Clarendon native pens, illustrates children’s book

Ashlyn Tubbs Grotegut has made writing a career, but her latest endeavor – authoring and illustrating a children’s book – turned out to be a bigger challenge than she expected.

In 2018, the Clarendon native was attending DFWCon – a conference for writers – hoping to get information for a different project, but there was just one problem. Attendees are supposed to come with a story idea to pitch.

“So I thought, I’ll do a children’s story,” she said. “That will be easy.”

She soon found out there was nothing easy about it. For starters, her story was 1,000 words long, and children’s books are more typically 500 words long. And then there were all kinds of other things to learn that were different from her experience as a journalist.

“I had to learn the publishing business,” Grotegut said.

Her original idea for a series of school supply stories was shot down by those in the business.

“We don’t even know if your first book will do well,” they told her. “Why would we commit to a series?”

So she focused her effort on one book, cut the length in half, and ultimately decided to self-publish through Amazon. Then after months of work, Ernie the Eraser became a reality.

The book has a very personal touch. The lead character Ernie is named for her grandfather, her grandmother lends her name to Patsy the pencil, and her mother provides the name for Jen the school teacher.

But this was no ordinary children’s book. The story of a pink eraser who thinks he has no friends is illustrated entirely by construction paper that Grotegut cut out, positioned, and photographed to create every scene in the book. Dots that decorate the book inside and out were created with a hole punch. Patsy the Pencil was comprised of seven different pieces of paper, and then there was depth and shading and other issues… such as her pets getting into her work space.

“I had to learn about Photoshop and figure out how to use it to get dog hairs out of my pictures,” she said. “I’m not an artist, so I had to learn about shadows and how to get things to appear 3D.”

But mostly she learned how “not easy” it is to write a children’s book.

“It took me seven different proofs just to get the cover right,” she said.

Her efforts paid off, and Ernie the Eraser is getting great reviews and is available as a paperback or an e-book through Amazon.com. This week she’s been reading to Clarendon school students and holding book signings at the school. She told pre-Kindergarten students she wrote the book under the name Ashlyn Parker because “Parker is easier to say than Grotegut, don’t you think?” They agreed.

Grotegut, who now lives with her husband, Parker, in Gruver, started writing in grade school and won Reading Rainbow Writers & Illustrators contest twice in second and third grade. One of the Amarillo television stations came to Clarendon to interview her about that.

“I guess it was a pretty big deal,” she said.

She later worked for The Clarendon Enterprise, The Daily Toreador at Texas Tech University, and then spent three years as a reporter for KCBD in Lubbock. She then worked for a Lubbock marketing firm before turning to freelance journalism a year ago. She also works part time as teaching Chinese kids English online to Beijing.

“I start at 5:00 a.m., and I’m done by 8:00 to focus on writing,” she said. “I’ve taught English to 256 different students in the last year.”

With her first book now in publication, Grotegut intends to turn her attention to other books, including the project that was the original reason for attending DFWCon – ghost writing a memoir for a man surviving a traumatic brain injury, who now gives presentations about the dangers of drunk driving. She met the gentleman when she was reporting for KCBD, and has already been doing the research and interviews for the project.

“It takes a lot of time because you can’t just talk to him,” she said. “He communicates with his computer, so you have to send him questions and then let him respond.”

She also is interested in writing about Panhandle history.

“I love sharing people’s stories in an interesting way,” Grotegut said. “I like shedding light on people who do awesome things.”

That’s the journalist in her. But projects like Ernie are letting her explore her creative side more.

“I’m really having fun telling stories this way,” she said. “I never dreamt I’d do that, but I really like it.”