Good morning!

Happy Monday everyone! I have the utter joy of being on the blog tour for the brilliant new book, Unleash Your Creative Monster, by Olaf Falafel. Olaf is here to give us a sneak peek behind the scenes of creating the monsters in the book!

This incredible new book is perfect for budding young writers because this is a properly gorgeous, innovative guide to all things writing that will get kids (and even some big people) buzzing about writing!

In the pages of Unleash Your Creative Monster, budding writers will sink their teeth into story basics, essential writing tools and the hidden secrets of the wordsmith. Featuring top tips on finding inspiration, how to keep a story moving and beating writer’s block, this essential guide has everything you need to unleash your creative monster.

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Behind the scenes: How I Created Our Monsters!

By Olaf Falafel

Creating the monsters for Unleash Your Creative Monster was loads of fun and I can’t actually believe that I got paid money to do it. If you’d have told 8-year-old me that inventing weird and funny creatures was going to be his job I don’t think he’d have believed you.

I started as I usually do with any illustration job and that was by putting the kettle on. Once I was settled with a cup of tea and some Jammy Dodgers, I got my sketch book out and started inventing different monsters.

There was no real method or science to it, I would just experiment by putting different body shapes and heads together. I would give some of them fur, give some horns, add sharp teeth to others and some would get multiple arms, legs or eyes. Some of the monsters are loosely based on real animals like bats, centipedes or reindeer.

When I was running low on creative energy, I roped in my daughters to help me. I’d ask them what my next monster should look like and they would shout out things like “he’s got a pen coming out of his head” or “it has really long stripy arms” – I would then draw these suggestions to make even more monsters.

In the end I must have created over 300 monsters of which around 50 made it into the final book. I tried to give most of them little character traits and recurring jokes that I could keep slipping in. For example, there is one monster who is always trying to eat books and another one who really likes sneaking off to watch football.

I think the monster I like the most is either the one who looks like a beard with eyes or the one who gets his bum stuck in a hole in a fence!

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I am so so excited to give this book to some budding writers in my life and see how it ignites their passion! I certainly know one or two!

As I’m kicking off the blog tour, this is a great time to remind you to check out the rest of the blog tour (details below) over the next few days!

A massive thanks to Olaf and to the publishers, Walker, for inviting me to be on this blog tour!

S x