The End

I finally finished The Shopkeeper's Apology after three months of pretty immersive work. It was such a wonderful opportunity to illustrate this enchanting story and I loved every minute of it. In fact, I was pretty sad to stop working on it, but the deadline came and the project was finished.

There was a part of me that expected something amazing to happen. I'm not sure what exactly? Maybe fireworks, or a fanfare, or a publisher emailing me and signing me up for a 10 book deal! Everything seemed a little flat afterwards, like the sparkle had dimmed.

But it was a relief too. My brain could finally think about other things and start looking at the bigger picture. I've been able to reclaim that elusive thing called 'balance' and actually think about things that are fun to do.

I even allowed myself to watch a movie! The Wolf of Wall Street, came up on Netflix, so I watched that in goggle eyed amazement. It was a pretty extreme look into the hedonistic and pretty debauched lifestyles on Wall Street and while I've enjoyed some pretty good parties in my time, they took it way over the edge!

So that was a good diversion for an evening and now I'm back to focusing on what next. I'm still getting a lot of benefit from svslearn.com and I know that my work will continue to grow and improve as a result.

This is an image created for the SVS 3rd Thursday challenge, where you have to respond to a prompt. The prompt was 'It was a pretty BIG problem, but Lucy was confident. She reached into her magic toolbox and pulled out the perfect tool for the fix.

A scene from The Shopkeeper's Apology

I'm not sure when The Shopkeeper's Apology will be coming out as it is up to the author, but I am certainly looking forward to seeing it. I have also asked Theraysa some questions and so it will be great to learn a bit more about her inspiration.

I have found that being a self published author closes some doors to you, as reviewers and book bloggers tend to stay clear! I can understand it in some ways, but it seriously limits your exposure and makes you feel like you have some weird affliction.

With this in mind I'm pretty keen to support quality self published authors and illustrators in the future and will be blogging and reviewing books that are worth sharing....

If you would like to suggest a book that you have found, then please get in touch and I will see if the author would like to be interviewed.

​Thank you for reading and being part of my journey. I think it's just the beginning after all!