Cover reveal!

Today I'm excited to share the cover of the next Watts and Whiskerton mystery: Sabotage at the Fete Cake Bake.

Budding detective Watts is back in Little Gossip to visit the Whiskertons and attend the village fete bake off. He's looking forward to a fun weekend, but then disaster strikes when the ovens flood with batter and accusations of sabotage begin to fly!

Who's responsible for the cake catastrophe? And why would they want to ruin the competition? It's up to Watts and Pearl to solve the curious case. But can this dog and cat detective duo find the proof in the pudding? 

The second instalment in an adorable new highly-illustrated series bursting with mystery and mischief for readers aged 5+!

Sabotage at the Fete Cake Bake is publishing in April 2025 and is available for pre-order by clicking here.

Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure

My new book, Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure, published last month. It's been really nice to see copies of it out and about in the world but I'm in the middle of illustrating Watts and Pearl's next adventure so I haven't really taken a moment to stop and properly appreciate that book one is out in the world. 

So let's a little look at the insides.

Watts is sent to Whsiskerton Manor for a holiday. There he meets his soon-to-be new best friend, Pearl Whiskerton.

Pearl gives Watts a tour of Whiskerton Manor. This was a fun spread to draw.

But soon a mysterious series of events occur and Watts and Pearl find themselves with four mysteries to solve.

    Are these four mysterious cases connected?

Let's have a look at the suspects.

 

Can you help Watts and Pearl solve the case?

Available now at lovely local bookshops or wherever else you like to buy books.

Why not try Rocketship Bookshop or Storytellers Inc

Pearl (Whiskerton)

This is Pearl. She's the Whiskerton half of Watts and Whiskerton, my new detective duo. You can read all about them in Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure.

Pearl meets Watts for the first time when he comes to stay at her home, Whiskerton Manor. She lives there with her dad, Count Whiskerton, and pretty much as soon as Watts arrives all sorts of strange goings-on start to occur. 

Pearl is incredibly smart and she loves mysteries, puzzles sand jigsaws. She really wants to be a detective. She persuades Watts to help her investigate the mysteries at the manor, and fills her new friend with confidence along the way.

This is the earliest sketch I can find of Pearl. At this point I had written 'Penelope?' beside her, but I wanted a more cat-like name so Pearl (Purr-l) was perfect. I've also changed her outfit. When I was looking through old-fashioned kids clothes I noticed a lot of them wore a version of a sailor suit, and it was so adorable I wanted Pearl to have one. I also got rid of her fangs. Some of the drawings in the book are so small that it was a detail that would get lost easily.

Right now I'm working on Watts and Whiskerton book 2 but book one is now available and you can buy it from your lovely local bookshop or by CLICKING HERE

The Week Junior Book Awards - Shorlist

 Today I was excited to discover that Wee Unicorn has been shortlisted for The Week Junior Book Awards 2024 in the picture book category.

Very exciting

I'm in very good company too.  I admire so many of the other authors and illustrators. Here's the short list:

You can see the full shortlist for every category by clicking here. 

Wee Unicorn is available wherever you buy your books. Hopefully a lovely local indie bookshop. But if you don't have a local bookshop then you can buy it here.

Watts

This is Watts. He's one half of Watts and Whiskerton. He's the main character in my new book Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure. Pearl (Whiskerton) is equally important, but Watts is a writer and he narrates each books for us.

Watts comes from a family of famous detectives but he's not sure if he wants to be a detective too. So when his parents venture off to investigate a case, Watts heads off to Whiskerton Manor for a holiday. There he befriends Pearl Whiskerton. She loves mysteries and persuades Watts to help her investigate a series of strange goings on.

Watts actually began life as Watson. I wanted to create a character in the tradition of Watson and Hastings, a slightly silly detective's assistant. In the story I was writing Watson was much older and through his investigation he met Pearl, who was young and smart and methodical, and much more likely to solve the case. I abandoned this idea quickly because what Pearl really needed was a friend to help her solve the case, someone as intelligent as she was. I realised they had to be the same age. And suddenly they made sense as a pair. 

We changed his name to Watts before the first draft was written. We wanted a W name to sit nicely with Whiskerton. My editor, Ella, suggested Walker because it had a nice dog themed link and I really liked it until I thought of Watts. I loved how it reminded me of light bulbs and bright ideas, and how his name sounded like a question. He is also the son of Mr and Mrs Watts so technically he's still a Watts' son. 

I can't find my earliest sketchbooks but here is a drawing from an abandoned early plot idea.

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that this scene is still in the first book, just changed a little. This was drawn in pencil and then scanned into my computer. I love drawing in pencil but I do spend a lot of time tidying the outlines. I decided to see if it was possible to get a pencil-like quality digitally since I had 128 pages to illustrate. Here's one of the first digital tests.

I was pleased with the way this turned out and decided to make my first book 100% digitally. It did save me a lot of time when I was drawing outlines. 

Another early test that I really liked had the characters with no outlines at all but I realised I had to draw the outline, colour the character and then remove the outline so I might as well save myself time and keep the outline. Here's a peek at the finished artwork.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure publishes on July 4th 2024 and is available for pre-order now by CLICKING HERE. Pre-orders really help authors because they show publishers and booksellers that there's interest in a book. And when it gets delivered you think, 'Ooh, a gift from my past self. How nice!'

Speech bubbles

My next book features one of my favourite things: speech bubbles. And my two main characters have their own designs.

I wanted both Watts and Pearl's speech to have straight edges to show they are logical and that they have something in common but I also wanted their speech to reflect their individual personalities.

Pearl is unpredictable, spontaneous and quite loud so her speech bubbles have sharp, oddly angled edges and are a bold colour.

Pearl

Watts is more considered, speaks softly and is a little unsure of himself so his have rounded edges and no colour.

Watts

I wanted readers to be able to easily tell who was speaking when they speak to one another, and on occasions when the characters are very small the speech bubbles help identify them. Like this...

Everyone else in the book uses the same soft pink bubble. To have too many variations would get visually busy.

This is Houndstooth the gardener.

Watts and Whiskerton: Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure publishes on July 4th 2024 and you can pre-order it by clicking here.

Roughs

When you illustrate a book you go through a stage called roughs. These are ideas of what will be drawn on every page of the book, bearing in mind where text will fit, and as their name suggests they are rough drawings. There are varieties of roughs though. I've seen some much looser than mine, and others so polished they look like finished artwork. Because picture books are so much about the images I make my roughs while I write. I can't separate the two processes.

Watts and Whiskerton is a highly illustrated young fiction book and I wanted the illustrations to be as important as the text. They hold visual pieces of information and readers will flit between the body of text, illustrations with speech bubbles and little comic strips. It sort of looks like the inside of my head. This is how I think. So as I wrote the first draft I created an even rougher set of roughs to send to the editor with the text to help her make sense of the book. It also really helped me pace the page turns and develop the plot. I call these rough roughs.

Here is the rough rough of the museum.

At this stage it's not necessary for me to know what the little details in the book will be, and to be honest I was scared to draw a whole museum.

Once the text was finalised and set by the art director, Sarah, we flipped the image to make sure the text was read before the 'Wow!' and more detail was added. This is the proper rough, there's a whole chunk of time scheduled to make these. This a simple spread but on others we had to cut text to fit or adjust the layout altogether.

The pink part is where you can't put any important information in case it gets chopped off.

This is the final image.

The black line is where the pages will be cut.

The details include some exhibits for Watts and Whiskerton to investigate later and nods to some famous paintings including A Bigger Splash by David Hockney because a swimming pool is a plot point in the book.

Watts and Whiskerton; Buried Bones and Troublesome Treasure publishes July 4th 2024 and is available to buy by clicking here.