About Us
I’ve been creating poetry, games and fun stuff for a long time
Other products that Happy Valley Publishers and Incredible Game Company has produced:
Welcome to Happy Valley Publishers
We love writing and creating for families and children of all ages
HAPPY VALLEY PUBLISHERS (HVP) was established in 1978 by Mike Agrelius. HVP did a number of different local books and games, including COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS and DO WHAT IS RIGHT.
Mike created The Incredible Game Company (IGC) in 1988 which sold games in college bookstores, specialty stores, and catalogs (including FAO Schwarz, Neiman-Marcus, etc.) in various parts of the US. Notable games IGC sold include ABSTRACTS The Game of Absurd Logic;
MADE IN THE USA; EXTINCTION The Last Game They Ever Played; and IN YOUR FACE!
Despite moderate successes, HVP and IGC remained side hustles for Mike, with long periods where his focus was on whatever “real” jobs he was doing at the time. Then in 2019, Mike got inspired to chase a couple of bucket list items. He put his two children’s book titles on a vision board, called his friend Val and Mike launched a Kickstarter project for HEAR WHAT’S HERE. A few months later HEAR WHAT’S HERE was printed, sent to Kickstarter backers, and placed in stores (mainly in Utah). Two years after that he did another Kickstarter for ELEPHANT GLUE.
Mike and Val had been talking about doing projects together since they met each other at a bookseller show back in the early 1980’s. Mike really liked Val’s cartoons and thought they were a perfect match for what he wanted his children’s books to look like. Val did sketches for what eventually became HEAR WHAT’S HERE and he did the actual artwork for ELEPHANT GLUE, some 30-plus years ago. Mike saved the artwork for all those years; however, it was very expensive to do a full-color, hardbound children’s book the way Mike had envisioned the book to be. So, they waited for years with Mike shopping the manuscripts around and receiving many rejection letters until one day Mike just decided he had to do it without a big publisher.
Now semi-retired, Mike has been working on this new “Dad Joke” book – writing some rhyming jokes for the first part of the book – collecting, tweaking, and writing other one-liners. Val, created wonderful new cartoons/illustrations, especially for Whatever Floats Your Goat.
Mike has other projects he is excited about and if these books are successful there may be more to come.