I wrote Tyler the Pterodactyl on a rainy weekday afternoon. I had known that I always wanted to write something, but I didn't know what I wanted to write, nor did I know what I wanted to write about. I actually started writing this sort of autobiogrophy if you will, and it was horribly sarcastic and almost a bit shameful. I was trying to be funny by using dark humor to illustrate the fact that I was adopted - truthfully it's how I coped with it up until very recently.
I sent a snippit to a couple of my closest friends and they were APPALLED at what I had written and they didn't find it funny, rather self-loathing and frightening. It was at this moment that I sort of had my "come to" moment where I knew what I wanted to write about, which was adoption and being adopted. However, I had yet to master how/in what format I wanted to write it in. I began writing poems because I felt it easier to convey feelings in an art form rather than convey them in a direct manner.
As I was writing poems, I escaped reality for a bit. I was in the zone and I was writing anything that came to mind and when I was pulled back into reality, I had written some couplets and they were in a happier tone and it hit me that what I really wanted to do was to write a children's book. I remember growing up not having many resources available to me to normalize being adopted, and so I felt very much an outsider. It was at that moment that I knew that I wanted to bring adoption into the conversation and make it less taboo.
I fell in love with the idea of writing a children's book and stayed up till 4:00AM that night writing my rough draft - I think I texted my family and friends once I finished, excited, asking them for their emails so I could send over a copy. I sent it over and got great feedback and constructive criticism and that's when I felt like I truly had something special... if you want to hear more about the nuances that was the pre-production of Tyler the Pterodactyl please come back and read more of the content! I promise it won't disappoint.
For now, we'll wrap up this portion of how Tyler came to be. Stay tuned for more Tyler related content as I will dive into all the nuances of self-publishing the book, like how I found the illustrator, Mousam, and how we almost went live with the wrong illustrations and several more stories!
Soaring off for now! - Matt Sidney, Chief Pterodactyl Officer
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