April Musings; Annnnnddd I am a published illustrator…six times over!!!
April has been a good month! There’s been the Easter holidays which everyone in my house very much needed and it was so lovely to hang out with my trio and spend time together as a family. We are also starting to feel like we are making progress with the next phase in doing up our doer-upper; my twins now have their own rooms which they are loving, and the cabin is in ready to be pimped up into an office for hubby and my very own studio!!! To say I cannot wait to move in is a massive understatement, I have already started collecting bits of furniture and randomly lots of jars…..?!! However, the big thing that happened in April has been the publication of the six books I illustrated as part of a collaboration with the talented author Marielle Bayliss. It’s surreal that they are now published especially as this has been an ongoing project for the last few years!
Marielle and I met in the May of 2023 when she bought some of my work from my Etsy shop. I realised she was local so I asked if I could drop off the pieces instead of posting them - it is always faster and I do worry when sending originals through the post! When I dropped them off we got chatting and Marielle told me she had this idea for her next book. Marielle has epilepsy and wanted to write a children’s picture book that was both informational and supportive, and she asked if I would illustrate it. I tend to say yes to almost every opportunity as you never know where it could lead and so I did!
We had lots of coffee dates sharing ideas and discussing thoughts about both the written and illustration elements. During this time my eldest son had been diagnosed with autism and we were waiting for an assessment for DCD. It was a challenging time and I just wanted to find out a much as possible so I could help him. I remember thinking how the epilepsy book should be a series which could help lots of children with different conditions feel supported, understood and heard. So the Neuron book, grew into the Neuron series!
Our aim was to create books that were accessible to all, informative and fun, honest and positive. The books are for both neurodiverse and neurotypical readers so that everyone is aware of these conditions so that we can all be more understanding, accepting and inclusive. They do not shy away from discussing the challenges these conditions might cause but they also celebrate the superpowers that they bring with them. We wanted people with these conditions to feel seen and heard.
Once Marielle had written the manuscript for the ‘Neurons and Epilepsy’ book and I had developed Enzo and illustrated a few pages Marielle took it to her publisher Graffeg. We couldn’t have hoped for a better response and signed the contract for a six book deal very soon after. The manuscript and characters changed and developed so much during the first book. It was such an emotional rollercoaster, but we learnt so much and by the second book we were in our stride!
It was an incredibly intense six months writing and illustrating the series, especially as both Marielle and I had three children and other projects on the go but we did it! And we loved it! For me, the neurons were a whimsical, fun and colourful world and it was a joy to spend my days illustrating their antics!
We also were incredibly lucky with our publisher; Graffeg were supportive, patient and listened to our ideas. I especially appreciated this at the beginning when it was all new and I was learning as I went! Graffeg even took the Neuron series for a trip to the London Book Fair and Bologna Book Fair which was fantastic exposure!
Naively I thought once the illustrations were complete - all 164 of them! - it would all go a little quiet. How wrong I was! Instead of illustrating, the focus moved on to promoting the series and arranging and preparing for the workshops. The teacher in me popped up and I developed resources to aid the workshop sessions which were in keeping with the fun and colourful theme of the books. I did have a lot of fun creating, as my daughter describes them, the ‘Supersized Neurons’!
It’s hard to believe the Neuron series are written, illustrated and published and we are now busy in the throws of illustrator/author visits and workshops! It is amazing taking our books into schools, libraries and charities and I am so excited to see where this leads us - it has already been such an amazing experience and a huge learning curve! I feel so lucky to have met Marielle and created this series of books together about something that we believe in so passionately and is so personal to us both. I just hope these books will help children and adults, neurodiverse and neurotypical to understand these conditions, the challenges that might be faced and the superpowers that might grow! Either way, I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved and what comes next!