The last publication was the continuation of my beautifully illustrated first children’s book «Leonard and Loulou», which is called «Leonard and Lea». Thanks so much, Teodora Puncheva, for your outstanding illustrations.

The newest publication is up on Amazon since today: «Loulou & Loupi» – a photo book with over 30 touching pictures about the real Loulou and her four kittens, among them the whitest one with his black tale called Loupi.

As a passionate photographer, I followed our cat family with my camera. I took pictures of them as blind newborns, cuddling one with the other, when Mama Loulou went for a short walk. I shot pictures, when they opened their eyes for the first time. I got them with my camera joking around, playing with each other’s tails or drinking with fervor and pushing each other as much as possible to get the most of milk.

I already printed this book one year ago, just one copy, and I took it with me, when I was doing a reading for girls and boys and I showed it to them after they have listened to my story of Leonard and Loulou.

As these schoolgirls and boys were also so fond of this photo book, I decided yesterday to publish it as an eBook on Amazon.

Now, you can discover Loulou’s kittens and certainly the most precious one, Loupi. You have to get to know his story. I say “his”, because all four kittens are male.

Loupi seemed very special since the very beginning. He didn’t push to get his part of milk like the others did. He always got overrun by his siblings. They climbed on his body or pushed him away. We often found three kittens drinking, while Loupi was laying aside and having nothing. He didn’t grow as quickly and strongly as the others, of course. When he tried to walk, we observed him falling down very often. We wondered whether it exists also some kind of disabled cats, because he seemed to be one of them.

Together with my boys, I decided that we would keep him, although mother cats don’t like too much to live with their children, once they are grown-ups.

Today, we are so grateful that we got Loupi, because he is the most sensitive cat in our whole cat family. One can take him onto his arms, and he doesn’t move at all. He just enjoys being cuddled for a very long time. He often jumps on our lap, when we are sitting on the sofa, and he starts licking our hands or arms, as if he wished getting milk out of it.

He is the one, who is looking for close human company the most among our three other cats. Besides, one of his brothers, Blacky, the one with the biggest black spots, is the total opposite of Loupi: his body mass index is the double of Loupi’s and regarding his character, we would describe him as rather aggressive. Blacky is the one, who decided to live with our neighbors. He still passes from time to time and says hello to sweet Loupi, laying under my office table and feeling a bit disturbed by his strong and impulsive brother.

In fact, all these cat stories and books wouldn’t exist, if we didn’t decide a few years ago to try to have kittens. That’s why Loulou joined us as a three months old kitten, and Leonard, the younger son, took care of his baby. With how much tenderness and love, he did it! You can read it here. He even didn’t have time to do his homework because of Loulou – read it in another blog post story.

Without Leonard and Loulou, there wouldn’t be my first two children book’s and this new one, “Loulou & Loupi”.

Enjoy the touching pictures! I always do, even after the 115^th times, I look at them. These cats are just heart-melting.

“Loulou & Loupi”, 60 pages, 30 full-page colored pictures, ca. EURO 3.20, eBook on Amazon

PS. If you like to get my 3 Secrets To A Writing Mindset, download it for free from here:

The post Books, books and more books first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

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I can hardly believe it, but it’s real: my second children’s book is printed and waits to be shipped to Switzerland.

“Leonard and Lea” is the continuation of “Leonard and Loulou”, but you might read it first and you won’t miss anything of the whole story. In this book, Leonard doesn’t only have a cat as his friend, but also his new classmate Lea, who is laughed at by the others in school, exactly the same way as they do it with Leonard.

He experiences for the first time how it is to have a friend, who feels the same way as he does.

How did I write this story? Leonard, in real life my younger son, soon 14 years old and me, developed the storyline. It has been a year ago. We drove a few hours to a place in Germany, where I did a reading of the first book.

We started with the question, what would Leonard like to have as a new friend. We designed Lea: with red hair and a pink school bag. We invented her story, why she joined Leonard’s class in the middle of the school year. We asked ourselves how the two of them got to know each other better and how it came that they even met after school.

The plot got developed, step by step. Leonard helped me to create a natural story, and sometimes, he would tell me, that his classmates would not behave this way, and we shaped the continuation differently.

It has been so inspiring to work with my son on the story. When we got home from Germany, I started writing chapter after chapter. In between, I read the text to him. Most of the time, Leonard was excited about it. Sometimes, I needed to discuss again a situation with him, when I wasn’t sure whether it would make sense what I had in mind.

The story got quite a bit longer than the first one. But it was done rather quickly. The first reader was excited, too, as well as Teodora Puncheva, the art professor and illustrator of “Leonard and Loulou”. Her contribution with these wonderfully detailed and colorful illustrations seems even more dense to me, as if she got more familiar with the characters of human beings and the animals.

I’d love to create a trilogy and continue in a third book with Leonard’s story. There would be so many other episodes to talk about. Bullying at school is such a big theme nowadays, and the topic of feeling oneself not good enough is such a huge topic, even adults are suffering from it – including me.

If you like to discover the whole story of “Leonard and Lea” in German and English, order it here. There is even a special, numbered edition, which will be personally signed and dedicated to the one you choose.

Enjoy the story and the very beautiful illustrations!

The post A beautiful and touching second book first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post A beautiful and touching second book appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

What are the most touching moments during the readings of children’s books?

My very special moments are when small girls and boys start telling things like about a cat, who came to their house, who did this and that and how that felt or like today, how a small boy told a long, long story with plenty of unimportant details about moving and so on in order to reveal at the end how it was that the cat purred.

It is amazing to realize that my story about the boy Leonard and the cat named Loulou resonates with children.

But not only with children… Another touching moment was when an adult told me at my very first reading that my story reminded her so much of her beloved dog from childhood that she was moved to tears. Or one colleague bought my story because when he was a kid, his cat always walked him to school as Loulou does with Leonard in my story.

Today, at my first reading close to my Swiss hometown Winterthur, I didn’t expect a big audience. Fifteen minutes before the start, half of the restaurant was full of joyful, small and big children and even elderly people, and at the start, all 30 chairs were taken.

What a moment to stand in front of this big audience and to see all these open eyes and minds to listen to me!

I’ve been reading stories to children since many years. My two boys, now 13 and 15 and in puberty, listened to me every night. We read together so many books, we read all books written by Astrid Lindgren. We travelled with Jim Knopf and Lukas, the train conductor. We suffered with the figures of Brother Grimm, and when we didn’t have a book at our hands, I started inventing stories about an elephant who was too big because he loved eating, and how many times, my boys told me to continue the story about Frederic, the elephant.

Reading to a big audience like today is completely different. It is strange because I am not that close to the children and I cannot feel exactly how they perceive the story. That’s why I love to ask questions in between in order be able to hear what they have understood and what they have been thinking of it.

One thing I was reassured of today: Animals like cats and dogs have such a big impact on people’s lives.

It gives so much color to my life with my two sons. Besides, our cat story only started five years ago with two cats. Then, Loulou joined us, gave birth to four babies. We kept two of them. Meanwhile, we only have three cats because one of the babies decided to stay at the neighbor’s house. I could tell so many stories about our cats, how they disappeared, how we found them again, how many dead mice, but even more living mice had visited us, and how many of them, I had to catch. Funny moments, I can tell!

The sequel to the first book won’t talk about mice but will be the story about «Leonard and Lea», and there will be a dog playing a big role together with the cat Loulou. The story is already complete in my mind, and more than three-quarter of it written down. As soon as I have some quiet moments without running after mice, I will get it finished.

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Publishing a book is like being pregnant and giving birth to a child. “Leonard and Loulou”, my first children’s book, is like a child who is taking me on a journey I never thought it would exist.

I had sent the German manuscript to several publishing houses in Switzerland, and guess, nobody wanted to take it. I was sad at the time I got these answers. Today, I am happy that it worked out for me like that.

End of October 2017, I decided to put the book on the Swiss crowd founding platform called wemakeit to raise some money to print the book in Switzerland. And I was so excited to see how the money came in because 34 of my dear friends decided to support me. Thanks so much again.

“3000 Swiss Francs should do it to print some hundred of copies of my book”, I thought. To find a printing office took me a long time. I asked at least 10 printing offices to get an offer. I always wanted to have a nice hard cover with a solid binding because the book should be resistant to a lot of hands to be touched by and to get handed over to the next generation.  How I love my children’s books, which I looked at as a child and I could look at again with my two boys now!

As a multicultural being, having studied French, English and German, I wanted to start with the book in three languages. Again, my friends are so wonderful. They translated the story into English (Marlyse Treichler) and French (Jacques Roch, the father of my two boys), and another friend (Cornelia Schmidt), who has her own translation office (I can give you her address because she’s got no website), lectured it. Thanks a lot to you all!

The very beautiful layout was made up by my neighbor, Adrian Ochsner and Printed Matter. Thanks, Adrian!  You may ask him for editing your book.  But at the moment, he loves doing some big construction works, he is driving construction machines and will be having time for graphic design again in about one year. That’s what he told me when he was devotedly repairing his newly-bought old tractor the other day.

Last but not least, also many thanks to my friend Kiril Charov (Swiss-Bulgarian doctor and artist) who found the great Bulgarian illustrator Teodora Dimitrova. She invented the main characters, my boy Léonard and our cat Loulou according to the pictures she got from us. Thanks to her, the book has been published. Before, Kiril had found another illustrator who didn’t fit at all to the story, and I nearly stopped my project to publish the story because I couldn’t imagine the book with other illustrations than they are now.

And the picture shows the wonderful action launched by my friend Dave Hertig (the big Swiss expert for Content Marketing Services) when he interviewed me in Zurich at his event, and half of the participants wanted to have my book.

You can order “Leonard and Loulou” as a hard copy by sending me an e-mail or you can buy it as an eBook at Amazon or iBooks. My latest and craziest idea is to bring the book into the Chinese market. Chinese people are very fond of Heidi and a lot of Swiss products. And I already see “Leonard and Loulou” in front of my inner eyes in Chinese. I let you know when this idea will be starting to fly.

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Baby cat Loulou got pregnant before it turned one year old. But even at this young age, it is a wonderful mother.

When I got to bed that special night, Loulou slipped under my cover. It was rather hot there and Loulou realized after some minutes that this wasn’t a good place to give birth to its babies. I made it a nest on the matrass beside my bed and felt asleep very quickly.

Three quarters of an hour later, I woke up and saw Loulou with two wet kitties very busy with cleaning them. I had promised my two boys to wake them up in case…

Excited by this little wonder happening in my bedroom, we three observed Loulou and its two charming creatures. We thought two babies would be enough. So we could keep them both. But suddenly, Loulou laid down again. It sounded like a fart when a black ball rapidly got out of its body. Loulou took of the bag of waters and dried the third baby by licking it softly.

Okay, three babies would be enough, we thought. But after a few minutes, number four slipped out of its mother, very quietly compared to number three. Oh, dear! We’re so proud of our cat mother.

Loulou did all as I had read before. It ate all four placentas. “It looks like a dark brown slug”, Little Boy said which was a very precise description.

It was 1.30 a.m. 10-year-old Boy and me, we two were not tired at all. “I go to bed now,” Big Boy said, “and I’ll look at the details in the morning!” That was a clear statement by my 12-year-old.

The exciting adventure with our cat family is 10 days old today. Nature is gracious to us. All four kittens and its mother are healthy, drinking, sleeping, drinking, sleeping, getting washed by its mother, smelling wonderfully like newborn, peeping from time to time when they cannot find a free teat.

We could spend hours and hours by watching this small miracle.

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The post Birth of our four kitties first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Birth of our four kitties appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Relationship

It takes quite a while to get along.
When I think of the two cats, it took four months until I could take this picture just two days ago.
They didn’t like each other very much at the beginning.

Couldn’t it be the same with humans?
It doesn’t have to be something like a firework while coming across a new person – at school, at work, in courses, with new neighbors.
It could take time, a lot of time,
Days, weeks, months, and years.
Do I have this time?
Am I patient enough?
Can I wait until I get the permission to enter the new person’s territory – slowly, but steadily?

The two cats showed me: it works.

The post Relationship first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Relationship appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

A heart for animals

Big Boy rescued a little bird. Mister cat wanted to play with it, and he could watch this scene.

A heart for animals, you’d say. Right.

But it depends very much of the situation.

Big Boy likes playing with the baby cat, putting it under a cover or putting his T-shirt around its body and letting it try in vain to break free.

Or he enjoys cutting earthworms or snails or dissecting locusts.

It was also Big Boy who came home from Kindergarten with a dozen of cottage snails in his hands and pockets.

At that time, I remember, I wanted to take out the laundry from the washing machine. Two cottage snails were wandering on the freshly washed jeans. They survived an hour turning around by 40 degrees Celsius.

As Big Boy’s mother, I’d say I have to have a big heart for animals too, in order to survive Big Boy’s zoo without a heart attack.

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The post A heart for animals appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Deep relaxation

Looking at my baby cat that is sleeping most of the time when I’m writing I understand what my yoga teacher always wants to tell me.

Breathing and letting go…

Relax.

Most of the time, my thoughts are walking around during the yoga class like my curious baby cat when it’s chasing butterflies, dragonflies, grasshoppers or even a toad.

My dear cat, can we change lives – just for one day? I’d like to sleep beside your computer while you’re writing my stories and get the sensation of deep relaxation.

The post Deep relaxation first appeared on Swiss Made Story.

The post Deep relaxation appeared first on Swiss Made Story.

Our cat lady Nara will be leaving us soon. It’s a sad moment because we really love her.

Nara grew up somewhere far from us. She must have been beaten and treated very badly. She is so shy and wants hardly be caressed.

Over this year and a half, since she came here, she became a tiny bit less anxious. The first week with us, she was hiding under the sofa. Now, she jumped onto the sofa from time to time, laid down and started purring and stayed a while there.

Nara started even licking our Mister cat and was lying with him in the basket. Everybody was convinced that she’ll be adopting our baby cat with an open heart.

When our baby Loulou arrived three weeks ago, Nara was very curious at the beginning. But then, her elegant tail grew very thick, as we’ve never seen it. She developed such anger only by seeing the baby cat.

Three days ago, she bit the tiny cat into its leg when chasing it in the garden. The baby cat’s leg was terribly bleeding.

It’s too much stress for both of them and all family members as well. That’s why Nara will leave us for a better place for her. Farewell, Nara, we love you.

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