By day they help deliver care in the Calhoun Cardiology Center. But in addition to their clinical roles at work and parenting responsibilities at home, Karen and Bruce Nelson write children’s books. In fact, they’re working on a series of children’s stories, the first of which, Mortimer the Wise, Book 1, was published last year. Karen, a staff nurse, and Bruce, a cardiovascular technologist, both work in the cardiac catheterization lab and have been married for nearly eight years. Together they have a 5-year-old son, Brucie, and they live in Southington.

Q: How did you come to be authors of children’s literature?

Karen: Our son is the inspiration.

Bruce: We were reading all these children’s books to him over and over, and I thought I could write a better book than some of what I was reading. We are working on what we hope will be a series of probably 10 stories, each with its own life lesson. Book 1 basically introduces all the characters, and Book 2 will be about sharing. But the life lessons are inspired by our son, as a 5-year-old who sometimes struggles to find his way in terms of listening, sharing, patience, conflict resolution—things he hasn’t quite mastered yet, but hopefully he will. We try to keep it simple: “This is the lesson, you can’t really miss it.”

Karen: We have a rough list of all the characters and all the lessons for each book.

Q: How do you work together to write these stories?

Bruce: I’ve written poetry and have had a few poems published.

Karen: I don’t really write, but I’m a good storyteller. I’m one of those people who will dream in movie form. He is a stronger writer than I am.

Bruce: And she has a better imagination, but I can put it down, I can write it. We actually work really well together, as far as making the stories work, both for this series and another project we have in the works.

Q: Describe your experience with the publishing process?

Bruce: We were kicking around the idea in January 2015, and actually started the process in April, putting the book in paragraph form to submit to the publisher. A woman we work with in the cath lab, Patty Fagan, her cousin owns a publishing company in Maine, Goose River Press. We asked Christy Meyer, who worked with us as the time, if she’d like to draw for us, and she was overjoyed—it turns out it was her life’s ambition to illustrate children’s books. It took another five months to put everything together, tweaking it, setting all the pages, putting the pictures together so they fit the story, things like that.

Karen: And it was funny, my daughter, who was 12 at the time, proofread it for us, which helped keep it simple and more understandable for kids.

Q: What have you learned from this endeavor?

Karen: It’s taught us to really focus our attention, instead of flipping out on the child, to, “What is the issue, what do we want the end result to be?” And we tailor our energies to altering the behavior rather than just yelling about it.

Bruce: The book has definitely been a lesson for the both of us too. It’s definitely taught us both patience for sure, me especially.

Q: Where do we find Mortimer the Wise, Book 1?

Bruce: It’s available online, but we prefer to sell it ourselves, so we can sign copies for people. We also sold a few copies to the Connucopia Gift Shop, so it’s available there too, both in the main building and the kiosk in the Outpatient Pavilion.