When I was nine years old, I was gifted a book-making kit called Illustory. The kit came with blank pages to write and draw your own story on, which you could then mail to the company to get your story turned into a professionally bound book. With my kit, I wrote and illustrated a story about adopting my childhood dog, Brutus, as told from Brutus's perspective. 

     (Note: This all happened before I was given the name Froggy, so the book was published under my birth name, Katrina Borges. It was also before I figured out that I'm nonbinary, so I unintentionally misgendered myself throughout.)

     We shared the book with multiple friends, family members, and acquaintances. Several of them loved it so much, they requested copies of their own. We ordered more and more copies for more and more people, until eventually my first grade teacher, Jill Kelly, decided to throw me a book-signing party. Not only did she organize the entire event, but she also invited the local newspaper to cover it.

     I expected the newspaper coverage to be just a short blurb, but instead they printed a full-page article with a teaser right next to the front banner. They even included my parents' landline phone number, encouraging people to contact us if they would like to buy a copy of the book. For a long while afterwards, we received countless calls from strangers, resulting in many, many sales. I felt like a celebrity!

     The Tail of Brutus is no longer available for purchase, but I still wanted to feature it here in the hopes that some of its fans might stumble onto my website and check out my other work.