Seven years ago John Severo wrote a children’s book as a Christmas present for his nieces and nephew and then sent the manuscript of “The Little Firefly” to various publishers.
Unfortunately, no one picked it up.
“At the time, the quality of my writing was pretty poor,” said Severo, an English and government economics teacher at Daniels Academy in Heber. “I had the storyline down, but the story wasn’t polished and marketable. And it was too long.”
Severo kept the book on the back burner until last year.
“My wife Annie said I should rework it with rhymes, which gets a little more difficult because you’re dealing with meter and rhythm,” he said. “It did take some time, but it worked out.”
The book is about Star, a firefly who befriends a snail named Pokey, Severo said.
“It’s like that myth of the mouse and the lion because while I was doing research for the book, I found that firefly larvae are usually eaten by snails.
“But in the book, Star and Pokey become friends.”
Severo’s idea for Star the Firefly was a nod to his childhood.
“I grew up in Virginia and we had fireflies out there,” he said. “When I started writing the story, I was living in California and they didn’t have fireflies there.”
As a kid, Severo caught fireflies, and put them in glass jars, like the boy in the book does.
“I would poke holes in the top lid of the jar and think the fireflies would live forever,” he said. “I was always sad to learn they don’t.”
When rewriting the book, Severo kept Star and Pokey intact, but basically cut out half the book.
“I left the core content of the story, but went through and took out whole paragraphs,” he said of the early stages of the process. “I started from the beginning and worked through it until the end.”
The process took a total of 50 hours, Severo said. And once it was done in March, he sent the manuscript off.
A few weeks later, Black Rose Publishing responded.
“I’m so thankful to them and their support,” Severo said. “They are a small publishing company that gave me a chance.”
Originally, the book was going to be published in June, but Black Rose held it back because of the illustrations.
“They recommended I collaborate with an artist named Cristan Hellen,” Severo said. “She is the go-to artist for the company, and I think she captured the essence of the story in her drawings.”
On Dec. 1, “The Little Firefly” was published by Black Rose Publishing.
“Black Rose was very accommodating,” Severo said. “We have a book that we’re both proud of. It’s what I wanted even down to the title of the story, which was a working title at the time. The only changes in the text are the changes that I made.”
That’s a far cry than where Severo was when he got out of college, before he began to teach.
“I majored in English and a couple of the first jobs I had was doing creative writing for an in-house marketing sales brochures for Herbalife International in Los Angeles,” he said. “I enjoyed the creative part of it all, but I soured to the process because I would pour my heart into the articles and then it would go through a slew of mid-level and upper-management editors.
” the time it was published, it wasn’t what I had done. So it was frustrating.”
After leaving Herbalife, Severo began teaching.
“It’s all been in the private-school sector,” he said. “In California, I was working with street kids, who were not functioning in the public school system. So they were shipped off to what is called non-public schools, which were affiliated with the district.”
Severo found himself teaching teens boys who were fighting drug addiction, sexual abuse and gangs.
“There is a burn-out factor and I think every teacher who works in that environment gets to a point where they need to create more mellow surroundings for themselves,” he said. “And since I had always been interested in creative writing, I decided I wanted to morph away from teaching and become an author.”
Still, a beginning author needs a day job. In 2007, Severo moved to Midway, and began teaching at a school in Oakley, before he started at Daniel’s Academy.
“The academy is a private boarding school for teenage boys with unique needs,” he said. “It isn’t as hard and heavy as the California school.”
A few days ago, one of the boys brought “The Little Firefly” to Severo for an autograph.
“One of the mothers bought it and sent it to the school,” he said. “And it was an honor being asked to sign it.”
Severo was about to sign the book, when he froze.
“It was the first published copy that I had been asked to autograph,” he said. “I sat down with the pen in my hand and I thought, ‘Gosh, what do I even say?'”
Working on “The Little Firefly” has fueled Severo’s enthusiasm for writing. He has since completed another children’s book called “Two Dogs, One Bone,” which was inspired by his two dogs, and he is currently working on a social-political satirical novel for adults.
“The Little Firefly” is available at www.amazon.com , www.barnesandnoble.com and www.borders.com, he said.
“This has all been a humbling experience,” he said. “My wife tells me that it’s a huge accomplishment, but sometimes I just sit and think, ‘It’s just a paperback children’s book.’ And I’m told that I need to change that way of thinking.”