Tom Lemery (left) and Dave Ross

I am pleased to have on Jemsbooks Guest Author Segment, Authors/Illustrators, Dave Ross and Tom Lemery. It is wonderful to have you both here today to tell my readers about your exciting new book, T’Bugs, and its beautiful cover!

First please let me fill you in on how I met Dave Ross. On a vacation in May in Sicily (I posted about this trip in May 2017) Dave Ross and his lovely wife, Kathy, were part of our small group of twelve travelers. As we were talking, Dave mentioned that he was an author/illustrator and had written several books. Of course, being an author myself, I was quite excited to find someone to talk to about my work too. We had a wonderful discussion, sharing our promotion ideas, publishing, writing, etc. All those fantastic things we authors can’t get enough of. LOL!

When I mentioned about having him on my blog, Dave jumped at the chance to promote his work. He was kind enough to send me copies of his fabulous books. I read and shared them with my grandchildren who are thrilled to have them. I will be reading and reviewing this newest book, soon.

Well, now Dave and Tom, please tell us about your book,  T’Bugs. 

Bugs by Dave Ross and Tom Lemery

Our collaboration began almost ten years ago when Tom and I worked together on a project for Helping Hands School. Helping Hands is a preschool for special needs students in Clifton Park, NY. At that time, Tom owned Creatacor, a local business.

He wanted to celebrate Creatacor’s 20th anniversary by giving back to the community. I was head of building and grounds at the school. Tom reached out to our school and we sat down to brainstorm the best way to make use of his generosity. Turns out, we both brought an interesting skill set to the problem. Tom was the CEO of a company that created and built high end trade show exhibits for companies like GE, Sylvania, LEGO, Virgin Atlantic and many more.

My background included writing and illustrating children’s books. We were
both visual artists, but with very different careers. We designed and built a decorative fencing solution to keep our young students safe while playing outside.

We both enjoyed the creative process of solving this problem and decided to seek other ways we could use our talents together. Since we both were big fans of full-length animated movies, we decided to try our hand at screen writing. More brainstorming resulted in a unique cast of genetically engineered characters.

Technobuggies [as we first called them] were half insect and half electronic devices. We imagined a not-to-distant future where computers could walk, cellphones could fly, and lightbulbs could think. We started by trading a storyline back and forth via email and took turns revising and expanding the original concept.

Several years later, we had Technobuggies the screenplay, a Hollywood agent, and a few nibbles from various producers in Tinseltown. Following a couple more years of frustrating wheel spinning with the movie business, we decided to fire our agent, and rework the screenplay into T’Bugs, a chapter book for young readers.

Last month T’Bugs was published by Create Space and is currently available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle versions.

Purchase Links:

Create Space

Amazon

Connect with Dave & Tom on their website.

Thank you, Dave and Tom, for stopping by and sharing your beautiful new book. It looks like it will be a lot of fun for middle-graders/preteens, young adults, and those who are young at heart.

I have just begun reading their fascinating book and promise to post my review here when finished.

Thank you, everyone, for stopping by. I hope you will check out Dave and Tom’s book on Amazon. Please be kind and leave reviews for authors. They will love you for it! I know how much I appreciate receiving them.

Remember:  READING GIVES YOU WINGS TO FLY! SOAR WITH JEMSBOOKS!

Blessings & hugs!

Janice