A touching telephone call from a young friend who lived halfway across the country was what inspired Timothy Bailey, a Webster City native, to write a children's book entitled, "I Miss You."
The idea came from the child of a friend who lived in Colorado.
"We became the best of friends. They would come over, and I would visit them," he said. Shortly after Bailey moved from Colorado to Illinois in 2006, he received a phone call from one of his young friends
"She called my house in Illinois. I think she was four at the time," he said. "She was home sick, and called and said, 'I miss you. Can I come over to your house?'"
She didn't realize that hundreds of miles separated her from Bailey. So that phone conversation developed into a poem that eventually developed into the book.
"I kind of started to write it all out, make it rhyme, and make it fun. I wrote it just to mail to them," he said. He later decided to turn the work into a book.
Bailey found a Colorado illustrator who created the colorful drawings in the book.
"It was just something we were working on for family and friends," he said. But they eventually decided to publish the story.
The book shares all of the fun things the separated characters will do when they are together again. There are whimsical drawings of cars and games and dinosaurs.
The process took several years to get from sketches and concepts to a completed book. But Bailey said that within six to eight weeks, the book would be available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other booksellers.
"Even if the store doesn't carry it, it's going to be on the registry so it can be ordered," he said.
He had a chance to share his book with a group of youngsters at a storytime session at the Kendall Young Library children's department Thursday morning. He told the young people how he came to write the book and also answered their questions about the writing process.
Bailey will read his book aloud again on Tuesday as the Kendall Young Library hosts another in its series of Iowa Author programs. The event will be held in the lower level meeting room beginning at 7 p.m. Bailey will have copies of his book for sale and will be autograph copies.
The author said this probably wouldn't be his last book. He has plenty of life experiences to draw upon for inspiration.
Bailey has been living in Scotland for three years working with Youth With a Mission, a Christian missions agency. He works with high-risk inner city teens in that country. Bailey also spends anywhere from two to four months out of the year in Romania working with orphans and street children.
He returned to the U.S. this year to get married. He and wife Caroline are now living in Colorado, but will soon return to Scotland.
"We're taking a furlough, I guess you could say," Bailey said. "After Christmas, we'll go back to Scotland for a year or so."
Eventually, the couple would like to move to Romania.
"We want to work fulltime for an orphanage and eventually open a children's home," he said.
Contact Anne Blankenship at editor@freemanjournal.net or call 832-4350.
