Full-time business consultant Rosemary Morrison has embarked on a new venture – writing children’s books to educate little ones while entertaining them with exciting stories with lovable characters.
The Dogged Adventures Of Deefir And Pat were created by Rosemary and brought to life with the help of her husband Gordon and illustrator David Smith.
Rosemary describes the project as: “Great fun, educational rhyming stories about friendship, citizenship, nature and the world we live in.”
The first book, A Day At The Beach, is hoped to be published thanks to a Kickstarter campaign which is now in its final week and in need of raising over a further £1,000.
Rosemary said: “The idea came about from walking with a friend and her dog on Sketrick Island County Down. She was telling me that another friend’s dog had done the same walk on a different day and got lost. It was in a badger set and they had to come back the next day, so that gave rise to the dog getting stuck in a lobster pot instead! The book looks at the beach as a place to play but also points out the dangers. At the end of the story the message from the pups is play safe.”
As a businesswoman with no prior experience of publishing, Rosemary had to learn everything in order to create the series.
She said: “I knew that it would be a very competitive market and I realised quickly how long it might take to be picked up by a publisher so in the end we decided to self-publish. There’s a lot to learn when starting any new venture in an unfamiliar sector. The main issue too is that I have another full-time business so doing this part-time was much harder.
“My working day usually starts at six or seven in the morning and I’m not home until six in the evening on a normal day, it’s been like that for over 13 years now.
“This is the reason that this whole thing has not come to fruition for 3 years – it’s difficult to juggle everything, but it’s with Dogged determination that we’re finally getting there!”
After years of working on the stories, Rosemary and her team are eager to finally provide children with physical copies of the first book.
She said: “I actually wrote a business plan for this book almost exactly two years ago and the stories were written maybe a year before that. I actually attended a writing course in QUB a few years ago too. I just wasn’t sure that it would be children’s books.
“The children’s books came about through my interest in the Learning for Life and Work element of the school curriculum as I’ve been delivering seminars for Young Enterprise for over 14 years.
“This was an itch that I had to scratch. Also, I thought that this would be useful knowledge for me to have, to understand the process, so I could advise any client that would want to do something similar either in publishing or simply using a crowd funding platform to raise some business finance.”
In a unique twist Rosemary plans to provide 120 libraries in Northern Ireland with a copy of the first book.
You can support the children’s stories by donating to Rosemary’s Kickstarter page HERE.