Category Archives: animals

Coming soon! A children’s picture book

Here it is, the gorgeous cover for my

children’s picture book!

children's picture book illustrated book

What’s this children’s picture book about you ask?

Well, let me tell you.

Can five completely different animals become friends?

Meet two dogs who befriend a moose on the train from Vancouver to Toronto. Along the way,  two bears – a black bear and a grizzly – join them.

Will the group overcome their differences and discover that deep down they’re all the same?

You can read how the book came to be here.

I’m thrilled with the job Aria Jones did on the illustrations. I found her on Fiverr and would use her again.

I’m waiting for quotes from two area printers. Given the fact, I’d prefer to use ‘local’ companies; I’ve requested quotes from two of them. One did the original print run of Tim’s Magic Christmas. The other is new to me but within walking distance of my house, which makes it great for picking up the finished product. The colour pictures will drive the cost up, but you can’t have a picture book without them, and black and white images aren’t going to do it.

When the buy links are available, I’ll post them here. I’ll also post regular updates on my Facebook author page as to the book’s progress.

Most Saturday’s during the summer, you’ll find me at the Brockville Farmers’ Market. As soon as the print edition is available, I’ll be there with it. You’ll find me on the east side of Market Street West next to city hall.

 

 

 

Dougal’s Diary by Sarah Stephenson #dogtale #humour #guestpost #giveaway

dougal's diary

Dougal’s Diary

by

Sarah Stephenson

 

Dougal's diary

Genre: a dog tale/ humour

Release Date: 14th Jan 2016

Publisher: Crooked Cat Publishing

Has he chosen well and landed on his paws? Dougal the Labradoodle puppy, a complete hypochondriac and Boris Johnson’s No1 fan, arrives in Greenwich with great expectations.

He longs to travel the world on Virgin Atlantic, dine at royal banquets and become; either a superstar and party the night away or work as a doorman at the Savoy.

Behaviour classes were never on his wish list, neither were cliff-hanging experiences on the Thames, booze cruises to Calais or obsessions for eating socks.

Can he survive life with a chaotic owner and her eccentric friends? Can he deal with his jealousy when a foster puppy comes to stay? And as for his dreams, will they ever come true?

AMAZON UK

AMAZON US

WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK

A real 3D version of Dougal does exist. And when I first got him, he seemed so different from other dogs I’d had; running into people’s homes if they’d left their front door open, curling up on their sofa, ready to watch TV, even expecting to be offered a cup of tea. He was a lover of parties, people and life. Happy to travel on the tube, ride on escalators, or spend a day in a children’s playpark. I felt he was asking to be put in a book. But what type of book, I didn’t really know.

Initially, I thought of a picture book with captions. One particular event encouraged this idea. Dougal always refused to go into the garden alone. I was in the bath. It was pouring with rain when Dougal decided he had to go out. So there I was in the garden clutching an umbrella, draped only in a towel, hoping the puppy would hurry up and relieve himself fast. And, of course, praying my neighbours weren’t watching me through their windows.

It took a while for me to wake up to the fact I’d need art classes to achieve my aim. And would life drawing actually help me with dog cartoons? It also meant writing it as a book for children was out, unless I found an illustrator. Not an easy task. So I decided to stick with words and write it for adults. Though I still feel, a few pictures would be fun.

The book changed dramatically from the first to final draft. In the beginning, there were tedious pages about puppy training advice, separation anxiety and the fact he had lacked friends because he hung out with large dogs who hated puppies. Sounds like fun read doesn’t it? Actually, it wasn’t quite that bad. Then it started to change and turned into a story about a long-suffering dog, with issues. Here Sue Townsend’s Adrian Mole was an inspiration. And Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones, too, I guess. Both the main characters in those novels have obsessions. Bridget Jones, her weight and men. Adrian Mole: acne and the whole teenage hormonal bit and of course Pandora. On top of that he’s the victim of divorcing parents!

Suddenly I saw the light. I was freed and away. Dougal, the complete hypochondriac and Boris Johnson’s No 1 fan, longs to travel the world on Virgin Atlantic.

The book follows his first 18 months of life, through the Olympics, Wimbledon, having the snip (hell) but not his fault, enjoying his first Christmas where he appears in a nativity play as the whole flock of Sheep, and the pain of watching Crufts on TV.

Behaviour classes were never on his wish-list, neither were cliff-hanging experiences on the Thames, booze cruises to Calais or obsessions for eating socks.

Can he survive life with a chaotic owner and her eccentric friends? Can he deal with his jealousy when a foster puppy comes to stay? And as for his dreams of travelling on Virgin, will they ever come true?

ABOUT SARAH STEPHENSON

Dougal's Diary

Sarah, who grew up in Bristol, now lives in South East London with two dogs, the occasional grandchild and a lot of mess. She’s had a chequered career as ballet dancer, cook, cleaning lady, salesgirl of outsize underwear in Littlewoods and actor. As an actor she worked mostly in the theatre: plays ranging from Shakespeare to improvised, both comedy and tragedy.

Cooking combines two of her passions; travel and people. She’s catered on barges in Burgundy, private houses in America, many stately homes in England, run a delicatessen, a stall in a farmer’s market and been a judge on the Great Taste Food Awards. Good opportunities for hearing about the lives of others.

Her need to write began with letters; sending home news of her adventures. At seventeen: travelling alone on the Trans-Siberian Railway and across the Sea of Japan. In Greece as a drama student, when the van blew up at the Springs of Daphne and they explored the mainland, riding on bread vans and tractors before selling their blood for a fiver and hitch-hiking home on a lorry. Or in Morocco on a solo trip, in pre-mobile phone days, when she was chucked off a bus in the desert and found herself surrounded by hundreds of camels and similar numbers of men, all in local dress.

Since then Sarah hasn’t stopped scribbling and joining the Write Place, a writing class in Dartford, encouraged her to put the contents of numerous exercise books into something more concrete.

These days Sarah chooses less adventurous holidays but might well send one of her characters off on a trek she doesn’t feel brave enough to make.

Dougal’s Diary is Sarah’s first book.

Dougal's Diary

Facebook: Sarah www.facebook.com/Sarah Stephenson798

Dougal: www.facebook.com/dougal.stephenson

Twitter: Sarah: @SvsStephenson
Dougal : @DougalDiary

Blog: dougaldogsdiary.blogspot.co.uk

GIVEAWAY

E-COPY OF THE BOOK X 2
a Rafflecopter giveaway

I See Faces and other things…

FACES and…

As kids, we likely all lay on our backs in the grass looking at the clouds finding faces, animals and other objects at one time or another.

What about with standing stones? Well, yup, I see faces there, too.

facesDo you see a face in this stone at Stonehenge?

facesHow about now after I draw the outline of the mouth, eyes, nose and chin? I should have picked a different color other than black because the contrast on the rock tends to overpower the painted line.

Since my attempt with black to outline didn’t achieve the result I wanted, I went back in and outlined it in white. Does this make it easier to see?

faces

Maybe this is the face of the troll who lived under the bridge in the Norweigian fairy tale, The Three Billy Goats Gruff?

facesOr what about this stone along the avenue near Avebury?

facesLooks a handsome fellow despite his large nose. But look at him from another angle… what do you see?

facesFrom this angle, it looks like a horse’s head. Perhaps the knight piece on a chessboard.

facesAnd this one reminds me of a shark with the shape of the head and the placement of the mouth. Look who’s grinning at us from the right side of the picture!

Did you see any of these faces?

 

#AtoZChallenge – Zebra

zebra

A member of the horse family, the zebra is native to Africa. Unlike their ‘cousins’ horses and donkeys, zebras have never been domesticated.

Zebra
By Muhammad Mahdi Karim (www.micro2macro.net) Facebook Youtube (Own work) [GFDL 1.2 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/fdl-1.2.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

In the news recently, a zebra got in on the selfie craze. You can see the photos at www.mirror.co.uk.

Did you know that the stripes on a zebra are unique to each animal?

 

 

#AtoZChallenge – Wallaby

A wallaby is a small to mid-sized member of the kangaroo clan. Like their cousin, the kangaroo, wallabies are marsupials and carry their young, also called joeys, in their pouches.

In 2008, Wendell, a wallaby from Saunders Country Critters zoo escaped and “Where’s Wendell” fever took over and sightings of the wayward wallaby were reported throughout Eastern Ontario and Quebec. Sadly, this story didn’t have a happy ending, and Wendell was found dead a few short miles from his home.

wallaby
By Glen Fergus (Own work, Cooktown, Queensland, Australia) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons