What began as a life-long love of cats and a growing fascination with an online community that centered around their furry friends, Plant City native Victoria Smude recently released her new book, The Chonky Alphabet.
The word “chonky” itself has become popularly synonymous with pleasantly plump felines across the internet, making it a perfect descriptor to grace the cover of her alphabet book for cat enthusiasts of any age.
“It’s 26 words based off of a kind of cat subculture,” Smude said. “It’s different words that people use when talking about their cats, and there’s certain rules. You don’t say chunky, you say chonky. Then there’s words like N is for ‘nip nops’ and B is for ‘blep’ and when you’re in this community you just understand what these words mean. Soit’s just a very colorful, playful window into this other world all about cats.”
So from “nip nops” to “blep, ”from “loaf” to “peeps,” The Chonky Alphabet serves as a guide to some of the most vital terms necessary in a cat-thusiasts daily vocabulary.
Smude says that the idea for the book began during the COVID-19 pandemic when she was furloughed from her primary occupation, giving her six weeks to teach herself a new skill in digital art. As she worked on creating new artwork while taking inspiration from a Facebook group, she challenged herself to find one piece of cat-centric slang for each letter of the alphabet. And as the ideas began rolling along, the possibility of putting it all together in one creative book blossomed.
Taking advice from friends who had recently released books of their own, Smude ultimately self-illustrated and self-published The Chonky Alphabet through IngramSpark and –upon its recent release on June1 – it quickly became a No. 1 bestseller on Amazon in the Cat Breed category.
“I’ve been posting about it throughout cat Facebook groups and people have been loving it people have even been ordering it to read to their cats before bed,” Smude said with a laugh. “It was the No. 1 bestseller for Cat Breeds, so it’s been really well-received. There are some people that didn’t know any-thing about this ‘language’, much like myself a few years ago, and they were having to Google what ‘chonky’ even means, but now they’re learning all about it. Cat-lovers are loving it, but not only cat-lovers. While it’s a book for those cat-lovers out there, it’s also a fun alphabet book for kids or anyone who likes unique illustrations. I even had a couple of kids come up when I was taking pictures with the book at a coffee shop and a little girl wanted to read the book, she just enjoyed the illustrations and the colors and the funny words.”
Smude will be holding a book signing at The Tipsy Book worm in Plant City later in the summer and The Chonky Alphabet can be purchased online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and Walmart.com. All art from the book, along with additional information on the book and upcoming book signings, can be found by following The Chonky Collection on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
“So for anyone out there who doesn’t know whether they can publish a new book or learna new skill or learn digital art, everything can be figured out,” Smude said. “There’s Google, there’s Facebook groups, there’s YouTube, there’s Skillshare. You can really learn to do anything at any age.”