I have a fun announcement to make; A children’s book is on its way! Though it’s not the Hound Town story I’ve been promising (this is in the works, however). It is in fact, a collaborative project with a most unexpected co-author and illustrator.

You see during Covid and all the lockdowns I started drawing and painting with my upstairs neighbour who was 10 at the time. Arabelle not being at school and I having lost the majority of my social life too we turned to each other 😂 And we were in for a wild ride 🤪 We created our first painting which would set the scene for a wacky adventure story we would write and illustrate together and name it Tim, Tam and Smarty Pants.

First, we built out the characters then we designed a map to help us structure the story and soon enough we got writing. Taking on the quirky ideas and creativity of a young mind we worked together to come up with something highly original, decently intelligible and overall unconventional. It’s an amusing plot with lovable characters and illustrations painted in watercolour and ink. A Children’s book for 5-10-year-olds and any adult with a penchant for silliness. 

It’s unconventional because, for one, we wrote it in a much more wordy format than your typical Children’s book. You can read it chapter by chapter each night (some are just a couple of pages) or it can also be perfect for kids starting to read longer texts on their own. The word count far exceeds any typical children’s book, but it still fits into 30 pages and we think this makes for a nice point of difference! 

We were a chapter or so off finishing when life got in the way again, but we picked it back up toward the end of 2021 to create the rest of the illustrations and we now we finally have a finished book.

The next steps are to raise some funds so we can self-publish and get a limited print run out into the big wide world for parents and kids to experience. We’re working on launching a Kickstarter so I’ll keep you posted on how you can donate and what's in it for you!