Just call me Lightning.

One of my goals this year has been to finish a story for my godson who lives in London. When he was born I started it for him, and I've been banging on and on about how I needed to finish it this year.

It's set in a parallel universe where birds fly backwards, people shrink when they get bored and on Thursdays the fish go shopping (see below).

It's called Bryce the Hidden Claw and is about a gargantuan cat who is notorious for being a vicious killer (and rumoured to floss with barbed wire). He moves next door to our main characters Jake and Izzie, who proceed to go on a crusade to rid this evil criminal from their neighbourhood. But it turns out that things are not as they seem...

I've drawn it out with my appalling handwriting and have illustrated it (badly). I got the idea for the design of the book as a great aunt of mine who lived in England wrote a book for me when I was a child, with this layout. (However there were a couple of reasonably major differences between her and I, she was an artist and a published author so her drawings were a lot less amateuresque and her story far more skillfully crafted.)

Anyway I'm just pleased I've finally finished. All forty-three pages of it (it even comes with it's own bookmark due to those forty-three pages making it a little long to read in one hit if you're small).

But what makes the whole thing worthwhile is that my godson got it for his birthday this month, and he loves it.

As I say, I started it when he was born.

He's just turned seven.