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Archives for April 2015

Stanley and Katrina by Felicia Maziarz Review

April 19, 2015 by Daniel Johnston Leave a Comment

It’s not often that you get to read a books written by someone who started them when she was nine years old. Even more rare is that they’re actually really good.

That’s exactly the situation with Stanley and Katrina, both book one and book two. The author, Felicia Maziarz, composed these two books about the relationship between dogs and cats, basing them on both her own animals and her imagination. 

In The Perpetual Papers of the Pack of Pets, Stanley (the dog) and Katrina (the cat) decide to get acquainted after finding themselves stuck in the same household for three years. They communicate via letters, and these are what we read in the book. They grow to know more about each other, and though they never really become friends they do team up and commiserate when the occasion calls for it.

They book is a series of anecdotes, from Stanley being judged by the Wise Cat Council (something Katrina made up), to messing up the Christmas tree, to trying to get out of pet shows by purposefully failing. There are a lot of very funny jokes here that I laughed out loud about.

The Observations of the Obstreperous Animals is more of the same kind of adventures. Katrina decides to create The United States of Katrina, the two of them are taken to a psychic, and they have to get out of agility training. This one is also very funny.

Both books are around 90 pages and 10,000 words, and well worth getting for free on Kindle Unlimited. Felicia has indicated that she won’t be writing any more installments, but these books are already a great accomplishment for someone so young. They are suitable for ages 6 to 13, and especially for animal lovers.

These books are based on a great idea (projecting human motivations and actions onto animals), as anyone who has been around animals for any length of time can tell. You can get the first one here. You should also check out Felicia’s website, particularly for the excellent interview program The Write Chat with the esteemed “This Kid” Erik.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Interview with 13 Year Old Author Tate Linders! Podcast #12

April 6, 2015 by Daniel Johnston Leave a Comment

Hi everyone, I’m really excited to present you with this interview today. It’s with Tate Linders, the author of Mystery on the Missing Ship, which she wrote when she was only just eleven years old!

Now she’s a published author (in the intro I mistakenly say she’s traditionally published; she is self-published, but had an editor and some people to help get her book out. That’s also not clear in the interview, so I wanted to make sure and explain that for you), working on her second book.

It all came when she read the Titanic Series by the writer who also happens to be my greatest inspiration, Gordon Korman! When she revealed this in the interview I was pretty floored, haha.

But after reading that she got inspired and decided to write a Titanic mystery/romance/crime/historical fiction all wrapped into about a hundred pages! She relates in the interview how she only wrote for a little bit of time each day for a year (personally I can’t understand how she could be that patient and not just do the whole thing at once, and a little amazed that she kept preserving like that for a whole year; it should be an example to all writers of what’s possible and what we can do).

Her book is on Kindle Unlimited for free, so check it out if you want. The romance is pretty heavy, and it’s also extremely fast-moving with tons of action. It’s a quick read, so again you can get it here on Amazon.

Here’s the interview where you can hear all the details of exactly what she did and what happened. I hope you’re inspired by Tate’s story like I am!

https://readersandwritersparadise.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Podcast-12-4.mp3

Filed Under: Interviews, Podcast, Writing

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Hi, I'm Daniel Johnston. I'm a seventeen year-old who loves everything about books! Check around for book reviews, recordings of audio short stories, and my own writing. Thanks for stopping by!

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