When I announced last year that I was going to be releasing my first ever children's picture book, The Terrified Troll, with artist Eva Byrne, I said that we were hoping to release it before the end of summer 2024, but "our time scale MIGHT prove to be overly optimistic." That, alas, has turned out to be the case. We haven't actually run into any external bumps, such as sickness or accidents (touch wood!!), but it has been a much steeper learning curve than we'd anticipated. For instance, we started out without a storyboard (basically a map of the entire book, featuring a detailed sketch for every page), not knowing that we would need one. When we realised that a storyboard would be essential, it took a few months to work it up from scratch, and as we did that, our aims grew more ambitious and the book grew longer by several pages -- which is good news for all of you who pre-ordered a copy, as you'll be getting far more bang for your buck, but it does also mean a longer wait, as each of those pages had to be planned, and now have to be drawn.

We're almost at the the halfway point, as far as the internal art is concerned. Eva is in the final stages of her MA this coming month, and her children are on holiday, but come September, with the MA in the bag and the kids back at the school, she'll be able to devlote much more time to the book. We don't have a precise estimate for you guys at the moment, but we think spring 2025 -- say, March or April -- is a realistic target. We're hopeful of being in a position to deliver it even earlier than then, but of course the obverse could happen too, and it could end up being even later than that (although we genuinely don't anticipate that much of a delay).

We're sorry for the delay, but we hope you'll all think it was well worth the extra effort and time when you see the finished book -- it's already far exceeded MY expectations of it!! So, your patience is greatly appreicated, and I'll be back in touch with more news and a more concret ETA at some point over the coming months, as work progresses even further and the end starts to trundle into sight. In the meantime, here are three of the pages from the book for you to enjoy -- a little taste of the Trolltastic treats to come!!!