Cinda Jo Bauman: Children's Book Writer & Illustrator, Cut-Paper Artist, and More!

Archive for May, 2024

BOOK TWO COVER REVEAL

The Kindle Edition listing is up on Amazon now, and it will be available for purchase June 18th! Release date for the print book is pending. I told you it was getting close. I can’t wait to hold this book!!

About the cover art

Like the cover for Shuffle, I created the cover art for Fetch using cut-paper sculpture and then photographed it until I got the shadow effect I liked. Normally, I like a stronger shadow with my cut-paper art but his piece had more detail. The strong shadows were confusing, so I decided to soften them.

How do you think it turned out?

What are the books about?

Book 1, SHUFFLE (previously titled Only My Horses Know and available now), is about how Kylie learns to accept her mom’s mental illness after struggling to keep it a secret from everyone, even her best friend, Joey. Spending time with her horses is the only time she can get away from the worry, exhaustion, and stress that a twelve-year-old shouldn’t have to endure alone. She has an idea of using their horses to help with everyone’s healing, but it is such a big dream that she will somehow need to reach out for help. But that will require sharing her secret. 

In book 2, FETCH (available soon), Frankie’s anxiety has gotten even worse since the horrifying day that turned everyone against her and took away the one thing she loved – baseball pitching. Even here in Montana, she’s most comfortable hiding inside. When her family convinces her to venture outside, a mystery horse in the woods fetches her baseball! She can’t believe it happened and is sure no one else will either. Surprisingly, she makes friends with Kylie and Joey, who unlike everyone else, never treats her like she’s different. She really likes Joey and doubts he will ever like her back, especially if he hears about what happened at her last baseball game.   

Book 3, GALLOP (written and will be edited soon, availability TBD), introduces Eli. Eli is angry. His parents are getting a divorce. His best friend, Sam, now has his dad, and his mom’s best friend, Sam’s mom, now also has his dad. That’s messed up enough to make any teen angry and sad. Add to that his mom moved them to a rural town where he has no friends and no plans to make any. Kylie, Joey, and Frankie are determined to change that. Eli discovers that riding crazy fast on a horse is the only thing that gives him a break from the anger and sadness. Even that could change if the horse he connected with gets sold. He must come up with a way to keep that from happening and find a way to forgive the people who turned his life upside down. 

I’ll keep you posted!

Thank you for letting me share my excitement. Yippee!!!

Reviews anyone, please?

I have been working on a HUGE (3’x4′) painting. Since I’m at a spot where I don’t know what to do next, I’m taking a break to do some book marketing.

The second book in the Hope and Horses series is on the final round of edits and they are very near complete. I am getting excited! Well, more excited!

Book one, Only My Horses Know, came out a few years ago. We decided that the cover needed to be rebranded for consistency with the next two books, and to allow for a larger and bolder title font. I liked “shuffle” because in this story, the main character deals with her mother’s mental illness which keeps them shuffling between good days and bad days. She also shuffles between having to be the responsible adult in the family and being a carefree pre-teen. The horses they train shuffle about as horses do, and one horse even shuffles between being calm and being afraid. More to come on this decision in the publisher’s newsletter, but here is the result:

Shuffle (previously Only My Horses Know)

What are your thoughts on the new title and cover? Please leave a comment!

I have a big favor to ask you. Amazon and Goodreads websites did not carry over the reviews from the first title, so now my poor book has zero ratings! I would appreciate it so much if you could take a minute to post a review. If you have already reviewed the book, you can still access Only My Horses Know to simply copy your review to paste it into a new review for Shuffle. If you have read it but not reviewed it, please take a minute to write a review or give me some stars. Amazon requires that you have made a certain dollar amount of purchases to be able to post reviews, so if that doesn’t work for you, please use Goodreads.com. All you need is to create a simple account there. Or, even better, do both!

You may notice that Amazon has Shuffle categorized as young adult. This will soon be corrected to middle-grade since this story is geared more towards tween aged readers.

My first goal is to hit 50 reviews since I read it triggers Amazon to give the book more visibility. So come on 50!! Your support means the world to me, and I would hate to lose those first wonderful reviews. Plus, if you could share this post, I may get new readers which would be super. Here are the links to Amazon and Goodreads:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/208828802-shuffle

Thank you, thank you!