My post  about the origins of Queen Narelle has left me thinking about where the ideas for my other stories came from.  So I thought I’d share perhaps the most ridiculous origin story.

The first two trade books I had accepted for publication were Doggy Duo, which

Doggie Duo

included two stories about dogs, and The Floatingest Frog, a picture book about, you guessed it, frogs.

One day I was talking to someone about my writing and they asked  “what are you going to write next.?’ I don’t know what inspired me, but I said flippantly ‘Well, I’ve written about dogs and frogs, so I guess the next one will be hogs.’ I don’t remember if the person laughed, groaned or just smiled politely at that response, but the idea to write a book about a hog remained in my brain as a tiny seed.

It wasn’t the next book I wrote, but the desire to write a book about a hog didn’t go away. Eventually I brainstormed some ideas, and came up with the idea of a Head Hog. It reminded me a little of hedgehog, but also of  Boss Hogg, a character in a 70s TV show.

I started asking myself what would a head hog be like. I decided that my hog would take the role of being Head Hog very seriously – too seriously – so that it would take a much younger hog to show him how to have fun. And, eventually, I  wrote the story that, after much revision and rewriting, became Head Hog, and was published by Koala Books with wonderful illustrations by  Ben Wood.

Unfortunately, it is no longer in print, but  I do still regularly read it at school and library visits, and it is a lot of fun. – and a reminder of how little ideas can grow into fun, complex stories.

Much much later I wondered if, having written about dogs, frogs and hogs, if I could perhaps write about logs. You can be the judge of the success of that: this poem is my very quick attempt:

Logs

There are many poems about frogs

There are many poems about dogs

There are many poems about hogs

But not many about logs

So let’s write about a log

And see if it’s such a hard slog.

A frog sat on a log

A dog sat on a log

A hog sat on a log

And that was the end of the log.

Proof that not all my ideas (or all my poems) are good ones.!