From the time she was a little girl, Cal Poly alumna Jacey Verdicchio always wanted to write books, but never imagined it would actually happen. Now, at the age of 21, she has published her first children’s book, “A King’s Decree and the Brave Three.”
The book is based on a Bible passage about three men who must decide whether to trust their king or God for protection.
“I had always really loved writing,” Verdicchio said. “When I was little kid in elementary school I said, ‘Oh I want to be an author when I grow up’ but then through high school I just sort of put it aside because that’s not practical.”
The 2008 graduate said she always wanted to influence children and had even explored teaching as an option. She realized this was not the career path she wanted to take and upon reevaluating her earlier aspirations, decided she should pursue writing because it’s what she loved to do.
Her desire to involve children led her to try her hand at writing children’s books, so Verdicchio began learning about the book market and researching publishers. The English major said she felt her first few attempts at writing were “cute” but questioned whether they added anything to books already on the market.
A breakthrough occurred when Verdicchio signed up for a storytelling class taught by Russell Swanagon at Cal Poly. A video the class watched showed professional storytellers at a festival and one storyteller in particular caught Verdicchio’s attention.
“There was a guy on there who had taken the story of “Jack and the Beanstalk” and made it rhyme,” she said. “I really liked the story and I don’t really like the story of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’… but I was so drawn into it because of the rhyming and trying to predict what the next word was going to be.”
Verdicchio also noticed that all the children in the audience seemed to love the story because they sat perfectly still and their eyes never left the storyteller.
The aspiring author had previously experimented with writing Christian books and decided to put that idea together with rhyming. Verdicchio’s parents had read the Bible to her as a child, but she doesn’t remember having any other books that “really taught (her) something about God.”
The inspiration for her first book stemmed from the idea to take a passage from the Bible, and without significantly altering it, write it in a rhyme. Verdicchio said she couldn’t leave the idea alone and wrote “A King’s Decree and the Brave Three” as a class assignment for the storytelling class.
Swanagon said he remembers Verdicchio as an “enthusiastic, vibrant storyteller” who was very excited about writing her story.
The full-time student wrote the book in three weeks while juggling Bible study, a part-time job and 16 units, but said she loved doing it.
“My alarm would go off and I’d be like, “Oh good, time to work on my writing,'” Verdicchio said. “It was easy to get up because I really wanted to do it.”
She then decided to recite it as a poem at a family event on New Year’s Eve and said that gave her a solid deadline for perfecting her rhyme scheme and syllables. Verdicchio wasn’t expecting much for the poem’s first “public appearance”, but said the story was well received and she saw the same reaction from the listening children as the ones on the video enjoying “Jack and the Beanstalk.”
Verdicchio said only her husband really encouraged her to publish the story, but both her parents supported her throughout the process. Her mother helped her put together pieces to send to magazines when she was younger and still proofreads most of her stories to this day.
Deciding that the worst possible scenario was a company telling her they didn’t want to publish “A King’s Decree and the Brave Three,” Verdicchio conducted more research to find companies that had histories of publishing children’s books, especially Christian children’s books.
“One of the biggest mistakes that authors make is that they don’t do their research about different publishers so they don’t send it to the publisher that wants what they have to offer,” Verdicchio said. “For instance, if a publisher only publishes two children’s books a year, you probably don’t want to send your children’s book to them because that’s not their specialty.”
Verdicchio only sent her manuscript to two companies but received a contract offer from Tate Publishing. According to their Web site, Tate Publishing is a “Christian based, family owned, main-line publishing organization with a mission to discover and market unknown authors.”
Another author told Verdicchio it took her nine years to get published and Verdicchio said she tells other aspiring authors that this is the more likely scenario.
“I don’t think (I got published so fast) because my book was so great but just that I had put a lot of prayer into it and done the research to find somebody that would want my book,” she said.
“Getting published is difficult and challenging so I think it’s marvelous (that Verdicchio’s book got published),” Swanagon said.
Verdicchio is now in the process of marketing her book and though it’s not as fun as actually writing her stories, the process is educational. The new author already has another story in the works, but said she wants to give her first book more time on the market before she launches into the publishing process again.
Verdicchio said she hopes to return to the San Luis Obispo area soon and credits her English professors at Cal Poly, as well as her English major, with indirectly influencing her writing.
“I feel if I hadn’t gone to Cal Poly, if I hadn’t done English, then I probably wouldn’t have come around to writing (“A King’s Decree and the Brave Three”) just because you’re thinking in terms of reading and writing all the time as an English major,” Verdicchio said.
“A King’s Decree and the Brave Three” book is available at jaceyverdicchio.com, amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and various bookstores.