One of my current projects is a children's word hoard, entitled The Lion of Sleep. It tells the story of how the magical lion Alvery Zee may help you to get to sleep, through the recitation of all the wonderful things he will require to travel to Contragonia and find his true love.

There's an extract below the read more button...

I've so far had one failed attempt to publish my Port Adelaide urban folklore book, the Panther of Divett Street, and I am tempted to self-publish it, or possibly reformat the book and try again with a regular publisher. Still scratching my head about that one.

In the meantime, a few mates have had a go at a cover, using AI. My prompt was "An old fashioned policeman holding a baton chasing a panther with a chicken in its mouth." Results are hilariously bad. Thanks to Richard, Chris and Eva for playing along.

From the time Naiden was very little, he liked games. There were some games in the Forest of Many Things, and some in the House, and evensome in the Imaginary World. 

Games in the House had actual rules. Sometimes, the rules were that you got put outside, because you didn't understand why.

​Another game had some things that people held in front of their faces, and then when they put them down on the table, you could attack them, and then you got put outside again. The best game of all was a big flat thing that you could lie on, and the rules were tiny little pieces of prey made of red and green plastic, and when they went across the board they moved almost as fast as you did! No wonder the people liked playing this game so much.

The people in the House liked it when Naiden helped them played this game. It was his favourite. 

In the Imaginary World, Naiden knew what all these games were called, and could say their names.

​He was very good at the game called Poker. The other players could not see what was on his cards, because he held them with the pictures facing towards his body, He often won the Poker game for this reason. 

In the Forest of Many Things, the games didn't have rules, and there was no such thing as winning. It could be a problem, not knowing when to stop. It was usually Naiden who said it was time to finish the game, and go home. Because he was the particular kind of cat to think of things like that. 

Next time we'll hear about one of the games that Naiden and his friends played played in the Forest, and how it ended. 

Naiden Goof first knew he was a cat when he had a cat’s body, and it was wriggling about. The mother cat was sleeping, but all the other little cats were wriggling about too. Naiden thought he must be a cat, because his mother was a cat, and all the others were all cats, and their bodies were the same as hers, just smaller.
 
At the same time that he knew himself, he knew about others, and for quite a while, he did not know the difference. When he wriggled, they all wriggled. When he ate, they all ate. The mother cat was warm. That was all they knew.