Sybil Powell

Life with My Newfoundlands Sybil Powell

Publisher Marketing: I still have the leads and collars, the feeding bowls of all my Newfies these together with four cigar boxes with their ashes in are all I have to remind me of twenty wonderful years during which they were my constant companions. There are also the few photos on the dining room wall and if you look at my Twitter page you will see them in situ as I enjoy them. It was after I had already written five fictional books that I felt ready for book based closely on these years, I altered very little by way of the story or the action of the dogs it would have been wrong to alter anything about their individual characters. People and places can easily be distorted in the memory so I have used new names for them though I do remember them as supportive and in the main attractive. Vets have always played a big part, if I suspected literally anything was wrong off we would go to see them, especially for my dogs, prevention was always the better option. Because of this Meg was able to live a long and I believe a happy life against all the odds. William died without pain and so did Osca. Even on Hogan's last night Mike called the vet out to give him a jab to lessen the pain he was obviously in. In my book 'Life with my Newfoundlands' I have tried to show my approach to living with them and the huge return I received from them. Contributor Bio:  Powell, Sybil I'm Sybil Powell, wife, mother, friend, entrepreneur, traveler and now an author of books which reflect many of those life experiences. I spent most of my childhood in a seaside resort town on the south coast of my native England. Eastbourne was a wonderful place to grow up, but sheltered just enough to make me want to go out and spread my wings and see what the rest of the world had to offer! That adventure started after I married a wonderful, young serviceman. After settling into life in the forces, we moved to Germany where we lived for a couple of years. On returning to England and civilian life, we settled in the north where I found work in the more heavily industrialized world of Yorkshire. Very different from the life I had known in a seaside resort! I loved living in and learning about the lifestyles in different parts of England, but my education really expanded when we moved half the world away to Saudi Arabia. The contrast between the coastal mountain areas and the inland, desert cities along with the rich culture and traditions going back literally thousands of years, is something which has affected my life and my writing ever since. Eventually we bid 'Adieu' to those exotic, arid lands and returned to the UK. Back home again, I started my own business-a secretarial agency which provided companies with the then-fledgling service of a virtual assistant. We've now moved again and this time to Wales, where I've settled into my writing career, and very happily draw on my many experiences both at home and abroad. Because those experiences have been so diverse, my books tend to be very different from each other and stand on their own- in plot, characters, culture and background.