My 2015 Christmas Gift To You

Each year, I offer a story to our subscribers and readers to thank you for your continued support throughout the year.  I wrote this year’s story – Rosie, a Tale of Redemption – for my friend Jane Park Smith’s dog anthology, which she expects to publish in 2016.  She graciously allows me to share the story on E.S. Kraay Online as my 2015 Christmas gift.  Thank you, Jane.

I write stories.  All are fiction woven around a truth that I hold with great conviction.  Four of my six novels are historical, that is they are told within the context of events that actually occurred:  the ancient Olympic Games; the Holocaust; the Civil War; the Roman Empire.  The other two novels contain kernels of autobiographical truths, though I’ll not disclose the fact from the fiction.

I believe dog is man’s best friend, and that is the core conviction of Rosie.  I believe dogs are so pure that I originally wrote The Sixth Day as ‘God’s only mistake,’ my belief that God created man because animals weren’t quite good enough.  I softened the message and told The Sixth Day as ‘the day God almost quit.’

Rosie is a work of fiction.  It is based, however on a story my friend has told me many times, the story of how his little dog saved his life, physically, mentally and emotionally.  It is a story worth telling constructed around those kernels of truth that my friend has shared with others and with me.  I have told the story in my own, fictionalized way with his permission.  Thank you, Carl.

To retrieve this gift, go the the complimentary offerings page and scroll down to the Rosie download or simply click on the cover.

I hope you find value in this short story.  Thank you for your support since the first words to The Olympian flowed from my pen in 2002, “I was 12-years old when my father took me to my first Olympic Games ….”

Merry Christmas