Katherine’s first ever stories!

After sending you all away to read the first story you ever wrote (you can come back now!), I thought I’d dig out my author’s first ever story so you can all have a good laugh. This has proved more difficult than you might think, since back when my author wrote her first story, computers had not been invented. In fact, she says she didn’t even write her first stories down. She just told them to her little brother at bedtime…

Katherine’s first ever story (aged 8)
Snowy, Silks and Soot.
Actually a series of stories about three magical dogs who lived in kennels in the clouds. Snowy was a proud white terrier, Silks was a beautiful golden retriever, and Soot was a black mongrel who got into a lot of trouble. Her brother (aged 4) had three little plastic dogs he used to play with, so that was where the characters came from. She says she can’t remember the plots! But they had some amazing adventures and kept her little brother amused (a-muse-d, get it?).

Katherine’s first illustrated book (aged 12)
The Story of Flax.
The first story she kept. It was neatly typed on a little typewriter she got for her birthday, and she illustrated it herself. It tells the story of Flax, a palomino pony who has all kinds of adventures in a riding school, circus, etc, before finding happiness. In the Muse’s opinion, the illustrations are better than the words! But it’s quite an interesting story because it’s told by Flax himself, rather like Alexander the Great’s horse Bucephalas tells his own story in “I am the Great Horse”. My author seems to like doing books straight from the horse’s mouth… I must help her write a unicorn’s story one day.

Katherine’s first novel (aged 16)
The Infinity Stone.
A science fiction novel about some telepathic teenagers who build a spaceship to escape their boring planet in search of adventure. Of course they find the galaxy is not quite what they were expecting, and get into all sorts of trouble as they search for the secret of the Infinity Stone and discover why space travel was banned on their home world. My author got into trouble, too, for typing this book on blue and yellow paper. Publishers do NOT like blue and yellow paper! So it never got published, which is maybe just as well, because back then I was only a shadow in the enchanted mist and would not have been able to blog about it.

Katherine’s first published story (aged 22)
A Pig’s Tale.
Well, all authors all have to start somewhere! This short story won a competition in GEC Measurement’s in-house magazine, after they found a small yellow plastic pig beheaded in the grass outside their New Product building. The competition was to invent a story for the pig to say how it got there. My author worked for GEC at the time as a mathematician, but she was obviously a frustrated writer even then… The story is quite short, so I’ll post it on this blog once I’ve had a chance to copy it into my author’s computer (she’ll probably kill me).

What was YOUR first ever story?