chose to do whatever they wanted to do. I realized that, where things were at, what it would potentially cost to get it done the right way and hand off the 26 pages of illustrations, call it 27 with the front cover and the back original concept.
Why I Looked at AI
It would have been a small fortune. So I looked at AI and I’m not anti-AI. My viewpoint, and I’ve shared it on the website, I’ve shared it in other episodes, is using AI in an organic, authentic, honest way that’s transparent.
So taking I found MyStoryBot and what I found that I really liked about MyStoryBot is that I could upload every page.
Every illustration concept from the characters of what we wanted from them. And we were very specific, and Olivia was very specific, my daughter was very specific about it.
I think I can say her name here. I’m saying her name. I’m not editing that out. My daughter was very specific.
I’m not going to edit it out. You’re going to see it on the cover of the book.
She was very specific about it because it was very close to the image of a little bear that we got or zebra that we got at Build-A-Bear.
Uploading Every Page
And so it had to have certain attributes. I changed some of those attributes so, you know, for licensing and imagery and all the legal beagle, it was correct. But we had the nuances of what we wanted to see, of what we didn’t want to see. And in uploading these to MyStoryBot, I was immensely impressed that it wasn’t, again, one of those books, and there are so many of them, with children’s books and adult books. They set in a prompt and send me this, and boom, and done.
When we first got back what MyStoryBot did with the main 26 pages.
It was incredible for me to see that it was what we had envisioned. But it was now, it was there and it was shaped there. And there were small nuances on every page. And we adjusted them. And MyStoryBot allowed that. As we went to MyStoryBot and said, okay, this needs to pull here. This is a little bit of an issue here. This is a little bright here. I can’t see the letter I’m trying to hide here.
The Small Edits
It’s just too hidden. This element here, I’d like to change the expression here. The juicy jelly beans in Jamestown, Virginia. Jerry the Jolly Jellyfish was juggling them.
And the background was great, and the image of the jellyfish. And I know that there probably aren’t really jellyfish in Jamestown, Virginia, but there was something off in the juggling, and it was my daughter that caught it. And we caught it, we added in, saying we’d like to see this, we’d like to see that. And we really were able to not only see something that was well received from AI and brought back in the best way possible. But in those small edits, it was the meticulous stuff that hit right to where we envisioned it and right to what we wanted to see.
And in that, and in having I mean the total page upload at the time of all the notes that we did and some of the stuff that I didn’t show my daughter because I didn’t want to overwhelm her. A lot of times when I was taking certain notes I was taking notes in one folder and not to go, okay, because I remember at one point she’s like, How is this a 70-page book?
It’s Ours
I said, Olivia, it’s not a 70-page book. It’s 70 pages of how we make sure it’s our book and every element sits exactly as it needs to, to show that it was us. She even began asking about AI. Well so we’re just doing AI. AI’s doing it for us. And I wasn’t deceiving her. I was saying we’ve done too much to say AI is doing it for us. These are the exact instructions we would be sending to a real person. And on these edits, these are the exact instructions we would be sending to somebody to edit these things. AI did the job.
We created the concept. AI delivered the illustration. We edited that. It’s ours. And she began to understand that. So to me it’s the use of it with transparency. And I state that in the book and online. We use MyStoryBot. This is how we used it. This is how we created it together. This is how long it took us.
Publishing the Book
From there on the completion, on a special day after a couple day visit that we had together, I asked her if she wanted to publish it. And I walked her through, she sat with me, and very determined, very committed, I kind of expected her to get bored and be done. She was right there next to the computer looking at every single thing happening. And I walked her through the aspect of this is what the copyright is, and this is how we file for what’s called an ISBN, and this is how we get a Library of Congress control number, and all the pieces, and some of the stuff for the filings where I began to set up I would do a little bit later when I wasn’t with her.
But I walked her through all the pieces of the publishing and I used the publishing model that I use and I’ve used in the past and I’ve shared with some of the people that I work with.
And we had it up and being checked and being reviewed that day. A week later. It was correctly and fully published.
Where the Book Is Available
As of right now, it’s on Amazon as a Kindle. You can get it as a paperback little eight and a half by eight and a half book.
It’s glossy, it’s a nicer paper, and because it’s the Amazon thing, the price is a little higher than what I’d like, but anything lower it would have actually been a negative point coming back and it would have been a little bit problematic. It was sent through also the IngramSpark system, so it’ll be available on Barnes & Noble both online and people can order it in stores, Books-A-Million, many other places, many distributors. Many library systems. I’m looking forward to getting it into the county library and even into her own elementary school and following a great format. And again, beyond that, it’s not this thing of you know, some kind of incredible massive selling system or some kind of profit system.
This is something of a dad and a daughter, an idea that we stuck with. It wasn’t a not-now.
And it was not a never. It just took time. And as we did this over time and pieced it together the right way, the last phase, the last lap was much faster than many of the middle ones.
Promises Made
And to be a part of this with her, to watch her be excited, to watch her grow, to watch her in the final stages of the little edits that she wanted shifted, the things that she added, and then the memories that I have going back. And I have pictures of her in different places, and that’s most of our thank yous is where we worked on it. We added in Panera, Starbucks, different locations, Culver’s, places that we worked on the concept or laid it out or scratched it out or wrote into the massive Excel sheet that I ended up building.
And I look back on this as just one of the best and greatest ways to connect.
And something that I hope that other fathers and daughters, or mothers and daughters, or fathers and sons could consider trying. It’s not for popularity.
It’s to showcase what’s possible and what can be connected to and what can be promised and what can be delivered.
That’s what this means much more as I look at the book and I hold it in my hand, I see promises made, I see creativity, I see struggle with times, I see doubt, and I see this end result and the pride when she said, I am a published author and I was welling up.
Because she is. And she did this. And we did this. And we got to be creative together. And we got to create together. And we said she started this off in that day in the office saying this is what she wants to do. And we did it. And it took time, but we did it. And I am so proud of her work. I’m so proud of this process.
What Comes Next
This book and where it goes from here. I want to record an audiobook with her so that people can read along or kids can read along.
I want to see inside of this Dadau Publishing imprint that I created, short for Daddy Daughter, that for other books she might want to create by herself or with friends. She’s talked about, you know, wanting to write a book with friends, that now here’s a model and here’s a place for her to create.
I’m looking forward to her getting her first copy which is going to arrive to her tomorrow afternoon.
Even more so when she gets that copyright notice.
And the other element that expands this and extends this book is each of these places. And this is a not right now, but it’s not never, of us to get to go there with that book and go to each of these places where we sent each of these animals and the foods that they tried to open up my daughter to try new foods and try new places. I also think about the idea of some book signings for her. She’s seen pictures of me. She’s seen things I’ve done with book signing. She goes, I want to do one of those. We can absolutely do that for you. She said she wanted to practice her signature a little bit. Now that the book is out, I think that’s really cute.
Dreams Are Reachable
And again to give her an experience and see what this draws and what this ignites for the follow through and for the next steps of her creativity and what she’ll commit to and see that certain things are going to take a little longer. But that when you plant the right seed in the right soil, when you lay the right foundation and you build with patience, perseverance and love, so much more is possible. I think beyond this being a children’s book that’s out, that this is one more step on her journey for her to see that dreams are reachable.
And while this was a small dream and a small promise, as she grows bigger dreams, that she understands the small steps that she can take to reach toward them.
And just how much she’s capable of. She is such an amazing, beautiful, intelligent, creative, caring girl. And I love to see her amplified, excited and inspired to bring all those elements and all those pieces out into the world for herself. And to share with others.
What Could You Create Together?
I’ll leave it there and my wish or prayer.
If you have a child, what’s something that you could do? What’s something you could do to connect? And it might take a minute. Is it a book? Is it a song? Is it some art? What could you create? What could you talk about creating and put out there? It doesn’t have to go on the biggest scale by any means. But what’s something that you could create together?
And in that, allow it to amplify and ignite so many other things, so many other possibilities, and a new drive and determination in that child to see not just that anything’s possible.
But that everything that they put their mind to, that they commit to, that they follow through with, that they learn, can set up a road, can set up an opportunity, can set up a possibility, and allow their light to shine.
That’s all I got. That’s this episode of Wait What Really OK, talking about my daughter and Alphabet Animal Adventures Across America.
Have a good day.
Song:
Wait What Really OK.
Loren Weisman is a Brand Communications and Optics Strategist who specializes in illuminating authoritative intelligence and amplifying authentic experts.
Weisman is the host of the brand communications and optics podcast Wait What Really OK.
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