My love of rhyming began at the tender age of eight, when I won a Poetry Competition at school in 1960. Over the years I dabbled in light hearted rhyming verses on greeting cards etc but never really expanded beyond this. Then in August 2006, my writing began to emerge in a way I never believed possible. Writing a children’s story had never entered my head, until I was asked by a friend’s daughter; a university student studying teaching, to write a children’s story for her to market as an assignment. Consequently, my fascination for pig ornaments, collected over many years, made a pig my obvious character choice for my very first children’s story. With a vague idea of a story plot, I began to type. Some hours later, Hammie goes to School was on paper. I have no idea where it came from; once I started, I just couldn’t stop. A whole new world had opened for me, as one by one the stories continued to emerge over the following weeks, until I had written in total ten stories about this adorable little pig called Hammie and his family. These ten stories became part of a series called The Adventures of Hammie. In September 2006 I began my quest to find an illustrator and soon came to realise that writing these stories was the easy part … but finding someone to illustrate them … that’s a story in itself. I am pleased to say that three years down the track the illustrating of Hammie Goes to School is in progress and hopefully will be completed some time in 2010 ready for publication.
In November 2006 I wrote Twinkle the Christmas Star and Twinkle Meet Santa for my grandchildren, after an endless search of book stores for a Christmas story.
I longed for a story that would bring to my grandchildren the same magic and wonder of Christmas I experienced as a child from reading The Night Before Christmas. Sadly, I couldn’t find anything that came even close to that wonderful story. I guess you could say it was an omen in a way, as it gave me the inspiration I needed to write my own Christmas story. In December 2006, I put Twinkle together for my grandchildren, in scrap booking fashion, using Christmas cards. Twinkle never went any further, until my chance meeting at the Yamba library, with Cathy McCulloch, whilst researching children’s books, some twelve months later. Meeting Cathy changed Twinkle’s future forever, as Cathy, a Graphic Designer for the past fifteen years, shared my passion for children’s books and together in Yamba we began to bring to life Twinkle’s story with pictures. In January 2008 Cathy and her family moved, but we remained in contact and never gave up on our dream for Twinkle. However, the prospect of ever getting published was nothing more than just a dream, as publishers are rarely interested in unknown authors. Last Christmas (2008) my husband Phil, sensing my disappointment at still not having a book published, suggested that we self publish Twinkle in time for Christmas 2009. I am so grateful to Cathy McCulloch for her dedication to Twinkle and the gorgeous illustrations she has created, finally making our dream a reality.
Well there you have it, Twinkle the Christmas Star is in the bookstores and the reaction is overwhelming. I now have a collection of fifteen stories including Twinkle and The Adventures of Hammie series. I have enjoyed every minute of my time spent writing and hope one day to publish all of my stories, not only for my six grandchildren, but for children everywhere to enjoy.
Cathie Whitmore