book details

Book: KHAN - A Maine Coon by Marie J. S. Phillips

categories: Book, Pets, Maine Coon Cats, Biography, Semi-Fiction, Animals, Cat

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Marie J. S. Phillips

about this book: This book, KHAN: A MAINE COON, is the true life story of my beloved Khan, a Maine Coon kitten my husband rescued from a shelter after I lost my first Maine Coon to an accident. This is his life, told through his eyes and stoic heart. I originally started this book as a fantasy type yarn about cats using Khan's adventures at the shelter and his adoption as a backdrop, but he fell deathly ill during the writing of this tale and it turned into his biography, told in a semi-fictional way so readers can follow his life and adventures from his point of view. I finished the book in about four years.

The title just came to me easily, inspired by a book I read in my youth called Lad: A dog.

Anyone can read this story, but it does appeal most to pet owners.

I chose this cover since it embodies Khan in every way, his sweet expression, and that Maine Coon face of old lineages now long gone. I created the cover and all the illustrations inside the book, which consist of photos, collage, freehand drawings, and some computer generated parts.

The most difficult part of writing this book were the sad scenes, while he battled cancer. Even after a decade since, they can still make me tear up. I learned from writing this book and several others, that it is almost impossible to get a traditional publisher to even notice a new author. I am not truly new, since I have written stories since grade school, but if publishers do not know you or your agent well, all you see are rejection slips, enough to wall paper two rooms.

Thus I turned Independent and have not regretted it at all. I write because the muse drives me, and has since early childhood, and though I write to please myself more than any market, I do hope readers will enjoy the strange and wondrous worlds I created as much as I have writing them.