Sadie started as just a little nut of a character in Robby McMahan’s head.

One day, he said, he finally jotted down her story — a short tale of how an ill-tempered squirrel learns to get along with others — and suddenly the idea became more than that.

“You know, it was kind of funny because I just wrote it for kind of exercise,” Robby said. “The idea was more therapy than anything else. I was just trying to get some ideas out.”

But once Sadie became a reality on paper, she didn’t stop there. That’s when Robby’s wife, Susan McMahan, stepped in. Susan is a former art teacher at Mount Vernon and Wauka Mountain elementary schools who now teaches ESOL classes at Myers Elementary. Robby has been a stay-at-home dad taking care of their son, Sam, 3, but said he’s hoping to start teaching next year, when Sam enters pre-kindergarten.

Since she was a freshman in college, Susan said, she had the idea to be a children’s book illustrator. Her first foray into publishing when she helped a family member put together a French book.

The book, which she now keeps as a memento, was carefully illustrated and bound.

“I did a French project for my stepmother, and I had to translate. And I translated this story about a little warthog,” she said. “That kind of fired me up. I probably picked a book apart and figured out how to put it back together.”

The idea to be a children’s book illustrator grew from there, she said.

“When I was in college I wanted to do something with art and I love kids, and so it kind of came to me,” Susan said. “I was like, I want to be a children’s book illustrator.”

She submitted samples to lots of major publishing houses, but never heard back.

“And then we got married and he had the script he had written, so then I just started ... I actually started doing the illustrations a long time ago. They’ve been through like millions of stages and stages and finally have gotten to that,” she said, holding mounted originals of the drawings for the book, “Sadie the Squawking Squirrel.”

“This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time,” she added. “I just love children’s stories and children’s literature, so this is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.”

Susan designed the book, and then the couple came up with a name for their new publishing company, Blue Cat Press. They sent the book off to China to be printed and now sell copies to friends, coworkers and others who find the book at Gainesville stores such as Stork and Kids’ World, the Crystal Plate and 2 Dog Restaurant.

“The local business people have been really warm,” Robby said of his efforts to get the book out to local stores.

The idea, Susan said, is a fully designed book that’s ready to be sold is easier to market to a larger publishing house than a simple manuscript.

Plus, they have a nice product they can sell themselves, too.

“It’s just more fun this way,” Susan said. “We may end up in the hole or we may make $1,000,000 — who knows what’s going to happen? But either way, this is the desired result.”

Robby added that there’s a certain satisfaction in creating a professional-quality book on your own.

“You can either spend your time trying to convince someone else that you have a good book, or you can just do it yourself,” he said.