Introducing The Book of Cymbeline: A Kitten's Tale

Grab your copy on the Amazon Kindle store!

My ebook release day is here!! I’m so excited to share The Book of Cymbeline: A Kitten’s Tale from Summer to Fall with you all. 😸✨🎉

I hope you'll pick up a copy on the kindle store, and if you have time/feel inclined to leave a review on Amazon, that would be wonderful. ❤️ Thank you so much to all of you for your kind and encouraging words about The Book of Cymbeline over the last few months, it's meant a lot!

As I mentioned in my writing vlog, I am researching how to get this out as a print edition and hopefully will have an update on that for you all soon. In the meantime, if you’d like to check out a sample before you purchase, please enjoy this snippet from the first chapter below…

---

Chapter One

Once upon a time, there was a tiny cat named Cymbeline. She was a tabby with tiger-like, black-brown-grey stripes, and her fur was flecked with a yellowy gold that you could only see when you looked up close. On each of her dainty feet was a boot of sugar white, with a bright blaze of white on her front reaching all the way up to her pink nose. Her big eyes, outlined in black fur, were still the baby blue of a brand new kitten when her adventures began.

Cymbeline was born towards the end of summer. She spent the first month of her life in a cozy abandoned barn with her mother cat and littermates. All through the long, sunny days of August, she grew and learned to open her eyes and began to amble about with uncertain, unsteady steps. But as the calendar turned to September, the weather turned too. There were two days of heavy wind, rain, and flooding, as if fall was eager to elbow in and tempestuously remind everyone that the warm days were numbered.

How Cymbeline became separated from her mother cat and littermates during this time, I couldn’t tell you. Neither could she. Cymbeline doesn’t remember. But I think it very likely that it was at least partly her fault…perhaps she wandered off when she wasn’t supposed to. From the very beginning, Cymbeline was an adventure cat.

On the second day of September, Cymbeline found herself alone outside a pretty grey farmhouse on a crisp evening. It was as if the weather regretted the petulance of the previous few days and wanted to assure the world that autumn could really be just as nice as summer, in its own way.  The little farmhouse garden, surrounded by fields and mountains, was filled with the glowing light of the last rays of the day. Tall trees soared overhead; one of them had a nice, kitten-sized hollow at its base…this was where Cymbeline chose to ensconce herself.

The hollow was screened from the wind by some faded gladiolus stalks, and there was a nice long green vine, growing from a crevice in the trunk high up above, that swung temptingly in the brisk breeze. Cymbeline watched it lift and fall. There was a glint in her eye. She was dreaming of the day when she would be big enough to surprise it with a big pounce.

While Cymbeline was enjoying her hollow and the swaying vine, a young lady came out of the farmhouse and walked towards a hammock strung between two of the trees. She sat there for a few minutes, enjoying the view of the distant hills, then she stood up and got to work in the garden.

Cats, as perhaps you know, have a peculiar power, beyond the ability of mere mortals, to remain perfectly and absolutely still. You have probably been watched by a cat many times in your life without realizing it. Tiny Cymbeline did not move a muscle. Her big eyes followed the lady’s movements carefully. The lady was now examining plants in different corners of the garden carefully, mumbling about “poison ivy” and occasionally digging up leaves of three and conveying them into banishment in a distant heap.

In the middle of this occupation, digging just a few feet from Cymbeline’s hollow, the young lady glanced up and found herself looking straight into the kitten’s wary gaze. The lady froze. She stared at Cymbeline. Cymbeline stared back at the lady.

The young lady’s name was Emma, and although she had seen deer, rabbits, squirrels, groundhogs, mice, camel crickets, bees, hornets, birds and insects of all sorts in great profusion, she had never seen a cat or a kitten near the farmhouse. Emma had never owned a cat. Emma knew next to nothing about cats. It must be confessed: Emma had never come in contact with a kitten in her entire life.

Cymbeline thought the lady looked rather nice, so she began to amble over to say hello. But there were some busy ants in the grass near the hollow that distracted the tiny kitten…and then she noticed a low root that looked like a mountain and thought she should try to climb it…and then she sniffed the breeze appreciatively, which was gentle but had the smell of fall in it…and then the vine tapped her teasingly on the back of her head, and she brushed it away and watched shrewdly as it swayed back and forth, taunting her…and then she stretched her tiny limbs to their full length…and then, this being quite a good spurt of adventure for so small a kitten, she backed herself comfortably into the tree hollow for a short rest…

Click here to get your copy of the ebook to read the rest of the story! 🐈