Thursday, May 20, 2021

My Memories Of Animals Large And Small For forty-six years, I jotted down stories about taking care of my animals and fowl with the thought that someday I would like to become an author. When I saw on the Keystone Library Bulletin board that there was going to be a six weeks Writer's Workshop I signed up. The teacher was a retired English teacher. She encouraged all of us in that class to write about things we knew. For me, that was my animals. When I handed in my first story, the teacher gave me pointers on how to write the story better. When the class was over, she told all of us that we could bring any other stories to her at her home and she'd edit them for us. I took her up on that offer. She talked a local newspaper into putting a Writer's Column in the paper. I sent in several of my stories and it was so great to see my work in print. By the late eighties, I was ready to try writing a book. From that one, I wrote two about Alzheimer's while I was working at the Keystone Care Center. It's still a great place to work and for residents to get the care they need. Self-publishing became easy in 2008 online. I had eight books to publish which sold on Amazon and now I am ready to sell number 64. My Memories Of Animals Large And Small. In the early eighties, my son was gifted with the first three books of Dr. James Herriot, the vet from Yorkshire Dales, England. He began jotting down his stories in the 1930s and later turned them into books. Lately, I decided I might be able to do the same thing so I dug my early stories out of the drawer and began to type them into manuscript form. The later stories I had put on Facebook and had copies on the computer. What surprised me was the fact that I had enough stories for three books. So my working with sheep in the first book had to be almost as rugged in the winter as when Dr. Herriot trudged through knee-deep snow and blizzards in England. Some of the stories are scary like when a disagreeable cow takes her birthing pains out on me, or when the new bull has a dislike for women in general and charges me when I kept going in his pen. So meet Bobtail, Samson, Mr. Quacker, and the rest of Fay's menagerie in her first days of tending livestock. Paperback Books, regular and large print and Nook ebooks are at Barnes and Noble online. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/memories-of-my-animals-large-and-small-fay-risner/1139509108?ean=9781666289633 Paperback book is in Amazon and ebook is in Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B095GG29XL/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=My+Memories+of+Animals+Large+and+Small+by+Fay+risner&qid=1621524779&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0959LQK2T Ebook is at Smashwords. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1084944 Coming sometime this year will be books two and three in the series.