Reflecting on World Book Day: A Celebration of Young Readers and Creativity

Thanks to all the schools and students that made 2024 the wildest World Book Day to-date.

We set a new personal best for most copies of The Shrew With The Flu signed during an Author Visit (70, WOOP WOOP!!!); got sent photos of one class' attempt at their very own clay Shrews; had a child projectile vomit within the first 10 seconds of our first World Book Day workshop (the joys of working with kids!); received a message from a mum saying her son "hasn't stopped talking" about the visit since we drew wiggly worms together.

“Will was amazing with the children and kept them engaged throughout the session. The children loved drawing the woodland animals and even our younger preschoolers were able to get involved.

The Shrew With The Flu is a great story with a gorgeous message and the children were enthralled listening to Will read it to them, they’ve not stopped talking about it since!”

- Head of Early Years Practice and Deputy Manager, Snapdragons Nursery

It's an awesome privilege, standing in front of classes of young people, doodling forest animals, and listening to their stories about when they've been out in nature and helped wildlife.

I still remember the first time I read The Shrew With The Flu to a group of people; I mean, there’s only one panel of judges fiercer than that of a Games Show and that’s my family. As I watched them smiling and laughing along to The Shrew With The Flu - thinking to myself, THEY ACTUALLY LIKE IT, HOLY MOLY THEY LIKE IT! - I realised there was a strange magic to reading children’s books. It was the first time I finished a reading feeling more energised than when I started. A switch had flicked.

For anyone keen to organise a school visit or writing workshop, drop me a message via the “Say Hello” section of my website.

Stay safe; stay smiley.

Will :)

My First Ever Running Race, An Ultramarathon - Raising £2,500+ for Children's Hospice South West

This time last month, we raised £2,500+ for Children’s Hospice South West by completing the Christmas Celtic Ultramarathon - a 55km off-road running race passing through woodlands, pastures, moorland and mountainsides in Afan Forest, Wales. Elevation gain? A cute 5,000ft. Toenails missing in action? Four (why did nobody tell me this would happen!).

An ultramarathon was never on my bucket-list. Somehow, a conversation with my best friend, Andrew, escalated into us running 55km after just 50 days of training. The conversation went a little like this…

Andrew: "It's about time we planned an adventure. This Ultramarathon's in December. You up for it?"

Will: "Urmmm...YEAH! Next Christmas would be kind of wild!"

Andrew: "No, it's THIS Christmas, in 50 days' time. I've signed us up!"

Will: "But...I've never even run a marathon! This is 50km! Is that even possible???"

Apparently, it was.

As children’s author from the South West of England, I've had the privilege of supporting Children’s Hospice South West (CHSW) in various ways over the years, from hosting The Shrew With The Flu Draw-&-Dance sessions with bereaved families at Hidden Woods, to reading a snippet of Shrew’s story alongside Sibling Care worker, Sarah, for the hospice’s Appreciation Event at Toppings Bookshop (themed around ‘the importance of storytelling’).

Witnessing the care, love, overwhelming positivity, and gratitude of the CHSW community has left a profound impact on my life. Since then, I've wanted to do something epic to raise money for this incredible charity.

The race was every bit as gritty and grueling as we anticipated, but with a great support team and more than double our initial fundraising goal for CHSW at stake, we finished the way we started: smiling!

For those wanting MORE GORY DETAILS, there are countless videos from our #50DAYS50KM challenge on my Instagram, and the #50DAYS5KM JustGiving page is also live for viewing.

Thanks to everyone that’s enabling me to discover causes like Children’s Hospice South West; thanks to those that supported the fundraising for this crazy challenge; thanks to the support team that cheered us on throughout the toughest challenge of my life so far.

Let’s make more awesomeness happen!

Stay safe'; stay smiley.

Will :)

P.S. an extra shout-out to Thermae Spa Bath Spa, who helped us donate two additional spa day vouchers to the workers at the hospice, for hitting our fundraising target early - acts like that make the world go round!

The Shrew With The Flu: A Journey of Persistence and Inspiration

This is the story of how The Shrew With The Flu went through two crowdfunding campaigns, three illustrators, countless revisions and a heap of early setbacks before becoming the picture book it is today.

How would I summarise the journey? Challenging, but worth it.

Pursuing picture Book Publication: A 20-Year-Old's Unconventional Journey

There’s no ‘normal’ way for a 20-year-old to pursue the publication of their first children’s story. In truth, there isn’t really a ‘normal’ way to do anything as a fledging adult: we stumble around in the dark, ignorantly charging towards our dreams, making mistakes, learning as we go, (often) turning around at some point to find we’ve either gone totally off-piste or (by some miracle!) magically wound up close to where we wanted to go. It’s a wonderful, sporadic, inexplicable adventure, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

In my case, the ‘stumbling around’ stage of my journey happened after a conversation with my step-mum led to a challenge. I had been reading my younger siblings bedtime stories like The Gruffalo while on holiday and started wondering “why don’t more people write stories like these?”. They were so simple, moralising, and magical. I couldn’t think of a better way to process the world, and help other people explore new perspectives.

“They are definitely not as easy [to write] as you think, Will!”, my step-mum cautioned.

“I think I could write one…”

“Well, go on then!”

I laugh at myself now. It really was that easy. I was off to write a picture book; largely because I felt inspired; mostly because I had been challenged to do so.

Rhymes and Revelations: how the shrew with the flu came to life

Off the back of my step-mum challenging me to write a picture book, I set to work converting famous historical events into rhyming children’s stories. I started with Henry the 8th and The Great Fire of London. To be frank, the rhyming was awful, the rhythm was clunky, and the reaction from my parents was disheartening enough to make me stop writing. That was, until…

I wound up researching small furry animals at some point during my third year of university in 2018 (the things we do when we have time on our hands!). Despite being a self-proclaimed ‘country kid’, I had never heard of a ‘shrew’ before, and the whole concept of them seemed hilarious: they have these teeny eyes that are practically useless, a huge nose that they depend upon to hunt, and a metabolism that is so disproportionately fast for their size that they spend every waking minute hungry.

Like a flash of lightening, I disappeared into an all-consuming episode of pure unguided inspiration: “what would happen if a shrew got the flu? How would it find food? How would it survive? Perhaps it would have to use…THE REST OF ITS SENSES!”. Like the crazed student I was, I struggled to keep up with my own thoughts, scribbling down the first draft of The Shrew With The Flu in under an hour. Then…I sat there, wondering what on earth had just happened. My flatmate was watching TV. I was staring at three sides of A4, amazed that I had just written my first children’s story: how bizarre.

Serendipitous Encounters: Meeting Sheila and Embracing Authorship

Sheila Supple entered my life some months later. If it weren’t for Sheila, retired primary school teacher and grandmother of Joe, my flatmate, I likely wouldn’t have published The Shrew With The Flu. At the time, I had no intention of going beyond my step-mum’s challenge – to write a children’s story. I was content, leaving The Shrew With The Flu to gather (digital) dust inside my computer. But – testament to the oddness of life - the summer after I wrote Shrew’s story, Joe’s mum suggested I sent it to Sheila for some ‘ruthless’ feedback. Well, I had nothing to lose, especially as I didn’t have any plans for the story.

I certainly didn’t expect Sheila to tell me that my work was ‘crying out for illustration’ and that I needed to pursue authorship. In hindsight, this was one of the first times anyone had told me, ‘you’ve got something special, Will. I believe in you!’.  

“You are Not a Celebrity!”

Before publishing The Shrew With The Flu, I strongly believed that anyone could take a shot at success and have a chance of ‘winning’. Thankfully, I’m now far enough down the road to look back and realise that I was right – we do all get a chance to succeed – even if it is frighteningly easy to bump into the wrong person and convince yourself otherwise. This happened to me when I first started submitting my manuscript to publishers. The only publisher that told me why they had rejected my work stated that they ‘did not base [their] rejection on the content of my writing’, but the fact that I had ‘no platform or status from which to promote [my] work’. The publisher went on to explain that, without being a celebrity, I didn’t stand a chance of succeeding as a children’s author.

I was just finishing a degree in Journalism, Media and Culture, designed to teach students about not only developing creative pieces of content, but tailoring them to an audience and marketing them effectively. I felt severely underestimated, being told by a publisher that I couldn’t be published because I ‘didn’t have a platform’ (I was only 20-years-old, for Pete’s sake!); and that feeling spurs me on when I speak to young people today. Nobody starts off as a celebrity – or at least, very few of us do. We all have to find ways of cutting through the noise when we first have a reason to do so. Not having a platform might make you more of a risk, but it does not make you unworthy of sharing your perspective, and you certainly shouldn’t let it stop you from pursuing your dreams.

With the message from that publisher in the back of my mind, I set to launching a crowdfunding campaign to fund the illustrations for The Shrew With The Flu. Few people know that my first campaign flopped. I didn’t reach half of my target – not even close! But by this point, I was a man on a mission. Hundreds of people had read early versions of The Shrew With The Flu and told me it had legs – even if they were small, furry, shrew-sized legs. A crowdfunding campaign seemed my best chance of success. “You need to make this work Will!”, I kept thinking, “this is your chance!”.

I peppered the owners of successful crowdfunding campaigns with messages, asking what I did wrong, what they were doing right, and how I could approach a follow-up campaign. Did you know that most successful crowdfunding campaigns line up backers well before they start the campaign? I certainly didn’t.

By the time I launched my second campaign, I was working nightshifts in Sainsbury’s and desperately wanting to make this a success. I wrote a 40-day marketing plan, clicked ‘launch’, and immediately started using every tool at my disposal to get people looking at the fundraiser.

We raised a few thousand pounds, which allowed me to commission a professional illustrator to work on The Shrew With The Flu.

The Quest for the Perfect Illustrator

Prior to my publishing and fundraising shenanigans, I went on a bit of a rollercoaster ride, trying to match The Shrew With The Flu with a talented illustrator.  I needed help bringing a small, greedy, food-obsessed mammal to life - cheeky, chubby, and totally adorable. We needed a protagonist that was innocent like a child, with the potential to impulsively gobble up a forest (it was a lot to ask!).

To begin with, my uncle kindly offered to sketch out The Shrew With The Flu free of charge. He was familiar with graphics design and had doodled with us as kids, so (naturally) I welcomed the collaboration. We started playing around with ideas.

Unfortunately, Stuart had to withdraw from the project early-on. It was a shame, but also an opportunity for me to find a talented university peer to collaborate with. Introducing…Sarah Maxwell. It was clear that Maxwell’s natural style was slightly too eerie for children’s books, but she was phenomenally talented and had a portfolio of pen-and-ink line drawings that captured my imagination. I asked Sarah to take inspiration from Beatrix Potter, and we wound up producing the first versions of Shrew that really stuck in my mind.

Some months later, Sarah would have to withdraw from the project for her own personal reasons. I was crushed. It felt like I was finally scaling Dream Mountain when someone had stolen my poles, blindfolded me, and shoved me in the wrong direction. It took some time for me to find my bearings again.

Eventually, I came to the decision that The Shrew With The Flu required a professional illustrator. Having successfully crowdfunded the money for a commission, I went through hundreds of illustrator portfolios with a fine tooth-combe, looking for someone capable of bringing a modern twist to a classic style. I finally found the hero of this whole adventure: Jennifer Davison. I cannot express enough how much of a dream Davison was (and is) to work with. As Davison injected her own vision and style into The Shrew With The Flu, it transformed from a 2D character into a living, breathing three-dimensional world. It was vibrant, unique, and different from my initial vision in all the best ways. I finally had a real-life picture book.

Sharing the Joy: The Growing success of the shrew with the flu

Since starting this adventure, The Shrew With The Flu is now stocked in stores all over the country. I’ve been approached by experts in foreign languages to translate the story, and by traditional publishers interested in foreign rights and publishing new manuscripts. I’ve performed at festivals like PoliNations with National Literacy Trust, hosted an Instagram live with Squashbuckle Pirate and The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power star Sophia Nomvete, partnered with organisations like Kabloom and BluePatch, and had endorsements from all sorts of people.

This is just the beginning of my journey as an author, and it might never have happened if it weren’t for a challenge from my step-mum, one encouraging comment from my flatmate’s gran, and a persistence in relation to my dreams.

So, if you take anything from my experience, please…

1. Challenge others and dare to embrace challenges yourself.

2. Let people know if their work makes you feel a certain kind of positive way - it might spur them on to do something incredible.

3. Be persistent with your dreams. You CAN do it. You WILL do it. But you have to KEEP GOING and FIND SOLUTIONS to the problems you face along the way.

Stay safe; stay smiley.

Will :)