The Land Far Away is a series that is very close to my heart. It’s gentle, full of adventure and fun, but the stories always seem to have a meaning. However, the reasons that LFA is special to me are manifold…
Firstly is this character’s story –
Pika the Phluph and The Gribblebid Tough was the first children’s book that I ever wrote and it’s the one that brought Maria K and I together. I’d been messing around with nonsense rhymes and she started drawing some of the characters from the post they appeared on. I loved her drawing style, so asked her if she wanted to collaborate. The collaboration turned into a long distance friendship – she and I have a lot in common!
Then of course, Pika the Phluph herself was created by my oldest daughter when she had just started school – she was struggling with the whole “PH” is “FF” sound and I wrote part of the story to show her what it meant – I drew a sketch of the character to show her that Pika was “fluffy” and that it could also be spelt “Phluphy”. I just continued writing about Pika because she was so cute (like my daughter at the time) and I’d been bitten by the rhyming story bug.
The next few books followed rapidly. Rhyming stories can be very hard to get right, so it took a while to get them right. Maria would sketch up the stories as I did them (I owe her several boxes of colouring pencils at the very least) and then format and publish them (it’s easier if she does that end because she has the scans of the pictures in the right DPI) – that segued into producing e-books of them and finally finding Trista Shaye to voice them in the audio books.
And that pretty much brings me up to date with the latest Land Far Away news!!
Last christmas I bought a cute little (singing) reindeer that I named Rosie. I had intended her to be a part of my Satyulemas Decorations, but PW jumped on her and immediately wore out the singing part of her!
Once I’d rescued her from PW, I sat her in with the rest of my collection of Stuffies and thought about her… next thing I know, I’m writing another Land Far Away rhyming story. It had been a long while since I’d managed to start one and actually finish it, but Rosie’s story just flowed out of my mind onto the screen in front of me…
A quick edit and polish later and I passed it to Maria.
She just published it… YAY! It’s currently only available in Print format, but knowing Maria, the e-book and Audiobook formats won’t be all that far behind!
So here is the latest of the Land Far Away stories –
Another Christmas comes to Land Far Away, and with it – a new set of troubles and adventures.
Rosie is a cute little Reindeer Calf, doing what Reindeer Calves love to do; eating Lichen and playing in the snow.
Unfortunately, playing in the snow is what gets her in trouble and it’s up to Quinza the Linzer to find and rescue her from the snowy wastes of Linzerland…
Available now in Print from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Rosie-Reindeer-Land-Far-Away/dp/1728888565
I didn’t mind that so much – having the first verse of “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” play every thirty seconds was a bit annoying…
The World of The Teigr Princess 