I’m really happy to announce that my new book, ‘Meet The Guttafawlk’ was published this week! It’s a fantasy adventure book for younger readers, featuring the exploits of a band of tiny faery ecowarriors on a mission to protect Mother Nature.
But what drove me to switch from writing about business topics and to start a project as a children’s author? Here’s how the book came about and ended up being published.
Becoming a fiction writer for younger readers
For many writers, there comes a time when you will ask yourself, ‘I wonder if I could write a kids book?’. For some writers, that’s the end of it. It’s a casual thought. A pondering. An idle wondering that pops into your head and disappears just as quickly.
There’s a brilliant episode of the 90s comedy, Black Books, where they try to drunkenly write a children’s book. It highlights the usual stereotype – that kids books are a piece of cake to write and that you could probably knock out a first draft in an afternoon.
However, the reality is that kids books are actually VERY difficult to write. Or to put that another way, it’s very easy to write a terrible kids book. But it’s much more difficult to write a genuinely good, engaging kids book that kids will actually want to read.
So, for most writers, that occasional thought about getting into kids books remains just that – a thought. But, I had this thought back in December last year…and then actually went and wrote a book that’s aimed at a younger readers audience.
I somehow managed to write a children’s book and now it’s drafted, edited, proofed, formatted and published.
This casual thought has turned into a real life book, and that’s cause for celebration.
Writing a good adventure, but with a serious message
So, why write a story about tiny ecowarriors who love Mother Nature?
It won’t have escaped your notice that we’re in the middle of a climate emergency at the moment. The weather has gone crazy, temperatures are rising to new unheard of records and the world is in a grave state.
This destruction of the environment is something that’s been on my mind for some time. We’ve watched as climate scientists have warned about the dire consequences of global warming, and then been horrified at the lack of action from the major governments and large corporations.
So, I wanted my story for younger readers to try and tackle the topic of climate change, but in a way that was informative, not patronising. Exciting, but not too scary.
An adventure seemed like a good format to get these ideas across, and fantasy would allow me to introduce ideas and characters that would engage my younger audience and get them into the story.
Then one day, while walking my daughter to school during a rain shower, I jokingly suggested that there were little people who lived down the drains in Australia (where we now live) and that there was a whole tiny world down there.
That idea really stuck in mind, suggesting more ideas over the coming days:
- Could there be a race of tiny faery people who lived down in the drains?
- Maybe they could be ecowarriors, in the mould of The Wombles, collecting all the trash and rubbish that humanity sends down into the gutters and drains?
- And perhaps these tiny ecowarriors are getting very annoyed with the messy humans ruining the planet.
- These faeries are folk that live in the gutters, so maybe they should be called the Guttafawlk?
That was the start of a proper theme and story for the book. This idea of writing a kids book was no longer just a random thought. It had a story, a purpose and an important message to share with a younger audience. All I had to do was write it…
Getting the writing done, one chapter at a time
I’ve written books before – three of them in fact. But they were all factual business titles, aimed at helping entrepreneurs, startup owners and freelancers run their businesses more successfully (you can find out more about the business titles here).
I’ve also tried my hand at fiction before, but have never actually completed an entire manuscript. So writing a whole book in a genre I’ve never tried before was quite a daunting thought! But, as any author will tell you, the best way to write a book is to start writing it – and that’s what I did.
Whenever I had downtime from my freelance content-writing work, I would write another chapter of the book. This was very much an occasional project, as workloads went up and down and time became available to explore the story.
The characters that would inhabit the story began to emerge as I started to write the first few chapters of the story:
- Leaf, the young the dreamer and thinker who’s wise beyond her years.
- Rat-tail, her kindly but clumsy best friend and his pet rat, Rakali.
- Bootlace, the bold and bearded leader of the Guttafawlk.
- And Matchstick, the highly intelligent but bumbling shaman of the tribe, and the Guttafawlk’s first ever scientist.
Gradually, week after week, month after month, the story evolved and appeared on the page. And then, in November, 11 months after starting this crazy idea, I had a finished draft. Plenty of re-reading, re-writing, editing and proofing took place and then, finally, the thing was finished!
After a bit of fighting with the Amazon cover creator tool, and the immense help of some brilliant cover art from my friend Nic @ Shugmoney, I had a cover for this book, and it was time to upload everything to the Internet and press GO!
As a book, it may not be perfect, but I’m very pleased with how this story turned out. It’s a book that the 10-year old me would definitely read, so I hope it appeals to other younger readers and that they can dive into this Guttafawlk world and get to know and love the characters.
Meet The Guttafawlk: buy the book today
‘Meet The Guttafawlk’ is available now through Amazon, in Kindle and paperback editions. If you have a younger reader in your house (8-12 is the suggested reading age), and they love a good fantasy adventure, this may well be the perfect Christmas gift.
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