Meet Alena

February 5, 2018

Meet Alena Summers

Alena Summers is an adventurous animal-loving girl who lives in the village of Covenant.  Her home is the planet called Devonia, an Earth-like planet far away where her parents’ transport ship crash landed many years ago.

Alena has one brother, Michael, and two sisters, Janine and Raquelita.  Janine is just big enough to start helping and doing big-kid stuff like fishing at Ice Cube Creek.  (Fishing is one of the Devonian children’s favorite things to do!)

Alena loves babies of all kinds.  She wants to study animals like her father and doctoring like Mrs. Nala and Mrs. Emma.  She loves getting to nurse the baby Brown-Sheep if they are rejected by their ewes (mother sheep).  Sometimes Alena’s temper flares fast.  She speaks the truth without tempering it.  Her father often says she must learn to speak the truth in love instead of in anger or pride.  Alena loves her beautiful world.  She comes across many unique animals and has fun adventures with her siblings and friends.  Alena also loves stories; she thinks that Butterfly tells the best ones.

One of Alena’s favorite stories in the world is the story of how Tawny came to be a part of her family.  That story is found in the third book in The Devonians Series called, “A Foundling Furball.”  When Alena tells it later, it starts like this:

One day while fishing, Alena heard what she thought was a baby crying.  The fishermen looked for this sound.  They discovered a baby dengee (a wolf-like animal) that was badly hurt!  Alena brought this dengee pup home and her father oversees while she doctors it. (Alena’s father studies all types of animals and their family tends the village’s current herd of Brown-Sheep) Alena names this baby girl dengee, Tawny.

Come follow Alena and her friends on fun adventures in their special world of Devonia here!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

Meet Tawny

The backstory of the little dengee adopted by Alena in A Foundling Furball. Meet Tawny:

January 18, 2018

Meet Tawny

On Devonia, a world far from here, but more deserving of the name Earth’s Twin than Venus, a dengee (a strong, wolf-dog-like creature) female birthed a litter of pups.  One of those tiny, sightless, nearly deaf, fluffy balls was a tan-brown female with black rings on her tail and black markings.  Her first two days of life were normal for any dengee pup.  She shoved her way to her mother’s warm belly and warmed herself inside and out with her mother’s milk and thick soft fur.

20171213_Tawny_Colored_Rebeccah_icon

But then something unexpected happened.  She was too young to understand, but the lead pack male was forced out by a trio of incoming younger, stronger males.  In the dengee world, those males would then destroy all of the previous male’s young.  Although some of the mother dengees had been wounded while trying to fight them away alongside the pack male, others resigned themselves to their fate.  The new trio of males, one lead pack male and the other two his cohorts, hunted down and destroyed all the six dens with the old male’s pups.

What the pup knew was that mean teeth snapped at her and a rough angry paw tossed her out of the warm den and into the cold early morning where it was just as dark to those with open eyes as it was to her blind self.  Miraculously, the tiny female pup, now heavily injured, managed to elude her pursuer and slide into the edge of a frigid creek.  She called for her mother.  She cried will all her might.

Her new mother heard her cries.

Alena Summers, a human child fishing on the bank of the Ice Cube Creek that early afternoon, heard the pitiful calls of this lonely baby and followed the sound.  Joseph Taylor, another human child, swam into the cold water to rescue the blob of tangled fur from her prison in the bushes on the edge of the water, and there Tawny became a ward of the humans.

This little three-day-old dengee pup whose eyes had never seen her own kind was rescued from drowning by two children and warmed in her new mother’s soft apron.  Tawny’s life had already been so full of turmoil!  Even on the bank after being rescued, the other children considered tossing her back because dengees were deadly foes to the humans – attacking their livestock and more than once, even the humans themselves.  Thankfully, Alena wouldn’t have that; she took full charge of this tiny creature.

With slow, tender, loving care, Tawny’s wounds will heal.  Four days later, at only a week old, and without yet opening her tiny eyes, little Tawny will face another challenge as the council of elders on Devonia has to decide if Alena can keep this dangerous animal.  Of course, Alena and her friends will swear that this pup is nothing dangerous – but that remains to be seen.

For now, Tawny, the newest member of the Devonian settlement of Covenant, is resting with warm Brown-Sheep milk digesting in her belly laying on a soft rag-blanket-bed on straw in the Summers’ barn listening to the sounds of Alena’s pretty lullabies, Brown-Sheep ewes, and baby lambs and dreaming of new warm sun on her body and the soft, warm love of her human mother.

If you want to read about how Alena, Joseph, and their friends find and rescue Tawny, you can read A Foundling Furball!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you later…

~Nancy Tart

 

New Paperbacks!

Introducing the paperback versions of The Brown Sheep Prank and A Foundling Furball!

January 17, 2018

New Paperback Books!

Introducing the paperback versions of The Brown Sheep Prank and A Foundling Furball!  These two short chapter books are parts 2 and 3 in The Devonians (following #1, Daydreamer).

Christina Tart did the illustrations except for Rebeccah’s design of Tawny, the “foundling furball” in book 3.

The Devonians are space castaways who have made their own life on a new planet called “Devonia” in a village named “Covenant.”  Each book follows the adventures of some of the younger colonists.  Daydreamer introduced the Taylor family with their five boys and baby Rose.  The Brown Sheep Prank highlights on the Summers’ family farm because Alena’s family keeps the only herd of Brown-Sheep.  Alena Summers and Joseph Taylor are best friends.  Alena gives readers a tour of her snug little house and you get to see where Alena, her two sisters, and younger brother, Michael, sleep.  In A Foundling Furball, the older of the Taylor and Summers children find a strange orphan animal at their favorite fishing spot!  Matthew Taylor and Janine Summers have a fun way to catch fish using teamwork.   Mr. Summers, Alena’s dad, tells the children stories as he tries to decide what they have to do with this unexpected little creature.

Enter the world of Devonia and be ready for engaging stories of adventure and friendship.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

 

Follow me!

Get my latest posts delivered to your email: