Tuesday 26 July 2022, at Imperfect Nutritionist.

I finished writing Sascha Martin's Visitor. Today. This morning.

It's years since I started writing it, but I shelved it because it seemed unlikely I'd ever be able to wrangle it down to fit inside a picture book.

And I can't.

And I won't try to now.

Sascha Martin adventures grow. It's what they do. They can't be constrained to 32 illustrated pages and I've realised, finally, they're not meant to be. The twists of language needed to get a rhyme can be enough to make you lachrymose - so they're more suited to older kids, anyway. And grown-ups (big kids).

Visitor is number two* - or three - in the new breed of Sascha Martin adventures, written to be read by anyone who loves language, rhythm, rhyme and the silliest of humour. In a convenient paperback size. And ebook, of course.

Sascha Martin's Visitor takes Sascha, Luca and Aggie on an epic journey across the universe ... across several of them in fact, and hurls them from the horrific heights of hideousness into the deepest, dreadfulest depths of danger and massive moments of major menace and petrifying pitfalls of particular peril and ... Well it's like, just awful, what they have to deal with.

Can they find their not-friend Mary-Alice (should they?) and the teachers of Landfill Public School, who've all been zapped to Somewhere in a puff of smoke? And if they find them, can they bring each one of them back in the same number of pieces they started out with?

I'll keep you posted on progress here in the Blog. And in the cryptically titled John Arthur Nichol's Newsletter, which is not horrific, hideous, dreadful, dangerous, menacing, petrifying, perilous, dangerous ... or even especially massive. The harmless and inoffensive sign-up box is at the bottom of each page on the site (adjacent to the limerick) ... or you can find out more at this unobtrusive, undemanding and minimalist web page (my profile).

Smiley smiley-face.

*Number one in the new bunch is Sascha Martin's Christmas Eve - another epic started years back, finished weeks ago and scheduled for release (fingers crossed ... like, really tightly) before the Christmas Eve of 2022. See my blog post about it.

Or is it Sascha Martin's Pitchy Witch?