Eight months pregnant, Abi Cushman had been walking in downtown Niantic with her husband Pete and daughter Scout about a mile from home in August 2017 when a downpour struck without warning.

She couldn't run because of her pregnancy, so she was forced to make the long slog home in the rain, drenched to the bone.

"I began to realize that once you get completely soaking wet, it doesn't get any worse," she smiled during an interview at Fiddleheads Food Coop in New London.

That simple message resonated in her mind for a couple months as she thought up a story that children might want to read. Finally, after weeks of developing a story with thumbnail sketches, she began to see the outlines of a children's picture book like the one she had been dreaming about publishing for years.

A few months later, she brought some of her finished illustrations to the New England Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators conference in Springfield, Mass., where she ended up winning the portfolio showcase.

Jim Hoover, the art director at Viking Press who had been a portfolio judge, suggested Cushman send some of her more polished work — both story and art — to be considered for publication by the major publishing house.

"They loved it," she said.

And now, after a lot of give and take with her agent and many revisions along the way with editor Tracy Gates, Cushman has won final approval from Viking for two picture books, including the first, "Soaked," to be released in 2020, and "Animals Go Vroom," slated for 2021 release. The humorous books are geared toward very young readers and average only about 200 words.

Nearly every children's picture book these days, she said, is 500 words or less. The books tend to be between 32 and 40 pages, she added.

"The children's book field is so competitive," Cushman said. "With a debut, you really need to make a splash. It matters how well your first book does."

Cushman fell in love with illustration at East Lyme Middle School when art teacher Cathy Lovell had her experiment with different media, including pastels. She graduated from East Lyme High School and went to Tufts University intending to be a biology major but eventually graduating with a degree in art history and studio art.

She took illustration classes at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and initially tried to break into the children's book market in 2003 but didn't have enough good story ideas, she said. In 2015, she began in earnest to look into the children's book market, experimenting with different illustration styles.

"Having children helps," she added, "because I'm reading a lot of current picture books. You become inspired by looking at the other books; you see what's working. You have to know what's current."

The great thing about children's books, she added, is they are not going digital anytime soon.

"It still needs to be hands on," she said. "You need kids in your lap reading a book. It is about the page turn."

And each page turn should be a surprise or a change of pace, so planning the layout of the book is crucial. That's why she uses scraps of paper to story-board the book way before she begins to do any of the detailed illustrations.

She writes snippets of text and does little drawings, and then tries to put it all together like a puzzle using pieces of paper and tape to constantly rearrange how everything fits together.

Even the illustrations are always up for change. She does the detailed character workups by hand in pencil, which gives her better control of details, then scans them into her computer to do the rest of the illustration in Adobe Photoshop.

Having the images on a computer allows her to easily change up the illustrations during the back and forth with her Viking editors. For instance, one of the moose characters in her book has undergone so many transformations that the only thing remaining from the original sketch is the look of the eyes.

"I didn't really know how to draw a moose," she chuckled.

Cushman said she uses reference photos to draw her characters, then must work out details such as whether they will walk on two legs or four.

She admitted that the storytelling process was pretty collaborative. For instance, she ran the story by a children's book group run by John Himmelman at Killingworth Public Library, where she got several ideas to expand the story, and received more help from a similar online group to which she belongs.

"Initially, it was just about a bear being in a rainstorm and that he realizes it's fun and finds joy in a situation," she said. "But there wasn't enough tension in the story."

The hula-hooping moose that had once made a few cameo appearances then began to take on more of a role and become an equal part of the story, she said. Meanwhile, a fox that didn't have a distinguishing personality was cut from the book, and a badger and bunny were given new life with some side storylines, she said.

"A lot of it is done with pictures — little visual jokes," she said.

An artist known for doing pet portraits in her early career, Cushman runs a website design firm called Brown Bear Creative out of her home, but she's pulled back recently to concentrate more of her time on picture books. It's not a lucrative career, she said, but it's creatively rewarding and allows her more time to stay at home with her children, 4-year-old Scout and 1-year-old son Finn.

Many children's book authors, she added, supplement their income with school visits. But she got a good advance, she said, partly because she both wrote and illustrated the book, and if sales hit a certain level, she will pull in extra money for each copy sold.

"You have to want it because it's a really long, tough process," she said. "It can be very disheartening at times."

Cushman admits to spending many late nights into early mornings revising her artwork in response to ideas and requests from her editors at Viking.

"It's very much a collaborative process," she said. "But I like that."

She likes the fact she can easily rearrange her illustrations by moving items around on her computer. She added that it's good to have editors in charge of quality control because sometimes as an illustrator you are too close to the project to see it critically.

"I don't feel stressed when I am drawing because I know I can change things easily," she said.

One thing she had to consider as she grew more serious about publishing was the idea of marketability. Most stories need a hook of some sort, whether it's tied to a season or a certain segment of the market. Cushman liked to run ideas by her agent first to determine whether they were marketable or not.

And even getting an agent is competitive in the children's book field. Cushman reports that agents accept fewer than 1 percent of potential clients who ask to be represented.

Publishers are always looking for books with series potential, but the first book must stand out on its own to get noticed, she said. And it's very important, she added, that authors back up their first book with another in quick succession, with the hope that brisk sales will give them more leeway to experiment with new ideas down the road, once their name is established.

"The best marketing is to write the next book," she said.

l.howard@theday.com