The story behind the story

  How did Pona and the Valiant Veterinarian come to be? To start, AJ and LA both seriously love My Little Pony, Barbie, Sailor Moon (the 90’s version), Littlest Pet Shop, and Pokémon. Strong female leads, doe eyed animals, and adorable pets that do what you tell them are apparently all the rage with my two kids as I am sure is probably the case in many households with little girls. Ha! Right?

  Every night before bed we have the same routine of reading a story together, singing some nursery songs, and saying our prayers. A little over a year ago, my kids surprised me by requesting that I make up a new story and tell it to them on the spot. (Thanks for putting me on the hot seat, girls.) So, I thought for a moment, and then began telling them a story about AJ’s favorite stuffed animal, a horse she had named Pona. I used their names in the story as well. Princess Pomegranate was originally Princess AJ. And Dr. Valerie was originally Dr. LA. They loved the story I made up for them so much that they wanted me to try to remember it so I could tell it to them again the following night.

  So after tucking them in for the night, I headed to my computer and typed up our story as best as I could remember it. I even searched the web for random clipart that resembled the characters from the story. When I printed it out, I had the story written on one side of the page, and the clipart images on the other so that they could look at it while I read it to them and enjoy the benefit of a partially illustrated version of their story. They thought it was “da bomb diggity”. That piece of paper got pulled out on multiple occasions over the following months and we read it together.

  I had the idea in my head, that if my children really loved the story enough to want to hear it again and again, I wondered if other children would enjoy it just as much, especially if it were fully illustrated. So, I began to roughly sketch out what I thought my characters would really look like.  As you might have noticed, my characters have a slight anime look to them. Like I said before, my daughters enjoy watching a little bit of anime and Barbie cartoons. So the human characters have a bit of a doll-look to them as well. My kids got a big kick out of the fact that I used their crayons to color my images. And to my delight, they began scribbling out stories and drawing pictures of their own right along with me. What a joy it was to partake in their creativity!

    After drawing out and coloring my own illustrations, I separated my story into several pages of text instead of having it all on one page. I thought long and hard about whether or not to keep the names of the characters as they were (with the princess and the vet originally named after my daughters) or to change them. Eventually, I decided that if other families were going to make these stories their own, it would be better for me to not have the characters named after my own kids. (But I would be totally thrilled to know that in reading the story to your children that you use your kids’ names in place of any of the characters!) Then, I pasted my illustrations into the story also. Soon, I had a full-fledged book and was ready to submit to Amazon.

  Overall, the making of this book took the better part of a year. The reason being mainly that I’m an ordinary mom and I have ordinary kids and we are ordinarily busy. Illustrating every image was very slow. Sometimes it took me several days to get one finished just how I wanted it. And there were little tweaks made to the story here and there, and editing, and formatting. As a busy mom, there were many days I didn’t even touch this project. Sometimes, I just didn’t know where it was going. But I didn’t give up on getting my book published and the effort has finally paid off.

  Some of the best things in life take place over a long period of time. You do not have to put your family aside to pursue a dream. Of course put your family first, but make a little time for that project, hobby, business, or other personal goal too. Don’t give up and keep pushing forward!

  To those who have purchased Pona and the Valiant Veterinarian on Amazon, I just have to say a big THANK YOU! It is so humbling to put a piece of yourself out into the world and have complete strangers willing to pay to have it in their homes because they believe the thing you created is valuable to them. I am so honored that you enjoy my story.

  To all my readers, the Peterson family wishes you and your family well and a cool and relaxing summer.

What will Pona be up to next? Stay tuned!

Find out more about future publications by visiting my Facebook Page! www.facebook.com/AuthorBrandiPeterson