AudibleAuthors

Anne Wheaton, author of Piggy and Pug

 

After 17 years as a hairdresser, I retired from my career to focus full time on my true passions: my love of rescue pets, and helping my fellow humans. For the past 4 years, I have served as a Director for the Pasadena Humane Society & SPCA, and as an Ambassador for National Women’s Health Week through the U.S. Health Department’s Office On Women’s Health. I also manage a non-profit my husband and I started called The Foundation To Increase Awesome.

My first rescue pet was an orange tabby cat who followed me while walking home from a friend’s house when I was 5 years old. (It was the 70s. Apparently it was a safer time?) After two days of searching for his owner, we discovered they had moved away and left this cat behind. The cat had gone out in search of a new family, and we became that for him. I never thought to seek out the family to find out why they left him, I just saw this cat who wanted to be loved and have a home. It was hard to understand at such a young age why anyone would do this, which is why I decided to write Piggy and Pug, the book little-kid-me would have loved to read.

I currently live in Los Angeles with my husband, Wil, and our three rescue pets.

Randi McKenin, author of The Magic Stones

RANDI McKINNON came to USA from Norway in 1959 and settled in Oregon. After working in food service 40 some odd years as a chef and baker, she retired. Thinking retirement was boring, she needed something new to do. Her correspondence with friends almost always turned into what they called ’book editions.’ Of all her hobbies, she likes writing the best and decided to take a correspondence course in writing children’s books. Most of her stories are fiction, as she embellishes on stories from her childhood. In the village where she grew up, it was far between houses, so she had no playmates and had to make up her own games. Trolls and fairies were believed to be real, according to her grandparents. So remembering this, gives her a lot to write about. Some of her sentence structures may not be quite correct, as she sometimes mixes her two languages together. 

Kevin Christofora

Kevin Christofora found his calling when he began to coach little league. He has coached the Mountain Valley Little League (formerly the Woodstock Little League) since 2008.  More than a pastime, Kevin loves working with the children. He prides himself on teaching them that it’s about more than a game: it’s about honor, respect, and community. As president of the league, he enjoys working with the parents and community members that all have one main interest: the kids. As he puts it, “Mountain Valley Little League is real fun, real life, and real baseball, with no substitutions.”

Written for children ages three to five, Kevin wrote The Hometown All Stars as a bedtime story to get kids interested in the national pastime again. His goal in writing this book was to get kids out of the house and onto the field – “ less screen,  more green.”  He believes in the valuable lessons that children learn from playing the game: teamwork, discipline, strategy, and thinking before they act. In addition, he wants to bring back the joy of being outdoors and playing, that kids in recent years have lost.

An engineer by education, Kevin gave up the corporate life to move back to his hometown to carry on the family business and become the local butcher and a dad.  He has found more happiness becoming a baseball coach, than he ever had before. He hopes to pass the excitement of the game to other children with The Hometown All Stars. Nick’s Very First Day of Baseball is his first book of the series followed by Magic Bat Day.

Seven-year-old Jewel interviews Kevin about his books.

Gene Barretta