S4E10: Writing Minecraft From Home with #1 New York Times Bestselling Author Tracey Baptiste

Speaker 0 (00:00:01) - Forced to work from home by your employer laid off or feeling depressed at home. Do you wanna make money working from anywhere? We'll show you how to do it from your couch. It's time for another episode of The Work From Home Show, coming to you from their homes in Austin, Texas, and Tampa, Florida. Here are your hosts, Adam and Naresh.

Speaker 1 (00:00:28) - Hey everybody. Welcome to The Work From Home Show. Shout out to all our homies, homeboys, homegirls, home Trans, all the work from Homers out there. I'm na This, uh, today we have Tracy Batiste on the show. She is the number one New York Times bestselling author of Minecraft, the Crash in the new book, mermaid and Pirate. Tracy Batiste, thank you so much for joining us on the show.

Speaker 2 (00:00:55) - Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (00:00:58) - Yeah, and I'm really looking forward to reading your book, mermaid In In Pirate. I haven't gotten a chance to, to read the hard version yet, but I'm gonna be reading it to my children. Yes, I think it's, uh, it, it's, it's very different from your Minecraft. Now, your Minecraft book, I believe is more a novel if I'm not mistaken. And Mermaid and Pirate is a children's book,

Speaker 2 (00:01:20) - Right? Yeah. So I write pretty much always for kids. It just, it sort of depends on the age group. And Mermaid and Pirate is a picture book. It is for younger kids and my books like Minecraft and the Jammies series are for older kids. Ones who are reading on their own and who wanna read longer novels. So yeah. Um, mermaid and Pirate, definitely for the little guys.

Speaker 1 (00:01:47) - Tell us a little bit about how you got interested in writing Fiction Fantasy, if you want to call it. Walk us through your journey. Is this something that you always wanted to do as a kid? Did you use to watch a lot of Disney movies? Tell us more.

Speaker 2 (00:02:03) - Yeah, I actually decided that I wanted to be a writer when I was three, which is kind of ridiculous. Oh, you know, , I, um, it's kind of ridiculous cuz you know, like when you're, when you're really little and somebody asks you what you wanna be, it's always like all of these different things. And, um, I had so many books in my house and a lot of them were fairy tales. Um, a lot of them were grims fairy tales. And I wanted to be a writer because I really love stories. My mom, my dad, everybody in my family would read to me, they would tell me stories. There was a big oral tradition in Tritan Tobago where I grew up. And so I was, you know, steeped in stories all the time. So it did not seem like that farfetched to think that I could grow up and be one of these people who has their name on the cover of a book. So I was three when I decided that that was a thing that I wanted to do. And, um, even though I diverged from that a little bit, I was a teacher, I was an editor and so on. I always was interested in storytelling. And so I always came back to this idea that I could write stories. So yeah, I started writing really, really early and kept with it. Um, my first published book came out in 2005, and I have been publishing pretty steadily ever since.

Speaker 1 (00:03:27) - I didn't know that your first published book came out in oh five, that's nearly 20 years ago. Was that through a traditional I'm, as there wasn't self-publishing back then, so I'm assuming that was a, a book deal that you got for that first book.

Speaker 2 (00:03:41) - Yeah, that one was Simon and Schuster. And since I have worked with a lot of different publishers, uh, mermaid and Pirate comes out through Workman, which is a division of Hasat. And, um, they have actually been my home for quite some time now. I have a series with them. The Jumpy series is a fantasy for middle grade readers. I have this picture book, obviously. I have, um, a non-fiction book called African Icons, 10 People Who Shaped History that is also for middle grade readers. And so yeah, they've, they've been my home for several books.

Speaker 1 (00:04:22) - How many total books have you written?

Speaker 2 (00:04:26) - I think at this point it's 20,

Speaker 1 (00:04:29) - So no, you can't, you can't even keep track the podcast you're

Speaker 2 (00:04:31) - Sent. Yeah, I I'm not exactly sure because, well, part of the part of it is that I am constantly working, right? Like, uh, you know, your podcast is for working from home writers, uh, working, you know, people working from home. And that is 100% who I am. I am a mom who works from home and I am constantly working on something. So I just handed in a book on Friday, just gone, and I have another book that I need to hand in at the end of two months and yeah. Oh wow. Just, you know, cost

Speaker 1 (00:05:03) - From the same publisher. They want you to submit some,

Speaker 2 (00:05:06) - Um, no, these are actually two different publishers that I'm working with this time. Um, so the same publisher from Mermaid and Pirate, uh, is the same publisher that I owe a book to in two months, but I owe a book. I, uh, the book I handed in on Friday was for a different publisher. So yeah, I am just, you know, it is very much a, um, a business and as a business I am always working and I'm always working on something. I'm always doing something new. I'm always looking for my next story. I'm always looking for the next thing that is going to engage a young reader and yeah. Right now, so I'm hoping that Marian and Pirate is that thing that engages the, the next set of readers for me.

Speaker 1 (00:05:54) - Can you tell us a little, you, you said this is your business and Mermaid and Pirate is a, a children's picture book, and you have an illustrator who did the pictures, Minecraft, the crash, similar, you have, uh, images that go along with it. So how did you partner up with your collaborators and you guys just continue to push out more projects together?

Speaker 2 (00:06:18) - Right, so for the most part, the publisher pairs me up with an illustrator for the picture books because with picture books, obviously, you know, they're, they're pictures throughout with, uh, projects like Minecraft Crash and the Jumpy Series. Those I really, um, only need a cover illustrator for. And because I obviously am not an illustrator, I only write, um, the publisher pairs me up with who they think is going to be the right person to convey, uh, the images that they need on that cover or in those interiors in the right way. So, um, so they, there was a cover designer for Minecraft, the Crash, um, the, I think it's the same cover de designer that does all of the Minecraft novels that Mojang puts out. Um, so, you know, that was something that had already been planned even before I came on board to do a Minecraft book. Um, Vivian Tow was the person who did the covers for the entire Jumbies series, and Liesel Adams did the, um, illustrations for Mermaid and Pirates. So the cover in all of the interiors, all of those bright, vibrant colors and the, um, the facial expressions that are so amazingly expressive for both Mermaid and Pirate because, you know, they don't speak the same language. So a lot of their, a lot of their communication is non-verbal. And, uh, Liesl was able to, to convey that in the, in the illustrations.

Speaker 1 (00:07:55) - Now, your book, Mindcraft, is that based on the video game?

Speaker 2 (00:07:59) - It is a world, it is a story set in the world of Minecraft. So the, uh, Mojang wanted me to write a fantasy because that is what I am best known for. I am really well known for writing fantasy, for writing, um, action scenes. And they wanted something like that for, um, their Minecraft world. So they came to me and asked me what ideas I had for it, and I was able to come up with something fairly quickly and write this story in which, um, the main character Bianca gets stuck inside of a virtual reality Minecraft world.

Speaker 1 (00:08:44) - So to, did you already know about Minecraft before or did you have to start doing some research or playing the game, or how did that

Speaker 2 (00:08:53) - Oh, I, I mean, I knew what Minecraft was because I have, I come from a family of gamers, so literally everybody in my house played Minecraft except for me. I, I get really nauseated, um, playing video games or watching video games, so it's really difficult for me to, to play video games at all. Um, but I did know about Minecraft because I, my kids were younger at the time and they were huge Minecraft fans and they helped me a lot. My son especially, he was 10 at the time I started working on this book and he became the consultant on this Oh wow. Book for me, cuz he would show me how to play the game, you know, for as long as I could stand because again, I do get nauseated. Um, and he would answer all my questions about how things could work in the story and what, you know, I could or could not get away with. And he did such a good job of it that Mojang actually gave him credit on the book as a consultant. So when you look on that, on that title page at the very bottom, his name is on there as a consultant,

Speaker 1 (00:10:04) - Minecraft consultant. I like it.

Speaker 2 (00:10:07) - Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:10:07) - Talking about your family a little bit more, you said that your, your kids are now somewhat grown. Mm-hmm. , you work from home. Tell us a little bit about the overall journey. Okay. So you told us you started at three years old, you wanted to be a writer or you started writing at three, but like you, did he go to college study literature or English or something? Did he go straight to writing out of college or did he work a job? Tell us a little bit more.

Speaker 2 (00:10:37) - Sure. So I did start writing, you know, pretty early. I think I tried to write my very first novel when I was about 12. And that of course was not a success because I was 12 . You know, I really, um, was just starting on my journey then. But I kept writing. I did go to college, I went to NYU and I got my degree in literature. My bachelor's degree is in literature. And then I went back and I got my master's degree in education cuz I thought that I wanted to be a teacher as well. And I was teaching pre-K, kindergarten, second grade, sixth grade. These were all the grades I was teaching. And I found that as a teacher, I was so busy and I was so, uh, involved in what I was doing in the classroom that I really didn't have time to write.

Speaker 2 (00:11:33) - So I decided to leave teaching and I then I went into educational publishing. So I became a publisher, um, an editor, uh, for an educational publisher. And that really afforded me more time to write. So while I was editing, I was also writing, and that's how my first book was published. I was, I was able to finish it while I was working as an editor. I would come home at night and write. And after that I was publishing more books while I was working as an editor. And then when the first Jammies book came out, uh, that was in 2015, that's when I decided that I was going to start writing full-time. So it took me, uh, quite a long time. It really was 10 years between my first book being published and, uh, the ju the first Jumbies book being published and me deciding that I could now work from home on my writing solely, um, at that point.

Speaker 1 (00:12:34) - That's a pretty cool story. And, and then as far as working from home goes, you get most of your ideas from home, your writing at home, do you have a set location at home to, to do your writing or are you just doing it on the fly?

Speaker 2 (00:12:49) - I do have an office. So you are talking to me right now inside of my office, and this is where I do most of my work. I find that it is easier for me to have a specific location where I do most of the work that I, I need to do. But usually when I start a story, it starts in like little bits and pieces. So often I have a notebook that I just walk around with and wherever I get ideas, you know, as I'm walking around or if I'm traveling or whatever, I will write them down in the notebook. And most of my stories begin longhand, even if they are picture books. Even if they are novels, um, they always start longhand. So I start them, you know, writing and it doesn't have to be inside my office that I'm doing that longhand writing, uh, of the initial ideas that can really happen anywhere.

Speaker 2 (00:13:45) - But once I start really solidifying what the story is going to be, that's when I come to my office, I sit at my desk, I turn on the computer, and I go to my notes, my handwritten notes, and that's when I start writing. Um, I often then print it out so that I can read it and mark it up long hand. That often happens in my office, but doesn't necessarily have to happen in my office. So I would say, um, you know, like maybe 75% of my writing happens in my office at home, and the rest of it might happen really anywhere.

Speaker 1 (00:14:23) - You wrote a piece in the New York Times titled Mermaids Have Always Been Black. What do you mean by that?

Speaker 2 (00:14:33) - So when, uh, Disney announced that Halle Bailey was going to play Ariel, there was a lot of pushback about this idea of this black woman playing a mermaid. And people didn't seem to be able, able to grasp the concept that, um, mermaids can literally be anybody, right? Um, I mean, there was the initial kind of ridiculousness of this is a fantasy character, so it doesn't really matter what the race of the fantasy character is, but because of my growing up in Trinidad and Tobago and my particular interest in, uh, folklore, fantasy and mythology from all over the world, but very specifically the folklore, fantasy and mythologies of black and brown people, um, I happened to know that there were a lot of mermaids, um, from various cultures that were black and brown, um, but they didn't have a chance to, you know, like have a Disney movie made about them.

Speaker 2 (00:15:44) - So that piece was really about the idea that, um, that mermaids could be anybody from anywhere, but also to introduce the idea that, um, mermaid stories have existed in all of these different places. So for example, um, South Africa, um, has in, uh, a place called Caru has these cave paintings of mermaids from, you know, like millennia ago. And, um, Persia had mermaids. Um, there are ancient stories from China and Japan that have mermaids. Um, the Maori people from New Zealand have mermaids. There are mermaids from, uh, south America and Central America. So, you know, mermaids really can come from anywhere. And the idea that this one particular casting was somehow, um, you know, inappropriate because it was a mermaid and mermaids can only look a certain way was, was a little bit ridiculous. And so that's really what that, um, op-ed was about. And you know, it was after that that my editor, she asked if I would write a Black Mermaid story and I said, yeah, sure. You know, I've always loved mermaids and it had never occurred to me to write a Black Mermaid story particularly. Um, I had touched on black mermaids in one of my series, but you know, not a story that's centered on black mermaids. And that's really where Mermaid and Pyre started. It started because of all of this sermon drawing and then, you know, the op-ed and then my editor saying, Hey, hey, how about a Black Mermaid story? And, and then Mermaid and Pirate was born.

Speaker 1 (00:17:33) - That's Tracy Bist, number one, New York Times bestselling author of Minecraft, the Crash. Check out her new book, mermaid and a Pirate, go to Amazon. Her website is tracy batist.com. That's b a p t i s t e. And Tracy is also spelled t r a c e y. So Tracy Batist, t r a c e y b a p t i s t e.com. Tracy, any final thoughts you want to share with our listeners or anything else you want to promote?

Speaker 2 (00:18:09) - Sure. Uh, thank you so much, first of all for having me and for, um, you know, spelling out my name for the website. I really appreciate that. Um, you know, I really just hope that people enjoy Mermaid and Pirate. I hope that when they read it aloud to their kids, that they have a fun time talking like a mermaid and talking like a pirate and enjoying the absolutely gorgeous illustrations by Liesel Adams. And thank you again for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:18:40) - Thank you for writing the book. I, like I said, I'm really looking forward once I get it delivered to read it to my kids. They're young once an infant wants a toddler, so it'll

Speaker 2 (00:18:51) - Be Oh, perfect.

Speaker 1 (00:18:51) - Yeah, it, it, it'll be fun. And, and then we could watch the, the movie that comes out this, this summer also, maybe mm-hmm. . So it, it ties in very well. So once again, Tracy Bice, thank you so much for joining us on The Work From Home Show to all our listeners. Check us out at work from home show.com. That's www.workfromhomeshow.com. Get on our mailing list there. If you have any questions, comments, if you wanna leave a note for Tracy that you want us to forward, email us hello at work from home show.com, that's Hello at Work from home show.com. Follow us on social media, we're on Twitter, we're on Facebook, we're on a few others, just search for us. You can leave us a review on iTunes. Tune in Stitcher, Spotify, whatever podcasting platform you use. And until next week, keep on working from home.