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By Carey King
Take one step into Steve Daniels' shop and you'll know you've
met a man who loves to paint.
Every square inch of wall is covered with his designs, from murals
to maps to business logos to paintings of military aircraft.
Daniels and his wife, Carol, moved to Cashiers 20 years ago to
open an art studio, Custom Creations. But during the past year,
with the help of a publisher in Georgia, he's branched into a
new form of creation.
Now he's publishing children's books.
Steve
Daniels shows off the cover for Cubby to the Rescue!, his children's
book that will be published this summer.
Follow Your Dream, the story of a caterpillar that
becomes a butterfly, and Do Turtles Have Talent?, the tale of
a turtle who figures out his special skills, have already been
printed.
And Cubby to the Rescue! - the lesson of a plane that transports
a heart for a transplant operation from one town to another -
will roll off the presses this summer.
Daniels has been writing for years, stashing away story ideas
in a file folder for future use. Besides the six children's books
currently on schedule for publication, he has written eight other
tales for children and a novel.
He has six more novels in the works.
His love of art started at age 4, when his father was a Navy pilot.
As a child in California, he sketched the aircraft his father
flew. After his family moved to Wilmington, he studied mechanical
drafting at Cape Fear Technical Institute before joining the Air
Force.
Assigned as a staff artist at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia,
Daniels worked with top military artists to paint images for Congress
of top-secret aircraft that had not yet been built.
After leaving the military, Daniels moved to South Carolina to
become art director of the publications department of the Medical
University of South Carolina, where he designed brochures, booklets,
posters and other printed material. He worked on slide, film and
animation presentations after transferring back to Wilmington
to serve as Cape Fear's art director.
Daniels then designed murals and exhibits for North Carolina's
marine museums, which allowed him to tap in to two other interests
- diving and underwater photography.
Despite this lifetime of dabbling in a variety of projects, Daniels
now hopes to narrow his multitude of projects down to children's
books alone.
"I want to do this full-time. I love doing the illustrations
and it's really neat to see how the children react," he said.
Daniels draws inspiration from all over - Follow Your Dream's
eagle character came to him on a drive home from Dollywood's bald
eagle sanctuary.
Though he normally works on stories a little at a time, he estimates
it took him about a month to get each book in his series of six
finished. By the time each was complete, he'd instilled traits
like determination and self-confidence into the main characters.
Daniels likes sharing both his characters and the book creation
process with elementary school students.
"I like to tell them how I go about doing it. Children like
to see how books are made. When most people read to children,
they just read the book and show the picture. But I show the original
illustration and their eyes get so big," he said.
Daniels has worked to get his books endorsed by such famous names
as Winston Groom, the author of Forrest Gump; Elizabeth McRae,
a former actress on Gomer Pyle, USMC; and Col. Robert Morgan,
former pilot of the Memphis Belle.
Daniels' illustrations can be seen in his shop and on his Web
site, www.bearwallow creek.com. Copies of his books and prints
are for sale in both places.
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