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GKP Writing News

Writing Goat Puzzles

Pencil puzzles are probably not the best use of my time, true. However, these are fun to do now and then. Except none of the regular pencil puzzles are about goats. That started me writing goat puzzles.

My new computer sat on the desk begging to be used. These goat puzzles were a great way to find out new ways of using my computer.

Now What?

There were sixty-four goat puzzles on my computer. It took a lot of time to create all of these. What was I to do with all of these goat puzzles?

Checking around I found I was the only one writing goat puzzles. Evidently people thought horse, dog and cat puzzles were much more interesting. There were books of these kinds of puzzles.

cover for "Goat Games" by Karen GoatKeeper
Learn about goats through interviews with goat owners, pencil puzzles, trivia and more.

Creating a Book

These other puzzle books had more in them than just puzzles. If I was going to have a book, I needed to have other things in the book besides the puzzles.

My goats are all Nubian dairy goats. There are lots of kinds of goats, hundreds of kinds around the world. These are not just dairy goats, but meat goats and fiber goats too. And there were people around my area with some of these goats.

Fifteen kinds of goats have pages in my book. Recipes for meat, milk and cheese were added. And the goat associations got a page.

So There Is a Book

I asked a publisher about my book. It seems goats aren’t as popular as other animals, so my book was rejected. The editor liked the book, but didn’t think enough people would buy one to pay for printing it.

The publisher was right. I self published “Goat Games” and found few people wanted to buy a copy.

But that’s all right. I had a good time writing goat puzzles, met a lot of other goat owners and learned a lot of new things about my goats.

By Karen GoatKeeper

Karen GoatKeeper loves to write. Her books include picture books, novels and nonfiction for science activity books and nature books. A recent inclusion are science teaching units.
The coming year has goals for two new novels, a picture book and some books of personal essays. This is ambitious and ignores time constraints.
She lives in the Missouri Ozarks with her small herd of Nubian dairy goats. The Ozarks provides the inspiration and setting for most of her books.