Star Valley resident Stephanie Wardle and children’s author Heather Gaytan joined the Weekday Wake-Up on Monday, December 15 to promote their children’s book Feisty’s Journey Home. The book is available now on Amazon, with all proceed benefitting Lucky’s Place in Star Valley.

(0:00) And joining me now remotely is Stephanie Wardle and Heather Gaten. (0:04) They’ve worked together to put together a book called Feisty’s Journey Home that (0:08) they are using as a fundraiser for Lucky’s Place in the Star Valley community. (0:13) Stephanie, Heather, good morning.

(0:14) How are you both doing today? (0:16) I’m doing great. (0:17) Good morning. (0:18) Doing well, doing well.

(0:20) Perfect. (0:20) Thank you so much for your time. (0:21) Well, Stephanie, let’s start with you.

(0:24) You’re a Lincoln County negative in Star Valley. (0:27) Tell us about Feisty’s Journey Home and what kind of started this project for you? (0:34) Well, it actually started about nine or 10 years ago. (0:38) My sister was living in Kansas City, Missouri, and I was living here, of (0:41) course, and she wanted to move to Wyoming to be closer to me, so we, (0:46) of course, moved her to Wyoming.

(0:48) Well, as a lot of people that move here after about three winters and being a (0:52) big city girl, she had decided she had had enough. (0:56) So I helped her move back home, and so that is where Feisty’s Journey Home (1:05) began was when we decided to move my sister, along with two dogs, two cats, (1:11) and two rats, all in one vehicle back to Missouri, and when I got home and I told (1:17) all of my friends about the ordeal, they kept telling me, you need to write a (1:22) children’s book, that is so funny. (1:24) Kids would love it.

(1:25) And Feisty passed away this spring, and I just thought that would be a nice (1:29) tribute to her, so I went looking for a children’s author because I’m (1:34) definitely not one, and that’s where the story began, and I guess I’ll have to (1:38) read the book to find out exactly what happened to me. (1:41) Yeah, so it’s all kind of based on real life events, sounds like, and so you (1:45) mentioned you go out and look for an author, and that’s where Heather comes in. (1:49) So Heather, let’s loop you into this conversation and tell us about yourself (1:52) as a children’s author.

(1:53) How long have you been writing children’s books, and maybe tell us how that works? (1:58) Oh, absolutely. (1:59) So I am actually a self-published children’s book author. (2:03) I released my first book in December of 2024, so I’ve only been doing this about (2:10) a year now, and it was really interesting because when I was little, I always (2:16) wanted to, my dream was to raise horses and write books, like that was my dream, (2:22) and I told my son when we moved to this small town south of Lincoln, Nebraska, (2:28) I said, Nolan, I should write a story about how lazy Luna is, and my son was (2:33) in third grade at this point, and he said, so he went to school and he told all of (2:38) his friends, all of his teachers, and then they went home and told all of their (2:42) parents, and so that’s kind of how I got pushed into, okay, if I’m going to do (2:48) this, I’m going to go all in, and so Feisty’s Journey Home was actually my (2:52) fourth book, and Stephanie and I connected through a friend of mine that I used to (2:59) work with, saw Stephanie’s post on Facebook looking for a children’s book (3:04) author, and so she tagged me in it, and Stephanie and I connected, and she kind (3:09) of, she gave me an overview of, okay, this is what happened, now turn this into a (3:14) children’s book, and so it was a lot of fun, and this was by far the longest (3:22) children’s book I’ve done.

I do a lot of stuff, my other three books are mostly (3:26) early readers, and so this is kind of more ages, I’d say if you have a strong (3:33) seven-year-old reader, probably seven to nine, seven to ten, is kind of the age (3:39) range for this book. (3:41) That’s excellent. So Heather, as you work through this project now, and it (3:45) sounds like it’s completed, right, and available, so how do people find this (3:49) book? (3:50) Absolutely.

So it’s available on Amazon, if you just search Feisty’s Journey Home, (3:54) or you can search my name, and it’ll pop up with my books. We’re advertising it on (4:00) Facebook, and I believe Stephanie does, Lucky’s Place, I think, was putting it on (4:03) their website also, right? I thought they were, yeah. (4:07) Yes, they will.

They haven’t yet, but they will be. (4:09) Excellent. (4:09) Yeah.

(4:09) Well, speaking of Lucky’s Place, Stephanie, of course, being with the theme of the (4:17) book, and then what you’re passionate about, you’ve reached out to Lucky’s (4:19) Place, and it sounds like that this book is actually going to act as a fundraiser (4:22) for the animal shelter, correct? (4:25) That is correct. In my early years, earlier years, I should say, about ten (4:32) years ago or so, I was doing a lot of fundraising for Lucky’s. They would hold (4:37) most of their events in the summer and use that money to lead them in through (4:43) the winter, and so I thought there needs to be something in place where they get (4:49) a monthly income, and so that’s why I decided to do this, and I got Heather (4:55) along on the trip with me, so that they could, you know, get a monthly income and (5:02) not go dry in the winter months when there were no donations, because they do (5:06) operate only on donations and grants.

(5:10) Gotcha. (5:11) And so when someone buys this book, then they can know that it’s helping (5:15) support that cause, right? (5:17) It goes directly to them? (5:19) Absolutely. (5:20) So what I do is when a book is bought, then Amazon kind of pays that out, and (5:27) then I send a check every month to Lucky’s Place for the total amount, (5:32) because 100% of the profit from the Amazon sales of this book does go back to (5:37) Lucky’s Place.

(5:38) That’s fantastic. (5:39) Stephanie Wardle and Heather Gaten on the weekday wake up this morning. (5:42) Feisty’s Journey Home is available now, and again, all the proceeds go directly (5:46) to Lucky’s Place, the healthy animal shelter in the Starbody area.

(5:49) Stephanie, Heather, this is such a cool project. (5:52) Thank you for giving me some background on it. (5:54) Anything we missed about Feisty’s Journey Home you’d like to mention today? (5:59) Not that I can think of.

(6:01) We did change up the book to make it a little bit more readable for (6:04) children, as opposed to what I wrote. (6:08) And so I’ve had several family members read the book, children, and they’ve (6:13) enjoyed it and make a great, it’d be a wonderful Christmas gift or a stocking (6:19) stuffer, and like I said, all the proceeds do go back to Lucky’s. (6:24) Perfect.

(6:25) Available now on Amazon. (6:27) Feisty’s Journey Home. (6:28) You can just search for it.

(6:29) As you said, Stephanie, get it in time for Christmas and two items crossed off, (6:35) the Christmas gift and the donation to Lucky’s Place all in one. (6:38) So Stephanie Wardle and Heather Gaten with me on the weekday wake up. (6:42) Stephanie, Heather, thank you so much.

(6:44) Appreciate your time. (6:45) Thank you for having us. (6:46) It’s all part of the SBI radio network.