Chad Morris and Shelly Brown take everyday situations and turn them into books. The Davis County husband and wife duo have written several popular books geared toward fourth to seventh graders including one based on the true story of their daughter who was diagnosed with a brain tumor in elementary school called “Mustaches for Maddie.” 

“It’s kind of about how she faced it with friends, humor and fake mustaches,” said Chad. “She just thought mustaches were funny. Thousands of people heard about it and wore fake mustaches for her to make her smile. It was just awesome.”

Morris said they had both written books when everything happened with their daughter. “Our publisher knew about it and they said, ‘have you ever thought about writing that story?’ It took us a little bit. We waited until Maddie grew up enough she could decide but that started a whole new vein of books for us.”

They’ve done fairly well, he said. “So these days it’s mostly contemporary. There’s maybe a little hint of magic, you know talking to whales and that kind of stuff.”

“Willa and the Whale” is about a girl who talks to a whale when life gets tough and the whale talks back,” said Morris. “We’ve got one called the Wild Journey of Juniper Berry about a girl who grows up off the grid and then has to come into town for the first time.”

Shelly came up with the idea for that book, said Morris.

 “I love a good history story, especially a quirky one,” said Shelly. “I heard about this family who had been living since the Bolshevik Revolution in the woods in Russia until the 1970s. When they were found by scientists there were children who were born in the woods.”

They were like 40 years old and had never seen anybody outside of their family, she said. “Just the concept of that sparked really interesting questions in my head so that was kind of the catalyst, the spark of the story.”

The couple met in college. “Shelly and I did sketch comedy,” said Chad. “We both happened to be in a group with a guy who always wanted to write kids’ books. That was kind of fun and then he broke through. I thought if my friend can do it, maybe I can do it.”

He’s Brandon Mull, Chad said. “He writes the Fable Haven series. Sometimes things seem out of reach until you know somebody who’s done it. I became interested and started writing and thankfully was able to crack in.”

At first Shelly asked Chad to write a book for her. “I just wanted him to write a book for me because I had a good idea that I wanted to read but I didn’t want to write it,” she said. “He said ‘no you write it. You’d do a better job’ and I did. I thought ‘OK fine I’ll write that one book.’ But then once you start writing, you’re like, I know I have 50,000 stories inside of me.”

Chad and Shelly had different experiences getting their books published. “I got a crazy idea and wrote a book and sent it to some publishers and the only one that I got that was interested was Shadow Mountain publishing,” said Chad. “That was the same as Brandon’s and I think that it was useful that somebody was with them.”

It was kind of good enough to get their attention but not good enough to publish, he said. “I rewrote it four times and never got there. But they said ‘we're really interested in your stories. We don’t think this one will work but if you write something in the future we’d love to look at it.’”

Chad wrote a group of five ideas and sent them in. “I said ‘does one of these stand out more than the others?’ They picked one and I wrote that one and sent it in and that was the ‘Inventor's Secret.’ That was my first book. It's a sci-fi fantasy series. That was the beginning.”

“My story is a lot longer and harder,” said Shelly. “I refused to sit on his coattails so I wanted it to be good enough to stand on its own.”

It took six years of trying and failing and trying and failing, she said. “I would go to conferences and I would make writing friends who could help me and look at my stuff so I could get better at it. I sent in over 90 (submissions) and got 90 rejection letters back from agents and editors.”

It’s a long kind of painful process but it worked out eventually, said Shelly. “I think it was a lot of grit. I would get up at five in the morning and get in at least my first hour of writing every single weekday. It was just grit and putting your nose to the grindstone and not quitting.”

Shelly said she just felt like she needed to keep going. “There was something in me that said ‘don’t quit on this’ and so I didn’t.”

Chad and Shelly will share their experiences and talk about their new book “The Playmakers” at an event Thursday, March 12 from 6:30 - 8 p.m., at the Syracuse Branch library, 1875 S. 2000 West, Syracuse.