Spring 2018

Spring saw the preparations for the launch of  my very first children's story book Tails of a Little Brown Mouse. It is a fictitious tale, however, based on the true account of a real mouse we found in our previous garden! The discovery of the little brown mouse in a tray of seedlings one night prompted the idea for a story - and the idea has blossomed from a little flash fiction chapter written in the summer of 2016 to a fully illustrated, full length children's story.

Of course, Bubbles the cat features in the story! How could she not?

In reality she did not come face to face with the mouse but I created a section of the story especially for her - and my illustrator William Scarratt created a superb black and white sketch of her for the story....

We held a book launch - and as it was really for children - there were LOTS of balloons! Now anyone who has followed our blog for a while knows Bubbles has always had a very up /down relationship with balloons. They go up and her ears go down! She is terrified of them.

So on the eve of the book launch, Brent was tasked with the job of blowing up about 30 balloons and as usual, part way through the evening, the lounge door flew open and in marched Bubbles. As soon as she saw the balloons, her whole demeanor changed and she slunk, low and stealthy to the floor across to say "hello" very quickly. Then she slunk back out to sulk in bed for the rest of the evening.

The interesting part came the next morning when we had to transport the balloons in our very small car all the way to the library!