It’s been four years since my last post and it all seems like a lifetime with COVID in the mix. Like many of you, the last two of them have forced me to reflect on what’s important and how fleeting time is. My kids LITERALLY grew up during COVID. For those I don’t know personally,… Continue reading Post Pandemic Ponders (Part 1)
Happy New Year and a fond farewell to 2017!! Like most, I’m looking forward to new goals and new adventures but I’m actually most excited to celebrate my successes. This year, I say goodbye to one of the most important chapters of my life – being a full time mom. After giving birth to my… Continue reading Turning Pages…
“Your words become your destiny”…a paraphrase of a favorite quote by the wise Mahatma Gandhi…powerful words which resonate loudly with me, especially this time of year. I have SO MUCH to be thankful for, yet I often find myself complaining more when things go wrong than sharing the things I appreciate. While I believe the… Continue reading Writing to Right: Positive Habits
My writing journey reminds me daily that there are many things I can’t control. As a wife, I can control my words and actions…my emotional investment in my marriage. As a mother, I can control the way I raise my kids, the food I feed their bodies and their minds. And as a marketer, I… Continue reading Life Stories
This week I hit another milestone in my writing journey – my first heartbreak. As a new picture book writer I was THRILLED when an agent from a dream agency responded to my query the next day with a request for additional materials. But for the past two weeks, I have LITERALLY been sitting on… Continue reading Keep Calm and Query On!
Last week my writing journey became real – I began receiving responses! I have been so distracted for the past month that I forgot all about my pending queries…until last week I received my first response, the first business day after I sent it! “Dear Angel, I am intrigued by Look Inside London’s Closet. Do… Continue reading Rejection Reflection
There is far more to learn about the publishing industry than I could have ever imagined! To get myself up to speed, I’ve been reaching out to fellow writers and agents for feedback and insights the past several weeks. My first bit of good news came as a result of these efforts when a friend of… Continue reading Query Quandaries
My name is Angel Chu and I am a wife and mother to three beautiful children. I have always had a passion…a talent…for writing but have always considered it a hobby. In fact, I’ve always had a love for the arts, of all kinds. As a child, I sang in church, took every art class possible… Continue reading A journey begins!!
Inspiration is a funny thing. Hard to find, impossible to force, truly amazing once it’s found! The inspiration for my book was a combination of things which sparked an idea I knew I had to pursue. Having worked since I was 14 years old, as refreshing as it is to take a break and focus on my family, around 6 months in I began to feel like I needed a purpose…a goal…beyond my four walls. That purpose presented itself in the form of an Usborne Facebook party that a former coworker hosted last November. I had already attended a party for another friend a month earlier and purchased several books which had quickly become treasures in my children’s library because of their high quality and unique approach to educational topics. I was already pondering the idea of becoming a consultant when my coworker invited me to her Usborne party, run by a close friend of hers who it turns out worked at my previous employer on my old team! We quickly struck up a lengthy conversation and before I knew it, I was joining her team and starting my own Usborne adventure.
The kit cost $75 dollars but came with 10 books, a website and all the supplies needed to start my business which was perfect since this was something I always wanted to do. I quickly purchased http://www.usbornebookangel.com and business cards to begin branding my business and began selling! My husband (and friends!) probably thought I was crazy – I treated my consultant role like a CEO role in my own company and quickly began hitting milestones…$1000 sales in 30 days…50% refund on consultant kit…$50 free books and merchandise…first recruit…$25 free books…second recruit…$75 more free books…before I knew it I had turned my $75 investment into $600 commission and $600 in free books for my kids!! Now don’t get me wrong, I was fully aware of this new adventure’s limitations – 25% commission on sales was certainly not going to make me rich but it would pay for my mommy and me classes with London, morning coffee and the occasional splurge on clothing – and it was so satisfying! My first attempt at entrepreneurship had yielded a 400% monetary returnROIF…but more importantly, it had yielded an ROIF, an emotional return, a return on investment in family. It had reenergized my love of books and desire to capture my creative vision on pen and paper in pursuit of a lifelong goal.
Over the past few months I have spent hours reading these amazing books to my children, quality time we have both come to look forward to. This quality time not only sparked a passion for learning in Mason but the inspiration for my children’s book – a book which I hope will ignite the same love of reading and learning in your home as it did in mine.
…so here I am! Anxiously excited to write my next chapter…and hopefully share it with the world in the very near future!
Angel Writes a Book 