Recap of Local Book Signing Event | Indigo Newmarket | Sept. 6th 2025

In August, I left 3 copies of each of my children's books at the Blue Heron Bookstore in Uxbridge, Ontario. I thought it would feel incredible to finally have my books in a brick and mortar store. The experience was less than I expected. While the bookstore was beautiful, it took me 45 minutes to drive up there from my home. I arrived and walked around Uxbridge savouring the major event. But when I talked to the person working the till—there were many customers that day—she was brusque, so much so that my BIPOC radar lit up—she processed my copies and told me they would go into the store after the long weekend. There was no opportunity to take pictures of my books on the shelves. A little confused, I made the most of it by posting reels of their shop and of Uxbridge on my Instagram and then drove the long 45 minutes home. I tuned into their Instagram in the hopes that I would see my lovely covers featured on their pages. No luck. My books could have been forgotten in obscurity. I received no confirmation that they had been shelved. No reassurance that my books meant something. As an author, I felt that I had made a transaction—renting space in their bookshop for my books to sit idle—and not a relationship.

Consignment costs an author money, time, and effort. We accept the risk of our books being stolen or damaged.
The consignment period lasts 3-4 months. If the books sell, they may ask for more. If they do not, they'll ask if we'll pick them up or if they should be destroyed/donated.

At around the time I reached out to Blue Heron Books, I also reached out to our local Newmarket Indigo. Their liaison, Jennifer, proved to be friendly and efficient. She had me fill out the necessary administrative details to sign up as an Indigo Vendor for consignment and scheduled me for a September 6th book signing event. They would not accept any of my books before that date.

I wasn't sure if Ro would come with me.

The day came and I told him what I was about to do. The industrious chap immediately asked if he could bring his iPad and proceeded to bolt out the door post breakfast.

The staff at Indigo were extremely welcoming. Such a huge contrast to my prior experience. They made sure we felt comfortable and had what we needed. Over the period of 4 hours I would get to know a few of the staff as their curiosity led to some interesting conversations.

Within the first hour, we had sold two books to the mother of a fellow author who was touched by our story of an author mom who's son's creativity burst into a book.

In truth, the first book Which Feeling was written on the day Rohan came out of his Jr kindergarten class declaring to me that I had "hurt his feelings." I then proceeded to ask him how I had hurt his feelings—did I hurt his hungry feeling, his thirsty feeling, his angry feeling—spoiler alert, I had not hurt his feelings but he came home understanding what the phrase meant.

The story was sent to various publishing houses. Scholastic offers a free submission program to BIPOC authors. Suffice to say, there were no takers and the printed manuscript ended up in a folder marked 'stories'.

Fast forward four years later—I had just parted ways with a job and had decided to get back into writing for a year. Fighting with Steph to get my hard drive (he hoards things that belong to me sometimes), brought a curious 8 year old Rohan to my desk. Paging through the story, he immediately started penciling in pictures for each of the pages. I was astounded. "Can you do this on an iPad in colour?" I asked.

To be honest, I wasn't sure if he'd complete ten full colour artworks. Nevertheless, I needed an illustrator and he has always been my budding artist. We bought him an iPad and set him up for success. What this looked like was my testing the waters by trying to ink (copy) the first page of his drawing and adding colours. I brought this experimentation to him.

"You have it all wrong," he said. "The walls are supposed to be..." He took the pen from me and proceeded to erase and redraw all of my mistakes and recolour to his heart's content. I can't remember if it took him a year to complete all of the drawings. He was very determined and enjoyed having the drawing prompts.

At some point, we had ten full colour drawings. Now it was my turn to figure out how to layout a children's book and implement the drawings. I used Pages on a Macbook for the layout. So began WHICH FEELING and our long illustrator-author/son-mother collaboration.

Rohan made a few fans on Saturday. A few kids of around the same age came by to admire his drawings. Children love these books on account of the relatable drawings. Which Feeling looks like it was drawn by a kid. It was. He was 8 at the time. These are early readers and encourage emotional regulation and communication between children and adults.

Most of the people who stopped by were parents with young children. The rest were teachers who took snaps of the books to request them at their school libraries. Many took my business card.

I also included a few in-process-copies of A Lion's Head for the few who showed an interest in mythic fantasy.

The matte cover makes for a better photograph. The gloss emphasizes the gold in the lion. People were divided over gold or white font. I love seeing the interest in people's faces when you show them the process of revising a book. Both glossy versions are marked up with red, blue, and black ink. I'm a picky author and I don't always make the changes but it's cool to see the work in progress and my thoughts come alive on paper.

So—milestone achieved. My books are in Indigo. They are available from a great many stores actually. To find out where nearest you, check out the promo pages for the books.

-D.M. De Alwis

Children's Books | Pre-School Early Readers

Mythic Fantasy | Pawn of Samsara Duology

A Lion's Head will be released in print, October 5th, 2025 and A Lion's Pride on January 3rd, 2026.