I wrote a children's book. And tried to illustrate it, too.

A more appropriate name for this post might be "I had my cake and tried to eat it, too . . . and the cake exploded."

Well, happy New Year. As always, I am late. Better late than never, eh?

An even better name for this post: "Colloquialisms & You!" 
Ignore me, I'm tired.

Anyway, yes, happy 2015. I've been having a lovely year so far and done some things I've never done before. One of these, the theme of this post, was write my first ever children's book. I've never thought I was equipped to write a story suitable for children; this is mostly due to the fact that I tend to write flourishing macabre and, well, death and destruction. But one day in church (sorry, God) I started to doodle.

And the doodle became a story. And I love the story. It's short and sweet and potent and I immediately went home and wrote it all down again. I thought, "Hey, let's Createspace this bad guy," which is the publishing company Riley Girl went through. I had a story suitable for small humans; I just needed illustrations to go along with it.

I liked my original doodles; they were simple but still striking, I guess. They reminded me of books like "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" or "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See," in a way, that they seemed like something the writer just created himself. Well, almost.

Maybe I was a little too comparative there, but no matter. I decided to recreate my doodles in a blank sketchbook. I could then scan them onto the computer, get the PDF ready, and viola - produce "Little Dark Star" my first children's book.

Easy enough, right? Easy as pie, yeah?

Let me just show you.

After several attempts, I just went with "good enough."

Mostly this was for the sake of Bamber, who was getting quite concerned with my growing frustration and the pile of crumpled up paper on the couch next to me.

So I moved on to the next drawing I had to do.

After Batman was when  I ruled out my future as a children's writer/illustrator. You're welcome, world. 

I guess I'll just be the one to write stories like "Little Dark Star" and leave the drawing up to those capable. Because I am so not. Not by a long shot.

Have a lovely day. Go pet an animal or read a child a book. Smile. Hug your mom.

Enjoy 2015.