Top into your most original thinking, organize your ideas, and create the opportunities to launch a creative work.

Unlocking your world of creativity, with best-selling author and brand innovator, Mark Stinson.

Welcome back to our podcast everyone, and you know the topic of fostering inclusion and bringing diversity to this.

On the forefront of our minds these days. But how could we do that in an unusual way, in this case, the hero of a children's book?

I think it's such an interesting twist that we're going to talk to our guest today, Ilani Bullock.

Ilani, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Mark.

Ilani is the author of a terrific new children's book, just released before Christmas, called Linux Takes Flight.

And it's such an inspiring story. It's a children's picture book and Ilani, tell us about the inspiration of the story and how Linux taking flight became so personal and meaningful to you and your family.

Thanks, Mark. Well, I never intended to be an author. I truly thought, well, there are so many books out there for kids. There's so many things I can read to him.

But it took a trip and us actually going to Thailand as a family for me to see that there was a gap in the marketplace. I couldn't find many books about travel for kids.

And those that I found didn't have very diverse characters. They didn't have very interesting story lines or, you know, just having different sort of characters from different backgrounds.

So when I couldn't find the book that I wanted to read with my son, I decided that I should create it.

And so Linux Takes Flight really took flight just out of a need to see different characters in different story lines for children.

And your creative process. Really, you were one of these people that sometimes, you know, others of us have an idea and we just sit around and we wait for a while.

And I said, I need this idea. I need this book. I need to start now. Tell us about how I kicked off the creative process.

So the creative process was really interesting. My first thought for this book was just to create a picture book that rhymed for kids. I was easy to read.

I was sitting in our hotel in Thailand with my two month old when he took naps. I would pull out my phone and just start journaling and writing down ideas and different things.

While I was there, I reached out to a program at Georgetown University that helps people of all backgrounds from anywhere, right books. And they said, a picture book is great.

But we actually don't do that. We need you to completely expand the story, the characters, the storyline, the create a world. That's a chapter book.

So that, you know, young readers can read it, but it would need to be much more expanded. And I thought, oh man, this, you know, small seed of an idea I had now needs to be completely blown out of the water.

So the first thing I did in terms of my creative process was just think, what are the different characteristics of my son, because I'm writing about what I know, what is his personality like mind you, he was two months old at the time. So I really had to dig deep and say all these little things and these little seeds that I see between him and my husband has in his personality. Now I can only imagine what they would be with him as an older child.

Yes, you're already creating this constellation of

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