From its winding roads and vibrant green spaces to its iconic architecture, Riverside is known as a beautiful place to live. Now, its beauty is not only visible but also legible to the wider world in its role as the backdrop of resident Abby Regan’s first book, “Not Your Average Oatmeal.”
The children’s book, self-published by Regan in March and available for purchase online, follows her family’s rescue dog, Oatmeal, on a runaway adventure around the village on his first day as their foster pet.
“He wasn’t very ready to trust anybody new, and so, on the first day that he was here, he actually jumped our back fence and went running around Riverside for a full day,” Regan said in a phone interview Thursday. “The story is about the sights that he saw in Riverside, the smells, what he heard, that sort of thing. It takes you through the scenes of Riverside.”
Several of Riverside’s landmarks made their way into the pages of “Not Your Average Oatmeal,” including the Swinging Bridge, the Des Plaines River, the Riverside train station and the gas lamps scattered throughout town. Riverside’s iconic Water Tower graces the book’s front cover behind Oatmeal himself.
“I grew up in Riverside, born and raised in the same house down the block from Central Elementary School, so I went to all of the feeder schools, went to Riverside-Brookfield [High School],” Regan said. “I just want to emphasize how much Riverside has had an impact on me and my life as well as my family’s life and, you know, anybody that I really talk to in Riverside. It’s just such an amazing place.”
Becoming an author
Regan first got the idea for the book after a family friend mentioned what a “great story” Oatmeal’s adventures made, but she said she “always knew I wanted to write a book in some capacity.”
“I’ve always been a really big reader, and I’ve always loved to tell stories,” she said. “From first grade to fifth grade, every year, we were tasked with writing our own story, and I’ve always loved those. I mean, I thrived when those were around.”
While Regan graduated from the University of Dayton last May with a degree in journalism and public relations, she said she “knew I wasn’t built for” news writing.
Outside of writing children’s books, Regan flexes her literary muscles through PR writing at Carol Fox & Associates, a Chicago-based marketing agency. She even used her PR savvy to promote the book, partnering with Riverside to host a giveaway on its Instagram page last month. Internauts were asked to follow Regan’s professional account alongside Riverside’s and to drop a comment saying who they’d like to read the book with. A winner was randomly selected May 1.
While “Not Your Average Oatmeal” has only sat on shelves since March, Regan said the manuscript came together during her final semester of college last spring.
“The conversations were from the time that we officially adopted [Oatmeal] in January 2021, so those conversations [were] from 2021 to the beginning of 2023,” she said. “I didn’t write the first manuscript until February, and then the final manuscript was completed around May, and that’s when we sort of kicked everything into high gear.”
For Regan, shifting into higher gear included hiring a publishing consultant who was also a New York Times best-selling author.
“We knew that he was going to do a great job and help us get from point A to point B,” she said. “From May until March, we were really going — I mean, communication was every week … back and forth, completely collaborative, getting all the illustrations created, everything for the way that I had envisioned them.”
Regan said it felt great when the book was finally published, like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders.
“I was juggling graduating and that huge change … and starting my professional career, and then also working that eight-to-five every day, and then coming home and starting communication from 5-9 with pushing this book out, so it was a lot of work. It was very time-consuming,” she said.
Even still, “It didn’t feel like a job. It felt like, ‘This is my passion. This is something that I want to complete,’” she added. “Getting to the point where I actually got a physical copy in my hands was incredible.”
What comes next?
Now that Regan has published her first book, she said she has her eyes set on turning it into a four-book series, although the plans aren’t set in stone.
“I do have books two and three written. I can’t say a whole lot about what they’re about, but they run along the same idea of a coming-of-age story teaching life lessons,” she said.
“[I’m] riding on this high right now with book one, and there’s still a lot to learn on the entire process of everything, and so I want to make sure that I get to, sort of, not the completion of book one, but run through the whole process so I know exactly what I need to take from process one and apply it to the future books,” she added.
While Regan hasn’t started the publication process for a sequel quite yet, she said she’s hoping to publish her second book next summer.
“The industry is on a little bit of a delay at this point, and we’re not exactly sure why, but from start to finish right now, the publication process is about nine months,” she said. “I still want to take a couple more months to ride on the high of book one and figure everything out fully before I start book two, so shooting for summer 2025.”
