Local author discusses ease of publishing her book

I just wrote it down one day, due to insomnia actually. I ended up writing it in two nights. Then after talking with my husband, and really, really talking about actually pursuing publishing, I looked into self-publishing on the internet.”

Tori Jurgens Huebsch, Author

“I have a niece and nephew who are twins, they are about 2 years old. I've always been a writer, I've always wanted to write a book and after they were born, I just kind of thought, you know, how fun would it be to have something for them?”

That is what Author Tori Jurgens Huebsch explained when asked about the motivation behind her first book, ‘The Silly Goose’.

The Silly Goose is about a goose that is out wandering around one day when he suddenly finds himself lost. Along his journey in trying to find his way in the world, he meets different animals while doing silly things because that is just his demeanor, silly and fun.

Huebsch is the daughter of former State Representative Tony Jurgens. She grew up in Cottage Grove but moved to Hastings nine years ago with her husband Tyler and their sassy orange cat named Frank. As a full-time assistant manager at Maurice’s, she was surprised at the ease of publishing her own book.

“I just wrote it down one day, due to insomnia actually. I ended up writing it in two nights. Then after talking with my husband, and really, really talking about actually pursuing publishing, I looked into self-publishing on the internet. I found a publisher, they're called Dorrance Publishing based in Philadelphia. I looked at their website, reached out to them and asked them about the process. To them, it was basically just sending them a manuscript and being accepted or not being accepted, and then we just went from there,” added Huebsch.

The publisher took about a week to go over the manuscript and accepted the story. That led to the need for an illustrator. Huebsch was not able to illustrate herself and she was not comfortable finding an illustrator on her own, so she worked with Dorrance to find the right illustrator through them.

“I was very hands on with the whole process of the illustrations. Other than drawing them myself. I mean, I basically told them word for word, what I wanted the illustrations to look like, and then they went from there,” said Huebsch.

The illustrations turned out to be exactly what she had hoped for, requiring no revisions. Her goose looked silly.

“He does he looks very silly, and I'm very, very happy with the way he looks,” she added.

With the book complete, Huebsch dedicated it to her niece and nephew as well as her husband, but she still does not know who the illustrator was that brought her vision to life.

“I do want to reach out to my publisher and see if there's a way that I can figure out who did it because I would love to send them a little email or something and just telling them how, how impressed I was and how really happy I am with the way that it turned out,” she said.

The Silly Goose is 38 pages long with some pages only being pictures and others only being words. According to Huebsch, when she has done readings at local schools, it takes about 10 minutes to read cover to cover.

The book is available both digitally and to order in print on the publishing website, rosedogbookstore.com. Huebsch will also be holding a book signing event on July 22 at A Book Store of Hastings. She expects the signing event to go from noon to 2 p.m. but did not have that locked down yet. The book will be available there for $18 with the signing being free. It has not made its way on Amazon yet, but that is in the works.

Huebsch closed with “One thing that is super important for me that people take from the book is that I think it is super important to always stay true to who you are. Even if you are a little different. You are a little silly. That was part of the reason why I wrote the silly goose on top of wanting something for my niece and nephew. I just think it's super important to have that message, especially for young kids. As they grow up to just always stay true to yourself. And that, you'll always find where you belong no matter where that looks like you.”