Jacqueline Watkins, Bobby’s Bully

Xlibris Publishing is happy to introduce Jacqueline Watkins, author of Bobby’s Bully.

My book, Bobby’s Bully, focuses on one child’s response to being bullied at school. The two main characters, Bobby, the new kid at school, and Tully, the school bully, have to navigate emotions and friendship on the schoolyard. My hope is that this book shows the impact of bullying and how we can work to stop it.

Much of my passion for writing comes from my love of good books. I have always wanted to help others (evidenced by my pursuit of nursing and advocacy for my patients) and realized that I could combine that desire with my love of writing to solve a problem dear to my heart, bullying. Some of my favorite authors as a child were Dr. Seuss and R.L. Stein. I also loved reading works by Peggy Parish, Herman Parish and Gertrude Chandler Warner. Additionally, I have always been very drawn to works from Maya Angelou, Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen. I believe in the transformative power of words and hope I can eventually reach others the ways these authors reached me.

The main inspiration for this book comes from the light of my life, my son, Trelin. He is only 7 years old but has taught me so much about life, perseverance, and generally overcoming hardship. Trelin was being bullied at school and initially didn’t want to tell me about it. He had also just lost his grandfather (my father), with whom he was very close, after a long battle with lung cancer. My father’s death, along with Trelin’s struggles in school, was almost a breaking point for me. I decided to channel my frustration into action, which resulted in the idea for this book. Trelin was instrumental in the development of the book. We spent days brainstorming together about ideas for character names, settings, plots, concepts, target audiences, themes and outlines. After many sleepless nights, talking aloud to myself about ideas (which let me tell you, got me plenty of worried looks from family), and rewriting more times than I can count, Bobby’s Bully was born. It took me 45 minutes to write this book and a month to ensure continuity of content. At first, writing was just an outlet for my son and I to positively and therapeutically deal with the physical and emotional effects of our experiences, but this soon turned into a labor of love and much joy.

The most important message in my book is that we have the power to change the negative things in our lives. I want others to see that something bad can turn into something good and rewarding. Even though I can’t change what happened to my son, hopefully parents can use this book as a helping tool. With any luck, as parents read this book with their children, they will also take the opportunity to have an open dialogue about how to treat others as well as how they should expect to be treated.

While I don’t have an immediate plan for a sequel, I am not ruling it out. The characters are at such a developmental age, who knows what might come up for them!

Xlibris Publishing will return with Jacqueline Watkins in part 2.

Please make sure to check out the Xlibris Publishing site for more advice and blogs, and be sure to follow us on Xlibris Publishing Facebook and Xlibris Publishing Twitter.