Friendship

I snapped this photo on February 25, 2018, two days short of five years ago.

The little girl in the photo was the first super fan of Bertrand the Mouse - and she had brought one of her little stuffed animals to meet him.

If you use your imagination to study the little animals, you can see the little girl's animal giving Bertrand a hug. And you can see a happy Bertrand looking straight into my camera.

Her mother had actually experimented with crocheting mice and other animals. Yet she could never reproduce Bertrand.

That's OK. 

Because that little girl's mother impacted Bertrand (and me) in a real and lasting way. You can read about it here. The original post is way more fun than a quick summary here.

I don't know if this little girl, who is not quite so little anymore, remembers her love for Bertrand the Mouse and still likes books.

But I hope she never loses her creative slant to life.

So if you want to know what a happy writer looks like, it looks like this photo.

And I would take one photo like this over a hundred book sales.