{"id":9446,"date":"2024-09-04T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-03T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/shewhothrives\/torquay-author-publishes-christmas-story\/"},"modified":"2024-09-04T04:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-03T17:00:00","slug":"torquay-author-publishes-christmas-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/shewhothrives\/torquay-author-publishes-christmas-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Torquay author publishes Christmas story"},"content":{"rendered":"

TORQUAY illustrator and author Michelle Conn has published her debut solo book, The Christmas Star.<\/p>\n

Published on August 27, the book tells a story of teamwork, friendship, sharing the spotlight and overcoming big emotions.<\/p>\n

The children’s picture book follows schoolboy Timmy, who is cast as a Christmas tree in the end of year play and his best friend gets the lead role.<\/p>\n

Playing the Christmas tree, Timmy wants to get noticed and tries different ways to get attention, but when disaster strikes, he is left to find a way to fix things.<\/p>\n

Ms Conn has previously illustrated Raised by Moths and All You Can Be, with The Christmas Star her first book as both author and illustrator.<\/p>\n

She said the story started out in 2019 when a little image popped into her head.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Christmas Star started off as a drawing of the main character Timmy and developed into a story. Photo: SUPPLIED.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

“I just had to draw it.<\/p>\n

“It was of Timmy. I didn’t know it was Timmy at the time, but it was a little boy dressed in a Christmas tree, standing in a spotlight on an empty stage and he looked a little bit frightened.”<\/p>\n

After drawing Timmy, she posted the picture to her Instagram page where people had a strong positive reaction to it.<\/p>\n

“It just started off with this little character and it was like it wouldn’t leave me alone, I just kept thinking about this character,” she said.<\/p>\n

After Timmy had been created, it was not until 2021 that Conn put pen to paper and started storyboarding the book.<\/p>\n

“I don’t actually ever start with the words, I always start with the images and so the images were my way of writing the story.<\/p>\n

“Getting the character was really important, and I just wanted to make a really fun book that kids could almost live vicariously through this character, just thinking ‘He’s made really bad choices here’ and it kind of becomes funny.”<\/p>\n

Ms Conn will be doing a story time at Torquay Books with local author Kaye Baillie on September 8 at 11am, reading their newly published books.<\/p>\n

For more information, head to michelleconnillustration.com<\/a> or follow her on Instagram @michelleconn_illustration<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORQUAY illustrator and author Michelle Conn has published her debut solo book, The Christmas Star. Published on August 27, the book tells a story of teamwork, friendship, sharing the spotlight and overcoming big emotions. The children’s picture book follows schoolboy Timmy, who is cast as a Christmas tree in the end of year play and […]<\/p>\n

Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":153,"featured_media":9447,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-9446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTorquay author publishes Christmas story - She who thrives<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Torquay author Michelle Conn's debut children's book "The Christmas Star" teaches teamwork & friendship.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/timesnewsgroup.com.au\/shewhothrives\/torquay-author-publishes-christmas-story\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Torquay author publishes Christmas story - 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