Hickory Dickory Dock...

For the longest time, I've wanted to write books. All kinds of books - children's books, adults' books, magical books, serious books, life-changing books, life-lamenting books, heart-warming books, heartbreaking books... Many ponderings of my inner monologue begin "when I write my bestselling, Booker-winning novel I'll..." 

But that's the bigger picture, the happy-ending if you will, when I have already toiled long and hard, and my fingers are worn away from bashing the keyboard, and I'm bleary-eyed from absorption in a world of my own creation... At the moment though, my writing is a long long way from a Booker Prize, and I must content myself with little ramblings and doodles.

However, as I mentioned, I want to write all kinds of books, and besides my much acclaimed, life-changing novel, I also want to write and illustrate children's books. In fact I do, what I mean is I want to get some published. One or two lie in various states of completion hidden in notebooks and word documents and sketchpads, strewn (I say strewn, but it's more for effect, I'm actually more of an organiser by colour, alphabet, size...) higgeldy piggeldy around my studio (ehem... by that I mean two shelves in my bedroom).

Anyhoo, here's the point.

I was asked to illustrate a fully written children's book by another author! I said yes, as any opportunity to add to and widen my portfolio is a good one. The stories are very sweet, featuring two little mice, and are for the bedtime-stories reader/listener. Obviously I can't put up the stories as they are not mine (and it would spoil the surprise!), but here is a little sneak peak at one of my illustrations so far. 

I'm quite excited about it today as the first section of the book has been printed to conduct a bit of market research (5 year olds are harsh critics, wish me luck!) and to send to potential publishers. So far I think it's looking pretty good though and hopefully I will be posting more about this project soon!