Joanne Blondin

I enjoy writing stories about my adventures in the outdoors and wanted to put them into a book. Now I am not a famous adventurer like Amelia Earhart or Sally Ride, so I wondered what would be of interest to others.

Then, a truly remarkable cat walked into my condo and became the heroine of my first children's book, Matty, Detective Cat. Matty brought in slices of salami instead of mice, she faced down a large (and barking) German Shepard a few feet away, and adroitly made off with chicken from my neighbor's barbeque. To spice up Matty's literary debut I added some other necessary characters: George and Charlie, arson investigators, Taylor, a chemist, and Billy, a neighborhood ne'er-do-well.

My next children's book Professor Magillicutty's Dingle-Dangle Guide for Hunting Wild Animals is all fantasy. I wrote the first chapter for a class (Ten Stories in Ten Weeks) at Grub Street Writers in Boston. The assignment was to write a story in second person, explaining how to do something. My story details Professor Magillicutty's method for catching a tiger by the tail. In another story, avid animal hunter named Floral Bouquet thanks the Professor for his instructions and is ecstatic when she catches a Burmese python instead of a tiger. A classmate suggested that the two stories could become part of a children's book and I spent the summer writing more stories for Professor Magillicutty's Dingle-Dangle Guide for Hunting Wild Animals.