Hello! If you’re reading this by email, it’s because you subscribed to hear updates from me through my site, www.mrchriscox.com. I thought I’d use Substack for updates moving forward and see where it leads.
This is about stories (particularly good ones), and creating them (hopefully also good ones)
A few years ago I wrote and illustrated a book for my children which ticked the boxes I wanted to see in children’s fiction: adventure, action, silly comedy, and heroic knights on quests. Heroes fighting against villains’ nefarious schemes; the kind of villains, who contrary to lots of children’s stories, don’t just go away or become your friends when you’re nice to them. Where good and evil exists, and families work together for each other, against what the world has to throw at them. You know, a bit like real life. Except the knights were dinosaurs. Which makes both knights and dinosaurs at least ten times cooler.
I published King Rex and The Cough Medicine Mission in 2020, and it went down really well with children and their parents. I received fan mail. I was onto something. So I began plotting out Book 2…
It’s a fact of life that if you’re going to make something good, it takes time. Sometimes a lot of time. And that is something that generally I do not have. I have a lovely family and a job that I thoroughly enjoy, so I create in the moments I have available. As with any creative endeavour, you need to carve out time, and mark success by the fact you’re still just plodding along, with times of momentum building and times where you’re picking yourself up again after a break that was longer than you’d planned.
Book 2’s story has come together, and has changed over time. Good stories need time to brew. They can’t be forced into neat formulas. They need to take on a life of their own. I was keen not just to do the same type of thing as Book 1. One of my friends had commented that he’d liked the book, he’d just wanted … more. I knew these characters had more potential to grow, and I wanted the story to be more action-packed, adventurous and high stakes; still with a silly sense of humour, just more all-ages epic: like The Lord of the Rings meets Monty Python by way of Asterix.
I’d love for you to join me on this quest to finish Book 2, and 3, and beyond.
That’s great, but why this now? Why not just keep writing the book?
I’m starting this Substack because after a long and winding road, I’ve finally realised I’m a storyteller and I’d like to write and illustrate more tales. Stories are powerful things - we find meaning, comfort, challenge and a jolly good time in them. We live vicariously in others’ shoes and situations through them. Stories shape the world, so I believe it’s important we create good stories which inspire and elevate and reflect truth. We’re too valuable and our time is too short to have otherwise.
I’m looking to build a positive group who can help bring more good stories into the world. Art happens in community, and your support would help me make more stories. And hopefully you’ll be inspired to create in your own way, and support the spread of good stories into a world that needs them.
I’m partway through Book 2 - I started pencilling in page 24 last weekend - and there’s more to go. To balance out the slow and steady, I have also returned to another idea I created in 2015 which friends, family and a children’s book editor liked - provisionally called The Legend of Sid: Booster Bear. If King Rex is me stretching to do the very best I can over a long haul, Legend of Sid is the opposite: still doing my best, but improvised, fun, loose, fast pages released regularly with a plot I make up largely as I sit down to draw. I need both to bounce between, and I think both need attention.
So what now?
I’ll be posting updates on King Rex Book 2, and new pages of the Legend of Sid. Every now and again I’ll share what's inspired me, and some of the inner workings of how I make books. Life does funny things, but I aim to post once a week.
If you’re up for the journey with me, it’d be great to have you along. Just click below :)