Published book
Cactus Kicks
A children’s picture book that grew from an Apple Watch bedtime-story voice memo into a published book project.
Official site is live at cactuskicks.com. Paperback ordering is live on Amazon.
How it happened
From an Apple Watch voice memo to a real children’s book world
Cactus Kicks started the way a lot of family stories start: at bedtime, half improvised, built for one kid, and strange enough to stick. The first version was not a pitch deck or a prompt. It was a dad telling his son a story about Leo, a cactus who loves soccer but keeps destroying the ball until he finds a pair of shoes made for him.
Afterward, the rough story was captured as an Apple Watch voice memo. That little recording became the seed. From there, AI helped us hear the shape of the story more clearly, Codex helped turn the work into a production system, and the project grew into a finished book package with a public website and Amazon paperback.
Catching the story before it disappeared
The voice memo preserved the odd details that made the bedtime version feel alive: a cactus named Leo, soccer, busted balls, big feelings, colorful shoes, and a world that felt playful instead of polished. The first job was not to make it slick. It was to keep the weird little spark intact.
Turning a ramble into a book
We used AI to shape the recording into a clean children’s-book arc: Leo wants to play, Leo cannot play the way everyone else does, Leo leaves home, Leo discovers shoes that fit him, and Leo returns with a new way to belong. The goal was structure without sanding off the bedtime-story charm.
Giving Leo a visual world
The art direction started from crude sketches, simple scene ideas, and a clear feeling: sunny, funny, colorful, and warm enough for a kid to want another page. AI turned those rough ideas into polished illustrations, while we kept steering character consistency, emotion, setting, and page-to-page continuity.
Using Codex as the production assistant
Codex helped with the unglamorous part that makes a creative project real: organizing assets, checking page order, preparing the interior, building proof files, reviewing crops and margins, assembling the cover wrap, and keeping a publishing checklist from getting lost in the mess.
Publishing the project without pretending it is magic
The result is Cactus Kicks as a published book project: an official website, finished preview assets, a KDP-ready package, and a live Amazon paperback listing. The important part for the portfolio is the full path from tiny voice memo to finished creative system.
Launching the official book site and Amazon page
Cactus Kicks now has a public home at CactusKicks.com, with the cover, story preview, and launch path in one place. It also has a live Amazon page for paperback ordering. That matters because this is no longer just a private experiment or a folder of generated art. It is a real children’s-book project with a public site and a working book listing.
Visit CactusKicks.comThe project is not interesting because AI made a book out of nowhere. It is interesting because a personal bedtime story survived the whole production path: voice memo, manuscript, storyboard, illustration, layout, QA, website, publishing prep, and launch.