As The Wattle Tree is about to be released in bookstores, I thought it would be great fun to share with you all how the story and picture book came together. With previous books publishers have approached me with a story already in mind, and I usually get a manuscript that has already been nearly completely formed. With The Wattle Tree however I became involved from the initial conception. What follows is a simplified example of how the story developed. It was a very organic creation, that we had not set out to create-to order. It just happened.

John and I were looking through one of my sketchbooks, and he became quite taken by this image below.

What was happening? Why were they sad? John and I talked about story ideas (as we often do) before moving on. ( PLEASE NOTE: Before the first draft was written we had also talked numerously about the feelings that we went through when we have lost family members we were close to. They are hard emotions to pin down.) It was a few weeks later before John had a picture book story idea:

Please come back soon, as the next post is all about The Wattle Tree concepts!