Local mother and business woman publishes first book
Author Elizabeth Hastings and her dogs, Roger and Wesley.
When she became a stay-at-home mom last year upon the birth of their first daughter, Elizabeth Hastings decided to do something a little different than just document her home life with a journal.
“My husband and I have a home business,” she explains, “at our farm a mile south of town. We sell auto parts and truck accessories for people’s ‘toys.’ I wrote a children’s book that sort of mirrors our lives to encapsulate this time forever. Our daughter loves our dogs, so I wrote about them!”
The book, named Roger and Wesley after the family’s two dogs who are a big part of their lives and the family business as well, centers around two dogs (conveniently also named Roger and Wesley!) who open up a toy repair shop and bring in their friends’ broken toys to their shop to repair or recycle into new toys.
Although Elizabeth had never written a book, or considered herself “a writer,” she just wanted to do something for her daughter and says it kind of “came to her” that she should write this book.
Self-publishing through Amazon, she says, turned out to be a not-too-daunting task.
“I actually found it to be way less stressful than submitting manuscripts to publishers and hoping to hear back from them in six weeks,” she says. “And as a first time author, (publishers) are less likely to take your book seriously. It was less expensive than I thought it would be. I (had) read lots of articles and blogs from self publishers saying they prefer this route as it guarantees your book makes it to readers.
Elizabeth hired an illustrator, Brittney Hassinger, going through a site called Reedsy, whose illustrations matched the vision she had for the book. She enjoyed the entire creative process and is actually looking forward to writing another book about Roger and Wesley in a year or so.
“Probably in the next book, I’ll bring my daughter into the story and they’ll ‘receive’ this baby to take care of,” she explains. “I’d like to write it in a way that it could possibly help people who are expecting their second child, and want to help their older child accept the new baby.”
Although the book has not been on the market long, Elizabeth says she has already received quite a few orders, which she finds gratifying. Although she credits support from friends and family for many of the purchases, she feels like the word is getting out and she would love to have even more support from the Manchester community for a locally written book that’s all about Manchester people (and pets).
“Part of my reason for deciding to write and self-publish this book was to help generate some income for our family,” she says, “since being relatively new to the small business world brings its challenges. So, I’d really like to keep the momentum going.”
“Roger and Wesley” is available from Amazon in Kindle or paperback editions.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login