I wrote a post a few days ago about my love for being inspired – you can click here to read it.

Basically, in that post I announced that I will be interviewing my blogger friends here on WordPress.com as a way of being inspired. Inspired by their dedication, motivation, their writing and blogging journeys, their photography and much more.

Today is the first post in the series. The blogger/writer being interviewed is Robbie Cheadle. I don’t recall how Robbie and I became blogging friends, but I must say she is so inspiring and wonderful. I hope you enjoy this three-part interview with Robbie.

Where does the inspiration to write come from?  Featuring Robbie Cheadle Part 1

In this three-part series, we will be speaking to Robbie/Roberta Cheadle who has written books in several genres, whilst running a household, working fulltime as an accountant, and actively managing two blogs.

Robbie lives in South Africa (SA), and is married with two children, and has a senior position in an international accounting company.  Yet, she has found time to publish seven children’s books, and publish fictionalized memoirs with her mother, and branch out into horror.  Along with writing books, she runs two blogs, she has expanded her writing skills into editing, research and beta reading.

Robbie is a true inspiration for myself.  She has so much energy in all aspects of life.  She fits everything in – as we will all discover through this series of interviews with her.

Today we are going to focus on her children’s books.

Where did the inspiration come from?

In 2015, my son, Michael, was nine years old and my niece seven and a half, and their naughty but cute antics inspired me to start writing poetry again. I continued to write for the remainder of that year and expanded into helping Michael write his ideas about a little man who lived in a world where you could eat everything (Sir Chocolate) into rhyming verse stories.

Michael has a vivid imagination and would talk about the characters, Sir Chocolate and Lady Sweet, who lived in Chocolate Land and who went around their world, helping others and putting wrong situations right.

My initial aim with writing these stories was to encourage Michael to read and write as he has a learning barrier and writing, particularly, was difficult for him.

Michael and I read the stories to the children at Sunday school, and one of the other mothers gave me the name of a friend of hers in the UK who published books. I submitted our stories to TSL Publications and that was the beginning of my published books journey.

The Illustrations in the books are quite unique – tell us more.

The idea of illustrating them using cake and fondant art was mine. Fondant art and cake decorating have been a hobby of mine for years and this story idea lent itself to edible illustrations. Michael has always been interested in baking, cooking, and food art so he used to sit with me when I did my fondant art and make his own creations.

I started taking pictures of our artworks and using them to illustrate our books.

How did the idea of including a recipe in Sir Chocolate books come about?

My brother-in-law, who works in advertising, suggested we add the recipes and make our books into a first cookery book for children. It wasn’t difficult for me to come up with simple recipes that children could make under adult supervision as I’ve always baked.

A Family Effort

The creation of the Sir Chocolate Books series was a real family effort with suggestions and ideas contributed by my extended family. My older son, Gregory, has also helped with my writing by filming and editing my YouTube videos and baking demonstrations for our channel.

Will there be more children’s book?

Michael and I have seven published Sir Chocolate stories as well as a number of Sir Chocolate stories that are available for free download on Robbie’s Inspiration (Roberta Writes blog). There will be no more published Sir Chocolate Books as Michael has grown out of the series now.

I have a second book in the Silly Willy series which is about three quarters complete and I am hoping to finish that during 2021.

I do enjoy writing for children, and I will continue to do so, but for an older age group.

The Interview continues…

In part two, we explore how Robbie started her writing journey, how she got into writing about World War II, Horror and Supernatural, editing, becoming a beta-reader and researching for her books. Finally in part three we learn about her writing habits and her advice to bloggers and wanna be writers, and how she juggles it all.

Are you inspired, motivated ?

I hope you liked this first part of the” Let gets inspired” series. It is amazing to read from Robbie’s experience that an opportunity presented itself – maybe without her looking for it. I certainly believe life can create magic opportunities that appear from nowhere (or maybe the universe was listening to her heart and her heart was saying…. and bingo it happened).

Do let me know your thoughts on this post in the comments in below. And do visit again to read part two and three of Robbie’s interview. After which I have five other bloggers interviews lined up, and may be more as 2021 progresses.

Thank you for popping by. Do share your thoughts below in the comments.

Images: http://www.freeimages.com, pixabay, pexel, google, instagram, canva, or created by myself, or used with permission.