Pam and Oskar invited me to do a guest post on Pet Blogs United, so here goes. My name is Marilyn D. Anderson, and I’m an author who writes children’s books about animals. I grew up on a Minnesota dairy farm, and since I had no playmates, the farm animals were all my friends. I had lambs that I fed with a bottle, a cow I showed in 4-H, and many farm dogs. I also LOVED books.
I my first life, I was a music teacher, and my roommate Janice and I shared a beautiful tricolored Shetland Sheepdog named Pixie. We took Pixie to obedience classes like two proud mamas, but Janice was the better trainer, so I was chief cheerleader. When I got married, and I let Janice take Pixie as her consolation prize. Then I got myself a sable Sheltie which I named Tyche and took her to obedience training. My husband and I loved Tyche dearly for the next 10 years until she died of cancer. In the years after that we had a whole parade of rescue dogs.
Horses were an even bigger part of my life, and I bought many a young horse that was down his/her luck in order to play fairy-god-mother. I trained these horses to be safe riding horses and then sold them to good homes. In my second life, I started writing books, many staring horses that I’d once owned. In the last 29 years, I’ve had 28 books published as well as dozens of magazine pieces. Six of the books are about horses; seven are dog stories, and the rest are on all sort of topics from HOT FUDGE PICKLES to THE VICEPRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES.
My best selling series is about a cute dog named Barkley, who is loveable but very good at getting into scrapes. In the first book called COME HOME BARKLEY, he gets seperated from his family at the airport, and as this city dog tries to find his way home, he tangles with pigs, other stray dogs, kids who want to claim him, dog catchers, and someone who wants to sell him to a research lab. Of course, there's a happy ending; I can't stand books that stay sad.
That book was such a hit I was asked to write sequel, which we called NOBODY WANTS BARKLEY. In the book our city dog struggles to adapt to living in the country. For example, Barkley thinkgs it's great fun to chase the neighbor's sheep until he meets the owner of the sheep and his German shepherd. That fiasco makes Barkely's owner sign him up for 4-H obedience lessons, where he becomes the dunce of the class.
I was asked to write a third book about Barkley and called it BRING BACK BARKLEY. At the time I was delaing with my father's Parkinson's disease and my mother being able to care for him, so Barkley became freinds with an elderly lady who had to go to an assisted living facility. Barkley wants' to visit her, but he has to keep hidin out from the superintendent of the home who doesn't want animals in his "hospital." The 3 books in the series sold almost half a million copies.
Then my publisher went out of business. I figured someone whould want to repreint very popular books, but I was wrong. After years of wasting time, I finally had Barkley reprinted on my own in order to have books to sell when I made school visits. Unfortunately the cover photo on the old books didn't belong to me, so I put an ad in my local paper asking for a "cover dog." A very nice woman with a darling Lhasa Apso answered my ad and she had dozens of wonderful professional pictures of Mayzee for me to use. She told me that Mayzee was the product of a puppy mill and had spend many of her early months in a cramped cage with no socialization. But gradually Mayzee turned into a wonderful companion. I used Mayzee's picture on the cover of the reprinted book and all three of the Barkley books when I loaded them up on Nook and Kindle.
Book IV has been "almost done" for about 15 years, and now that the other books are doing well on Nook & Kindle, I finally found the ambition to really finish it. I hope to have WE NEED BARKLEY up online in the next few weeks.
You can learn more about me and my books at my website: MarilynDAnderson.com.
I would love to hear from you on Pam & Oskar's blog.
Horses were an even bigger part of my life, and I bought many a young horse that was down his/her luck in order to play fairy-god-mother. I trained these horses to be safe riding horses and then sold them to good homes. In my second life, I started writing books, many staring horses that I’d once owned. In the last 29 years, I’ve had 28 books published as well as dozens of magazine pieces. Six of the books are about horses; seven are dog stories, and the rest are on all sort of topics from HOT FUDGE PICKLES to THE VICEPRESIDENCY OF THE UNITED STATES.
My best selling series is about a cute dog named Barkley, who is loveable but very good at getting into scrapes. In the first book called COME HOME BARKLEY, he gets seperated from his family at the airport, and as this city dog tries to find his way home, he tangles with pigs, other stray dogs, kids who want to claim him, dog catchers, and someone who wants to sell him to a research lab. Of course, there's a happy ending; I can't stand books that stay sad.
That book was such a hit I was asked to write sequel, which we called NOBODY WANTS BARKLEY. In the book our city dog struggles to adapt to living in the country. For example, Barkley thinkgs it's great fun to chase the neighbor's sheep until he meets the owner of the sheep and his German shepherd. That fiasco makes Barkely's owner sign him up for 4-H obedience lessons, where he becomes the dunce of the class.
I was asked to write a third book about Barkley and called it BRING BACK BARKLEY. At the time I was delaing with my father's Parkinson's disease and my mother being able to care for him, so Barkley became freinds with an elderly lady who had to go to an assisted living facility. Barkley wants' to visit her, but he has to keep hidin out from the superintendent of the home who doesn't want animals in his "hospital." The 3 books in the series sold almost half a million copies.
Then my publisher went out of business. I figured someone whould want to repreint very popular books, but I was wrong. After years of wasting time, I finally had Barkley reprinted on my own in order to have books to sell when I made school visits. Unfortunately the cover photo on the old books didn't belong to me, so I put an ad in my local paper asking for a "cover dog." A very nice woman with a darling Lhasa Apso answered my ad and she had dozens of wonderful professional pictures of Mayzee for me to use. She told me that Mayzee was the product of a puppy mill and had spend many of her early months in a cramped cage with no socialization. But gradually Mayzee turned into a wonderful companion. I used Mayzee's picture on the cover of the reprinted book and all three of the Barkley books when I loaded them up on Nook and Kindle.
Book IV has been "almost done" for about 15 years, and now that the other books are doing well on Nook & Kindle, I finally found the ambition to really finish it. I hope to have WE NEED BARKLEY up online in the next few weeks.
You can learn more about me and my books at my website: MarilynDAnderson.com.
I would love to hear from you on Pam & Oskar's blog.
You can enter to win one of three copies of COME HOME, BARKLEY by entering the Rafflecoper below. Contest is open to US residents only.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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