As most of you know, I don't sit still well. I'm not comfortable not doing something and so being in Dublin not knowing many people (in the early days of my adventure) I began to think of things to keep myself busy. I'm always thinking on the lines of education and I obviously have an appreciation for travel so I combined the two with my other great passion, writing. I put together two books based on an idea from Carol Poole, a former teacher and mentor of mine.
The idea was to take an animal and share the stories of my travel through the animal's perspective. I've been fortunate enough to travel many places throughout Europe and America but I wanted to make it really personal for the first book. I thought I'd root the character someplace and what better place is there than Charleston?
In speaking with the publisher, I was able to work on two books at once so I took my new adventure of living abroad as a starting point for my second book. I thought of a character I'd like to go with and the giraffe seemed like a lovable animal that hasn't been overdone with children's stories. I wanted to use alliteration to choose a name for the giraffe and Gia was a cute name that I thought would work well...thus, Gia the Giraffe was born.
On December 20, 2011, both The Adventures of Gia the Giraffe and Gia Goes to Dublin arrived on my doorstep. They are the first two copies to ever be printed of my books. I am now awaiting word that the others have been printed and are available for purchase on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It's all so exciting!
I'm happy with my little project from Dublin and proud to have another something to remember my time there. I'm also very proud that these little stories can be shared with children so that they too can "visit" two fantastic cities. I hope that I'll be able to share more stories of Gia's adventures in the future.
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