Local Children's Author Delves Into 'Bug Patrol'

Denise Mortensen has the perfect day job to provide inspiration for her second job. A paraprofessional at Washington Avenue School, Mortensen spends her spare time writing children's books, the latest of which, "Bug Patrol," was published in February by Clarion.

Mortensen writes in charming, approachable rhyming couplets that seem effortless, but their roots are anything but. Mortensen was trained as a nonfiction writer, a reporter who majored in journalism at St. Bonaventure University and worked in Manhattan. After her family moved to Chatham she sent out her first manuscript.

When no publishing houses were interested, she took a writing class at The Adult School. "One of the assignments we had was to write in poetry, and I thought, 'Okay, I don't know if I can do this.' But then I just wrote, and everything started coming out of me in verse," she said. "I never knew I could write poetry."

Now, she said, she pours over her couplets until they are perfect. Even then it's not always enough for immediate success. "Bug Patrol," for example, was a manuscript she sold in 2005 but is only just hitting shelves this year.

"Bug Patrol" takes children through a day in the life of Captain Bob, who "keeps order in the insect world," Mortensen said. "There's the beetles bumping at the mall, fighting over a parking space. They're all kind of human situations, but scaled down to the bug world."

For this book Mortensen's publisher went through two illustrators over six years before they found Cece Bell, and it took another two years for Bell to complete the illustrations. That wait, Mortensen said, is nothing. "Eight years is like eight weeks in the publishing world," she said.

The drawings look as though they were stenciled in permanent ink, then sprayed from a distance with spray paint. "I don't know how she does it," Mortensen said.

Mortensen remembers she received an email saying the book was finally going to be published. "I was just skimming over the email, and my eyes saw, 'Feburary '12,'" she said. "I got so excited. Then when I went back to read it again, it said 'February 12, 2013.'"

A Full Portfolio

Mortensen, who writes under her full name of Denise Dowling Mortensen, credits the success of her first book, "Good Night Engines," to her meticulous editing and to "beginner's luck," since it was only the second book she'd ever submitted to publishers.

"I basically wrote that because I had five kids, and my youngest, I knew he was going to be my last baby and I really wanted to enjoy putting him to bed every night," Mortensen said. As her son Patrick would fall asleep, his limbs would twitch. "It was like his little motor was turning off."

So she came up with the idea of writing a story about a boy who bids goodnight to his toy cars, trains and airplanes.

The illustrator, Melissa Iwai, drew a big-eyed, brown-haired boy in blue pajamas as the story's main character. When the blond-haired Patrick met Iwai in 2003 after the book came out, Mortensen said he asked her why she didn't make the boy to look like him.

"She said, 'Oh, I'm so sorry!' That Christmas she made this little doll, and it looks just like [the boy from the book], but with blond hair," Mortensen said. "She gave me that for him, and it's just exquisite."

It was this book which won Mortensen the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Award in 2004, an award given to exceptional children's books, toys, videos and audio releases.

The success of "Good Night Engines" spawned a sequel, "Wake Up Engines," in 2007 and a flip-book of the two: One side has one story, and the other half has the second story (printed upside-down from the first story.)

Mortensen also wrote another story about watching tornadoes from her family's old house in the Midwest called "Ohio Thunder" in 2006. She still remembers the shock of her first tornado. "I grew up in Long Island," she said. "I never saw storms like that."

Once while driving with four of her children from Cincinnati to Columbus, a tornado appeared. Mortensen opens a page from "Ohio Thunder," points to a picture of a funnel that looks about a mile wide, and said, "This was coming at me. ...

"There was rain, there was hail, there were lightning bolts hitting the corn fields around me. I had to pull under one of those overpasses because I just couldn't see. The kids were asking, 'Are we going to be okay?' And I said (in a crying voice), 'Yeah, everything's going to be fine!' Meanwhile inside I was freaking out."

Ever since that day, Mortensen knew she wanted to write a story about it. She turned the storm into a metaphor for getting through difficult times.

Times Ahead

Mortensen said she always has a few manuscripts for new books floating around, but it was easier to write them when she was a stay-at-home mom. "I'd write while they were napping," she said.

She does get constant inspiration from the 6-year-olds she works with at Washington Avenue. "One little girl was drawing a gingerbread man, and I was just writing a gingerbread story that day,'" Mortensen said. "I said to her, 'This is a neat-looking gingerbread man.' 'Yeah,' she said, 'it kind of looks like,' and then we both said together, 'A gingerbread ghost!' So there may be a gingerbread ghost story in the future."

She's also learning the virtues of self-marketing in a digital age: Mortensen recently started her own website and blog, complete with Twitter, Facebook and Goodreads profiles.

"I'm really trying to promote this book using social media," Mortensen said. "A lot has changed since 'Good Night Engines' came out."

Will there be more stories by Mortensen in the future? "I'm still working on more, but just life and kids and work, it's just really hard to find the time."