In Greek mythology, Zeus is the King of Gods, ruler of Mount Olympus and God of the sky, lightning and thunder. But for the Jahn family of Knoxville, TN, Zeus was not a god but instead a dog. Dog of Mischief.
To pay homage to their late, ornery Yellow Lab, Zeus, 1990 Macomb High School graduate Nick Jahn, recently published the children's book, 'Zeus is a Dog.' With the title a deliberate play on words, the book was originally penned for his two daughters, Faith and Chloe; however, it morphed into a second edition that's now available on Amazon.
'I've always loved dogs, but as an Air Force pilot, I wasn't home enough to have a dog. I met my wife Ashley when we were both in the Air Force, and after a 14-year career in the military and with our separation of service dates close together, we got married and began a life together outside of the military. She had adopted Zeus from a Lab rescue, so when I married Ashley, I also married Zeus,' the 1994 Air Force Academy alumnus explained.
While Jahn, whose parents Larry and Mary still reside in Macomb, was still in the Air Force, he obtained his MBA from Indiana University and later he earned a second master's from the University of Tennessee. He has worked in the financial services industry since 2010.
How did this pilot who flew around the world and pivoted to financial services become the author of a children's book?
It all started with stories about what they called 'Big Sweet Zeus' they'd tell their daughters, who are now 8 and 10, who were born after Zeus passed away, and from the notes Jahn jotted down over the years about the Lab's antics.
'The girls have grown up around dogs, so we'd tell them stories of our first dog together and compare the goofy things Zeus did with the things our current dogs do,' he shared. 'I started putting little notes together, and I told Ashley I should put something together about Zeus. Well, that evolved into about 10-15 bullets/memories, which turned into each page of the book, but it started as a book to give to our daughters.'
Jahn said when putting together that first edition, he knew nothing about the publishing process. While he had phenomenal artwork, thanks to illustrator Kaitlyn Merli, he said the final product was 'really rough.' And the only way he could get a book together to give them away was to get a copyright and an ISBN number, and then commit to buying a minimum number of copies of his own book so there was enough volume for it to be published independently.
'I worked with a publishing company and with an editor to pull the first copy together in a format to send to someone who could print it. There was enough interest around that first edition, so I decided to reformat it to be a print-on-demand book so people can order it. But to do that, we had to add more pieces to the story to meet Amazon’s minimum number of pages' he said.
Once they had the minimum number of pages necessary, Merli redid all the artwork to make it consistent within the revised edition. And then it took several attempts over a couple months to get it submitted as an acceptable proof. To Jahn's chagrin, he caught a typo after the proof was completed and uploaded, so they had to fix that and try not to go into a third edition, which would change the ISBN and copyright. As he said, it was a process.
'Once we had it ready, we let it rip,' Jahn said with a laugh. 'Overall, from start to finish, the book was probably five years in the making. I wrote down the notes five or six years ago thinking 'someday I'll get around to this,' and then in 2021, my goal was to get it done that year.'
While he's not on the New York Times Best Seller List, Jahn said it was never about that to begin with.
'It was never about earning back what I put into it,' he said. 'I tell people I'm a selling author, and they ask 'best-selling?' and I laugh and say 'no, just selling.'' When he was working on the first edition, he didn't know what he was going to do about the illustrations. He was on a website designed for authors to find freelancers, and he was waiting for someone to respond to his request, which at that point had gotten nary a nibble. One day at church, he found out the church had a Christmas book out called 'The Toymaker.' Jahn saw the pictures and was amazed.
'The pictures were just beautiful,' he said. 'I found out that the illustrator was Kaitlyn and she was actually a member of our church! We connected and she was interested in doing it. I didn't give her a lot of input. She just ran with it. I gave her pictures of me, Zeus, Ashley and the girls, and she nailed it.'
Zeus is a Dog ... and Mia ... and Buddy... and Molly ... and Winston ... and Gracie 'I got to experience his antics firsthand,' Jahn recalled. 'He was incredibly unremorseful, especially when it came to stealing food. When we were in our apartment in Tennessee and had been married less than a year, we watched him put his paws on a dining room chair, look around and then put his paws on the table. Then he was up on the table. We just looked at each other. He looked at us and just wasn't sorry about being up there.”
'He didn't like walks or exercising; he'd rather be lazy,' he said. 'But he was incredibly loving. He loved being with us, and protecting us.'
He would give Jahn fits at first because it had been just Zeus and Ashley for a few years, and then Nick entered the picture. He'd eat so many socks and then get sick, so he could, as Jahn said, be pretty exasperating.
'But I'd look over at him lying on the floor, and he'd look at me and just thump his tail,' Jahn added.
Nick and Ashley often referred to him as Big Sweet Zeus or Zeus the Wonder Dog, because the couple always wondered what was going through his head. Jahn said one of the favorite illustrations in the book is the picture of Ashley and Zeus together in the beginning pages, along with the page of Zeus chasing the birds, which actually look like they're in motion.
That love of dogs led the couple to adopt a retriever mix named Mia while they still had Zeus, and initially their first 'born' dog was a little thrown off by the newest member of the family, but they ended up doing great together. Today, the Jahn family has a Royal Standard Poodle, Winston, and a rescue, Gracie, that they think is a Rhodesian Ridgeback/American Staffordshire mix.
'Zeus passed away in 2013, and our oldest daughter was born in 2015. While they didn't know him, they know of him because of the stories. And that is actually how I laid it out at the back of the book to describe how they miss him even though they never met him,' he added. 'Because of the stories we told, Faith and Chloe remember him with such fondness that they say they miss Big Sweet Zeus.
'I don't know if Zeus was THE dog for me, but he definitely has a special place as he was the first dog I ever had in my adult life and we didn't have dogs growing up,' Jahn said when asked if Zeus was his favorite, adding that would be like choosing between your kids. 'Mia did 'choose' me as her person though, so she was pretty special.'
While there's not necessarily a second book in the works, Jahn's daughters tell him not to forget this-or-that about Mia, Winston and Gracie (they did not know Buddy or Molly as well as the others), so he is encouraging them to take notes. He has jotted down a few things about Mia, but he's not quite ready to think about another book as losing Mia a few years ago hit him hard.
'She was my special friend, and she lived to be almost 15,' he said softly. 'She was a bulletproof Golden mix, and for a few years, I didn't have the strength to even think about her without breaking down. But if I do this again, the girls will be a part of it. It will be a family affair.'
