Children’s Book – BMW the Author

Barely Alive After 2025

December 9, 2025December 6, 2025 by benmweilertNo Comments

If there's one tweak to a famous quote I love it's, "We do this not because it is easy, but because we thought it would be easy." If this doesn't describe this year's creative efforts, then I hope I don't give myself nearly as much to do next year. I figured I was due a break after a few years of recording and publishing audiobooks for The Fluxion Trilogy. Instead, a project I thought would take a month ended up sucking me in for several. The emotional burden of many things this year forced myself to give my creativity some grace to let a few things drop from the plan I set forth in January. Still, I managed to be quite productive on the few things that mattered most. Here's the summary... 2025 YEAR IN REVIEW The $1,300 Alphabet While I started The $1,300 Alphabet last year, there was plenty of activity with my illustrator, Nancy Anderson, to get this alphabet book containing...

Striving for 2025-ing

January 7, 2025January 1, 2025 by benmweilertNo Comments

Now that 2024 is over, I'm glad to see my creative calendar lighten up significantly. Last year, I had something to work on for every single month. While many of the tasks were easy and only took a couple days to complete, others expanded and took more time than I expected. Having sat down and worked through what I want to accomplish this year, I'm glad to see it's slower than usual. Of course, there's a lot of moving parts in multiple projects, so here are the broad strokes of what I want to accomplish in 2025. The $1,300 Alphabet With last year's release of Bountiful Bunnies, I'm on a bit of a children's picture book kick as I continue to work with artist Nancy Anderson to illustrate this year's release, The $1,300 Alphabet. I am convinced that if kids can memorize the Latin names of dinosaurs, then they can also learn "$50 words" like "Akimbo" or "Defenestrate." This book has been...

2024’s Checklist

December 10, 2024December 5, 2024 by benmweilertNo Comments

I love the quote, "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail." This year, I had an ambitious goal to accomplish something every month. I was wrapping up a few years of 10th Anniversary projects and wanted to get a head start on the next few years of projects. Some of these tasks were easier than others and some took a lot more work than I had expected. Ultimately, I'm proud of what I accomplished this year, so here's how my initial January plan stacked up... JANUARY/FEBRUARY: Releasing the complete, definitive edition of The Fluxion Trilogy wasn't too difficult for the hardcover, paperback, and eBook versions. However, all the experience I gained from producing the first three audiobooks came to a head when I realized I needed to re-record a lot of what I had previously done the last few years. This set me back a bit as I had originally only expected that I needed to record the Appendix...

More in 2024

January 2, 2024 by benmweilert1 Comment

For the last few years, I've been more productive than I had to be. Since 2018, my singular goal has been to publish a single new book wholly written by myself each year. This means that being in an anthology doesn't count, as the entire project must be something I wrote. However, it also means that compilations of things I've written (like blog posts or short stories) can count as my annual release. There also isn't a length requirement, which is why I count children's picture books and cookbooks as meeting the intent of my goal. Having published not only a 10th Anniversary edition of The Fluxion Trilogy for the last few years (including audiobook versions of these books), but a new book as well, I decided it was time to refocus my efforts for the next few years before I have to put out a 10th Anniversary edition of Fourteener Father in 2028. The plan for 2024 still has some...