Happy New Year to you all. Can you believe we are already well into January and here in South Yorkshire we have had the first snow fall of the year!

I did say last year that I was hoping to get book three finished and in print by World Book Day 2019. Sadly that just isn’t going to happen and this book has been far more time consuming than the two other books put together. I don’t want to rush it and end up making mistakes that I will regret afterwards, so I’m just taking it one day at a time.

So I just thought I would take this opportunity to let you know where I am up too with Billy’s third adventure.

I think I now only have four illustrations to complete the story and that includes the back cover. Once I have done this, I will go back to the beginning and check again each individual page, adding anything I may have missed. That part sounds simple, but it is equally as time consuming especially as I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I look for ways to make things better and sometimes I can spend days and days on just one page. No point in cutting corners and thinking this is just a children’s book and they will not notice. The fact is that kids miss nothing and if they spot something that doesn’t look right, they will tell me. When I visit different schools, I do tend to display all the images on a big screen, so that all the children get the best view of the pictures. I always ask questions about the story after I have read it, including some little things that I honestly don’t think they will have noticed. But they do spot these things, so it has got to be right.

The printing process alone can take as long as twelve weeks, so it’s easy to see how creating a picture book from start to finish can take a long long time. So I am very hopeful that it will get finished sometime this year, but just not for World Book Day ( I’m so sorry ) I will certainly keep you updated with it, either on my website, or the Facebook page. Happy 2019!