Growing up, 29-year-old Oliceia Tinnie’s always doubted her abilities but with encouragement from family and friends, she persevered. Tinnie continued perseverance recently saw the publication of her second children’s book, titled ‘The Adventures of Daddy and Me.’
The beautifully illustrated book, which was published on July 13, 2022, tells the exciting tale of a little girl, as her dad takes her on a bicycle ride through their village—what appears to be a typical Guyanese village with all the familiar sights one would expect to find.
Tinnie explained that she decided on writing a children’s book because she always enjoyed the art of telling a story, especially children’s stories. “When it comes to children stories, children’s imagination tend to run wild. I enjoy the freedom of stretching the imagination, especially as it relates to children,” she happily shared with Stabroek Weekend.
Writing always came naturally to Tinnie. Reminiscing, she expressed how her mother, Olive Simon, encouraged her. “She was always encouraging me to put the ideas that I had on paper and get it out there.” However, it was not until after her mother passed away in 2020 that Oliceia began to seriously pursue her writing. One of her goals was to overcome the discouragement she felt after her first book, “What I meant was,” which did not live up to her expectations. The idea for ‘The Adventures of Daddy and Me’ was birthed during this time.
Being a mother herself, Tinnie had a front row seat to one of the best relationships in her life—the father-daughter relationship between her husband, Hamani Tinnie and daughter, Hasina—which was the major influence behind her book. “The story itself is basically how they would go and do adventures on a daily basis. As soon as he gets home from work, she would rush out to him and he would take her to ride around the village to see all the different things,” said Tinnie as she explained how the idea manifested into a published children’s book, almost two years later.
Despite having the inspiration, she was faced with a number of challenges while working on the book.
She did not have a laptop to work with and thus the book was entirely written and published on her smartphone. “Sometimes I would have to send it (the book) to my sister, for her to pull it up on her laptop and to assist me in formatting the text or maybe words,” she explained. If her sister was unable to help her, Tinnie would wait days to get back another edited version.
Tinnie wanted her book to be portrayed as a true Guyanese book, but finding persons locally to do the illustrations for a children’s book turned out to be more difficult than she anticipated. “What I ended up doing, was sourcing a company called Bobooks from the Fiverr website, they did illustrations for the entire book,” she noted.
Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) allowed the mother of one to successfully publish her book. Praising the platform, she said, “they set up in such a way that every step of the way you’re guided. So in terms of formatting the book, they give you the different sizes that you might want to choose from.” She went on to say that using the KDP platform was also very cost effective.
The moments of joy experienced by the Guyanese author were more than words could explain. She expressed how she felt ecstatic after completing the book and learning that it was approved by KDP. Another moment when she felt genuine joy was after seeing her book on the Amazon website. “To know that someone can type in my name on Amazon and something that I worked on would pop up, that was it for me,” she said.
“To see that I was able to just focus on my abilities and was able to put out something that I was proud of and other persons could enjoy, that’s a feeling like no other,” she further said.
The initial reactions to the book have been overwhelming. “So far it’s been really positive. Persons really enjoyed the fact that it’s not your typical book,” Tinnie happily said.
She added that the response to seeing a father-daughter relationship portrayed in the book, rather than the typical mother-daughter relationship was extremely positively received.
Readers have also lauded her effort to create relatable characters, especially as it relates to their complexion. “Persons of darker (skin) tone, they enjoyed the fact that their dark skin child can see a girl in a book that matches their (skin) tone,”
she pointed out.
Readers can definitely look forward to more books from Tinnie in the future. Revealing just enough information to tease her readers, she shared that she will be releasing a book for older readers in collaboration with one of her sisters. That’s not all, the author is already in the process of cooking up another children’s book. She also plans to republish her first book, albeit with some changes to get it to the standard of the second book.
At the same time, Tinnie made an appeal to the relevant authorities to place more effort on making the necessary changes so that it will be easier for local authors to publish their books without having to worry about copyright infringement in Guyana. She said that the challenges at times could be far more discouraging than persons want it to be, especially for persons who want to keep their writing and publishing process local.
Aside from her mother, husband and daughter, Tinnie credited her father Cecil Simon and her sisters Nicola Halloway and Abidemi Simon for the influential part they played throughout her journey. Another person that helped along her journey was Andre Haynes, her former editor at the Stabroek News, who assisted her with her challenge of finding the suitable structure for sentences.
Persons interested in adding a copy of the book ‘The Adventures of Daddy and Me’ to their libraries can find it on Amazon, available in both paperback and Kindle formats. Tinnie is also collaborating with the Guyana National Library to officially host a book launch in September, 2022. The date will be announced in the near future. Work is also ongoing to distribute copies to several local bookstores.
Tinnie also did not hesitate to share her advice for aspiring authors. “Every idea, no matter how silly it may be, put it on paper. Perfection does not exist and you can’t always wait on the right moment to do something because sometime the right time might never come,” she stressed. “Once you start and you make the effort to meet the finish line, the outcome would be beyond what you imagine. Don’t limit yourself.”
