I love the idea of a series of random events and characters all bound together in some way. In this case, it’s greed and opportunism!

 So I wanted to create an opening scenario, in this case Grandma making her pie and setting it to cool on the shelf – and for her to have absolutely no idea of all the shenanigans ensuing after a naughty fox comes along and decides to help himself!

This is my first published story in rhyming text. I don’t always write in rhyme, but I like to change things around a lot, otherwise I get bored. And also somebody (who shall remain nameless) told me that there was only one author (who shall also remain nameless) who could write in a rhyming text – and we all know that’s rubbish, right?

So it made me even more determined to write this piece.

At first, I wanted the artwork to be quite minimalistic, but my publisher wanted lots of detail and so even if you look through the book, you can see in the backgrounds exactly where the pie has been. It took me forever to decide on what kind of dog character to have in the book. I tried sausage dogs, poodles, spaniels – and eventually decided on an English Bull Terrier, because I love the shape of their noses.

Grandma also evolved from a brown bear into a polar bear, and it was fun choosing exactly what her clothes would be. She’s ended up wearing a rather pretty apron, with a “Do NOT Feed The Bears” logo on it, tee hee.

I also love the rather louche cat standing outside the Kitty Kat club. I would seriously go into this club. I went recently into something very similar when I was in Vietnam!

Here are some sketches and pages from the from Oh me, Oh my, a Pie!