Flagstone’s Gerry Couzens has released his second book.
The 80-year-old author has released his first children’s book Magic Bridge Stories on the back of releasing a motivational walking book entitled Destination Better Health in earlier this year.
Mr Couzens said he was actually working on his children’s book prior to releasing Destination Better Health.
“I was writing this one quite a while ago but in the meantime I was doing this motivational walking and it was suggested to me why don’t you write a book on that so we actually interrupted the writing of this book and produced the other one first,” he said.
“This was really the first book I was writing but it’s actually came out second.”
Mr couzens said the idea for the book which is aimed at children between 8 to 12 years old came from bed time stories he would tell his own children.
“It started off as bed time stories for my children, but I tried to write it about 30 odd years ago to write it and produce it and got knocked back by one of the majors, having got the rejection letter I thought I’ll carry on earning money the way that I was then because I wasn’t doing too badly so all the writing got pushed aside
“Then about two years ago my eldest daughter bought me ‘write story books for children’ online which took me about 14 months to do and after I’d done the course I looked at what had been rejected and I thought well I would have rejected it too.
“So with what I’d learned from that course I decided to do it all again and this is the result.
“It’s gone out and it’s been quite well received already.”
Mr Couzens has also produced a colouring book for children using the illustration from Magic Bridge Stories by illustrator Ria Cornall who he met through a fellow Flagstone resident.
“A friend who lives in Flagstone as well, his sister was visiting him from England and he got talking to her about the book that I was writing and on their way to the airport they popped into see us and she and I hit it off straight away and with a handshake deal it started.
“She lives in Hampshire in England and I live out here and all the illustrations and things were negotiated using email.”
Mr Couzens sells his book at the Tamborine Village markets once a month and you can also purchase either of Mr Couzens books online at gerrycouzens.com
