Meet the stars of my next book – Jamie, Billy and Grandad!

So far, I have written a first draft, edited it to within an inch of its life, done rough drawings for every page, and now done these colour prototypes of my three main characters.

Tomorrow I start the illustrations proper. I am determined that this time they’re not going to take a year to complete!

Very excited that my new book, ‘Isabella, Rotten Speller’ is available from Amazon from today! www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1508460868

Just a few more days until ‘Isabella, Rotten Speller’ will be landing at Amazon!

This will be the second book I’ve published and although it’s another rhyming picture book, I think it’s quite different from the first. The setting is certainly different: the story takes place in the mythical town of Rhyme, where everything and everybody is made up of letters and words (which probably goes some way to explaining why the illustrations took me more than a year to complete!)

The story tells of the devastation caused to this word-based nation when young witch Isabella, a lovely girl but a rotten speller in every possible sense of the word, accidentally lands there.

It’s fundamentally daft, but might pass as educational – there are hundreds of letters to spot, puns, rhymes and interesting words, hopefully for both children and adults, to enjoy. There are even some rather good anagrams, courtesy of my friend Matthew.

I’m getting very excited about an idea I had for a book a couple of years ago. I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the last few days and pictures and words are beginning to form in my head. Time to get something down on paper I think!

Mainly because it seems most of my family choose to have their birthdays during the first eight days of January (happy birthday Paul), today is my first working day of 2015.

And I have that familiar beginning-of-the-new-year feeling: I am full of ideas and enthusiasm, got a list of things to do that is considerably longer than my arm, but at the moment I am faffing around, not sure where to start.

The problem is I want to do everything at once: I want to get the book I ‘finished’ just before Christmas published; I want to start another book (I’ve got lots of ideas); but I really need to put some proper time and effort into marketing and distributing Hairy Fairy (including getting to grips with social media).

So what am I going to do now?

I think I’m going to make lunch.

Get to grips with social media!

I am very pleased with myself this morning because I have ‘finished’ my third book! I put ‘finished’ in inverted commas because there will inevitably be a fair amount to tweaking between now and publication. But I do have words and illustrations on every page and have just put the ‘finishing touches’ (more inverted commas) to the front and back covers.

It has taken me the best part of two years to get the book to this stage – I just checked and I was working on the first layout back in May 2013, which means I started on the words some time before. There have been several versions since then.

I think of this book as my ‘concept album’, which probably translates as ‘a bit bonkers but a surprising amount of effort’. I just hope children get the ideas – and, more to the point, like them.

The concept behind the book (which I am keeping under wraps for now) has dictated a rather laborious approach to the illustrations. I think my mantra for the next book should be ‘sketchy and quick’, though I’m not sure I’m really the sketchy and quick type.

Anyway, book three is ‘done’ – and just in time to miss the Christmas rush. So the next step is to pack away my crayons, scoop up all the tiny bits of paper left over from my ‘cutting out’, and pack away the illustrations until after the festive period is over.

I will publish it in the new year – just not sure when.

Unreasonably excited by the fact that in the last 24 hours I have sold my first two books through Amazon Europe, which means I now have (unpaid) royalties in three currencies! (The other two being pounds sterling and US dollars, in case you were wondering.) I have officially gone global!

This was the title of a very nice piece about Hairy Fairy that the IW County Press carried this week (Friday 21 November). It doesn’t seem to be on the online edition, so for anyone who’s interested, here it is: County Press Article