In 2017, I published Tales from the Toy Cupboard: New Friends. And you can learn all about the story behind how that came about on its own page on this website.

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Although not my preferred genre, the feedback to that book was surprisingly positive. ​​In 2018, I wrote the text for a second book and in January 2019 Fiona, the artist, and I met (our first face-to-face meeting since 2012!) and the wheels were put in motion for book two, with ideas for a further three - five in total.

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And then real life got in the way. Fiona - a very busy person - was struggling to find the time to do the artwork and I became distracted with a combination of real life and writing projects in my preferred genre, and the second book was mostly forgotten.

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That was, until early 2026, when someone posted a review for Tales from the Toy Cupboard: New Friends, the first new review for some years. At this time, I was way behind with my self-publishing plans. I had hoped to finish and publish my 'next' full-length comedy novel, The Red Herring, some time ago, but was struggling with the plot of it and finding time. 

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The new review reminded me that I had a 'finished book' all ready to go - just no artwork. Of course, times have changed since the first book was published and I had recently, for fun, been flirting with AI, creating "Muppet-style" versions of family portraits. Curiosity got the better of me, and I asked AI to come up with a cover for the second Tales from the Toy Cupboard book. And it did. And I was pleasantly surprised with the results. So much so, that while I would never use AI to assist with my writing (no matter how much I may get writer's block sometimes), I thought if using AI was going to be the difference between the second Toy Cupboard tale ever being published or not, I would do it. 

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Of course, that first book had been prompted by my friend Fiona, so no matter how good a cover AI came up with, there was no way I was going to pursue this without her blessing, so I contacted her, and thankfully, she gave her blessing, I cracked on with it, and the second Toy Cupboard book is here.

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I will say that I DID have many frustrating fights with AI in creating the images - it would add extra characters sometimes, take some away, or completely change the appearance, despite me following its suggestions of creating templates etc. It was a very frustrating process, and while I am pleased with the overall results (there is one image in the book which features Poodie which does not look quite right, but it had taken a long time to get this far, and after reminding myself I was arguing with a 'machine', I opted for the best result I could get, but also resolved 'never again', so it's doubtful books three, four or five will ever see the light of day (never say never, but, in the first instance, they're not written yet and secondly, my AI experience was far too stressful to want to do that all over again!).

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But I AM pleased that the story itself is finally out there!​​