by Emanuela Samaritani
When I started writing my books, after thinking about it on and off for a few years, I began to imagine the illustrations that in my opinions would perfectly match the kind of message I wanted to share. It’s a dangerous thing for a writer, because publishers don’t let you chose neither the illustrator nor the style or the subject of the images. It’s one of the reason why I decided to self-publish.
Once that decision was taken, I had to find the artist, which could have been be very difficult because there are so many talented people out there to chose from. Luckily for me, I knew of three very talented ladies with whom I would have loved to work with. I asked Helena Kreissel to draw a couple of illustrations from a description of what I thought would work well with the text, and the choice was made. I just loved it.
When Helena suggested Fiona Good as the designer, I had no idea what to expect, but I decided to give it a go. Later Fiona sent me some proposals and I was once again struck by their talent. None of us had ever worked on a children book before, so it was a bit of a risk, but I am extremely happy with our collaboration and I hope that we will continue to work together for many more books to come.