We recently connected with Angelina and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Angelina thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the decision of whether to donate a percentage of sales to an organization or cause – we’d love to hear the backstory of how you thought through this.
When my daughters were young, I would ask them to pick a cause that was important to them, and then we would spend a year, working together, to fundraise for that cause. We have been fortunate in our lives and I think it’s important to help others if you can.
With my book series, I have an opportunity to give back to those that don’t have a voice or those that just need a helping hand.
Animal rescue is always a cause that is special to me. Over the years, we have rescued cats, dogs and horses and they have all made our lives so much better. We currently have six rescue animals on our little farm.
Some of the other organizations I have donated to I learned about because of people that stopped to chat with me at book events. Some of these include The Honor Bear Project, Dogs on Deployment, Becky’s Gift, Hats for Homeless, Healing on Manes, literacy programs, library donations, and the Old Friends Thoroughbred Retirement Home.
If we can’t help each other then what are we doing here?
Angelina, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
When I was in high school, I loved everything about language and literature. I took French, Greek and Latin classes in school, and spoke some German at home with my family. I had an English teacher who was also a published author and she encouraged me to write. When it was time to head off to college, my dad asked me what I wanted to study. I told him I wanted to write. He had more practical plans for my future. “Business school”, he suggested, and off I went to earn my degree.
I’ve worked as a financial controller and CFO for the last 35 years. The last 20 years, I have worked on my own as a fractional CFO offering CFO services to small businesses that would otherwise not have been able to keep a CFO on board. I’ve met incredibly gifted and talented business owners and I am fortunate and grateful for the opportunities to work with them. I have learned so much from each and every one of them.
In between the long hours of running my own business, I realized that I missed the creative side of life. I picked up pen and paper several times over the years and started jotting down ideas but known of them ever stuck and I didn’t understand why.
In 2016, my daughter, Gabi, committed to competing at a World-level show with her horse, Spike. The day Gabi made that commitment was the day that I started a journal for her. I shared thoughts, memories and pictures from that day until the day we boarded the plane to fly to the event. I wanted to give her something that she could look back on and remember all the good days and the bad days. The setbacks and the triumphs…the things that made her and Spike so special.
Looking back, I realize this is what ignited my love for writing and storytelling again.
I needed to take a very long detour to live life and learn the things I learned from raising my daughters, in order to write the stories that I can now share. Part of my detour involved a breast cancer diagnosis and year-long treatment in 2020. Cancer actually saved my life. I needed something to make me stop and take a hard look at how I was taking care of myself. Thankfully it all worked out for me!
After my final treatment at the beginning of 2021, my daughter, Ashley, asked me to consider moving up to New Hampshire with her and her soon to be husband. We bought the property we now call Sky View Farm and I started writing again. I currently have seven books in my children’s book series. The series is based on a lifetime of adventures that my daughters and I have shared as well as life lessons and life skills we have learned along the way. Each story focuses on soft concepts such as honesty, teamwork, rescue, community, empathy, family and relationships.
You ask me what I am most proud of….it is my daughters. I have helped them grow into strong, independent, smart and compassionate women. They have each followed their dreams in their own unique ways. They love what they do and they bring that passion with them where ever they go. It is one thing to say “follow your dreams” but it is another thing entirely to live those words. It is because of them that I have found the courage to follow my own dreams. I will be 58 years old this year. I am here to tell you that you are never too old (or too young!) to make changes and to pursue the things that bring you joy.
When adults read our stories, I hope they remember what it felt like to be young and to believe in yourself. When kids hear and/or read the stories, I hope that they realize that age is not always an indicator of wisdom and that young people can do great things. Finally, I hope that people walk away from these stories knowing that they can believe in themselves and the good they can do in the world.
Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.
A few years ago, (one of) my daughter’s and son-in-law and I bought a 250 year old house on top of a small mountain in NH. We moved in 3 of our horses, 3 dogs and a bunny. It’s not easy to combine homes with your adult children, and the animals had some grand ideas about their new living quarters too. There was so much space for all of us to roam and explore! And roam and explore we did.
The horses and dogs escaped. The bunny went free-range. It was chaos. And it was fun and entertaining (once everyone was safely corralled again).
It was my new home and animal escapades that made me pause and think back about the lifetime of animal adventures that my two daughters and I have shared over the last 20 years. When the girls were growing up, we always had at least 9 pets, between dogs, cats, rabbits, horses and an African fat-tailed gecko named Lightning. Our household was chaotic but it was filled with love and it gave my daughters a great understanding about what it meant to care for and be responsible for another living creature.
This was the inspiration for my children’s book series.
For the first time in 30 years, I started writing again. Pen to paper; keys to keyboard. When I was ready, I showed the manuscript to my daughter, Ashley. She read it and said “Mom, you need to finish this one”. That was all the encouragement I needed!
I did some research into the world of children’s book publishing and realized I needed the guidance of a seasoned editor. After scouring various websites, I found an editor that seemed like the right fit for me. She looked at my manuscript and respectfully told me that I had some thinking to do. I wrote a lovely rambling personal narrative that was fine for family gatherings but was not a viable commercial entity. This was the most honest advice I’d received up this point in the process and it was exactly what I needed to hear. Back to the keyboard I went to rewrite my stories. The difference this time was that I had more focus. I’d like to tell you that I had a clear intention of what I wanted to achieve with my stories, but that came much later! It would have been great to have both focus and intention at the same time, but it didn’t come together that way for me.
Once my manuscripts were edited, it was time to find an illustrator to help bring the stories to life. I took to Instagram and spent time looking at lots of different illustration styles and I kept coming back to one illustrator. Jess Bircham. I reached out to her, shared my stories, and held my breath. When I first reached out to her, she had over 100,000 followers on Instagram! I had no idea what I was doing. Why would she want to work with me? It ends up, Jess had always wanted to illustrate a children’s book that included horses. She said yes…and has illustrated every one of my seven stories as well as doing illustrations for various marketing campaigns. She is amazingly talented and insightful. She understands the personalities of each one of my human and animal characters and brings out the best of them in her illustrations.
Book design came next. I have to be honest…I went through a couple of book designers before I came up with the right one for me. I did learn a valuable lesson: even though I paid someone to do a job that I knew nothing about, I still had to pay attention to the details of what they were doing.
Once the fonts were picked, the text was laid out on each page, accents were placed on certain words and phrases and the legal language was added, it was time to head to print.
It is important to me that my creative and production team are US based. People told me that I could print my books less expensively overseas but that didn’t feel right for me. I found a wonderful print house based in Maryland. They were patient with all my questions. At one point in the process, there were mechanical issues at one of the printing plants and it looked like my book order was not going to ship as originally scheduled. This was a huge problem because I had committed to events based on their delivery dates! The print house managed to get a small run of my books pushed through and delivered to me in time for my events. I am grateful for all of their efforts; they will always be my first choice when it comes to printing.
Lessons learned:
1.It’s ok to rely on other people who have more knowledge of the industry but you should still listen to your own (inner) voice. No one knows your product or your intentions like you do. I think it’s really important to stay true to who you are during the process.
2. If you want something, ask for it. The worst thing that can happen is that someone says “no” to you. I see that as an opportunity to try a different path. Maybe that first path was never meant to be your path anyway :-)
3. How you handle adversity during the creative process can effect the quality and outcome of your work. I definitely had moments of extreme frustration during the publishing process but a good friend reminded me, as often as I needed to hear it, to take a breath. Taking a step away and then coming back with a clearer mind was great advice.
Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories?
One of the reasons I started the Sky View Farm Adventure series was because I wanted to share the special things that my daughters and I have done and learned together. The books were also meant to be a way to get me out of the house and connect with people. I work from home Monday-Friday and while I talk to clients on a regular basis, it is not the same as talking to and meeting people face-to-face.
Here’s the thing with these stories: they are personal. They remind people of what it was like to have a dog or a favorite pet. It reminds them about a time when being a child was innocent and easy. In the last two years, I have shared my stories and strangers have shared their stories with me. Building connections with people I would never have met during the course of my “normal” day has been a huge boost to my well-being.
Here are some of my favorite moments over the last few years:
My daughter, Gabi, has travelled with me to book events in other states so that we can continue our mom/daughter adventures.
A young girl shared her stories with me and told me she wanted to do what I do when she gets older.
Students at schools I visit share their writing with me.
Adults who have written stories but don’t know the next steps ask me about my process.
Families read the stories together and then take the ideas in the stories and create their own traditions and memories.
Maggie is the main character in my stories and Dutch is a mischievous miniature horse that steals your heart. At one event, I met a couple with the names Maggie and Dutch. They were were so funny and their personalities matched my characters!!
I met a young couple two years ago and they bought a few of my books for their nieces and nephews. I have seen them every year since I first published my stories and every year they buy a new book from me. This year, 2025, they found me at an event and introduced me to their newborn son.
I know marketing and sales are important…but so are connecting with people in a special and meaningful way. So many creative people have the opportunity to do that…I hope they see the impact their work can have.
If my books help, and inspire people to pursue their dreams, then I think I have done my job well.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://skyviewfarmadventures.com/
- Instagram: SkyVieFarmAdventures
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SkyViewFarmAdventures
