My self-publishing journey has taken many years so far. As my first release was Pure of Heart, it would make sense to start there, but that’s for next month.
     The Bunny Basket Collection actually came first. I wrote all 10 books 7 years ago, inspired by the children I was Nannying. The books are all about helping children learn to show kindness to others by listening and helping.
     At the time, I bought toys that looked like my characters, and photographed them so they could be made into unpublished books that I could gift to these children, and my friends and family. Only a handful of these original sets of books exist today, but the children who own them tell me they are still reading them.
     Fun fact: The original idea for the bunnies came from winning a raffle! I had gone to a craft event day for Nannies and I won a prize. I could choose any prize I wanted on the table and there I saw this knitted basket with 10 cotton bunnies inside. In that moment, I had the beginnings of an idea to give them their own stories.
     I don’t know who made these bunnies, there wasn’t a commercial label on the basket, so I assume they were handmade. My thanks goes out to this amazing artist who inspired me.
     Back then, I had a dream to illustrate the stories too, but there just wasn’t the time between work and home life. I eventually found time in lockdown to pursue this idea.
     With the best of intentions, I admit I am no illustrator! However, my efforts have at least come in useful as concept art storyboards for the real artist.
     You will note that my editor and 3D artist share the same name as me. Smith is obviously a common name, but I am proud to say that Cody is my son.
     As a 3D artist, he has created each of the toys as fully poseable models. With realistic texture for cotton, fur, wood, plastic and more, he has brought these characters to life.
     With his 3D art hat on, he can take my ideas and make them better than I ever imagined. With his editor hat on he can be my most fastidious critic (which I assure you, I am grateful for).
     You can see the differences in these 3 pictures. They are all the same scene from the first book in the collection, Friendly Flynn and the Bunny Basket.
     The first picture is the photograph of the original cotton bunnies as shown in the original set of books. The second is my drawing of how I imagined I wanted the bunnies to look. The third is the actual scene from the published version.