Lady Autumn – now available on paperback

Many years ago, when I used to live in Ottawa, the colours of autumn would always inspired me. The fiery tones of the trees that lined the streets were absolutely breathtaking. It was as if an artist had painted the leaves. I used to imagine a little creature waking at the break of dawn and painting the leaves before the rest of the world woke up. I told myself when I had children of my own I would explain to them that there was a special fairy who lived in the woods and her only job was to change the colour of the leaves every year.

I knew one day I would write this book, but I never really got around to it. Eventually, when my daughter was about 6 months old, I decided to write it. I had ideas of how I wanted the story to look but wasn’t quite able to capture it with my own art skills. I also learned that hiring an illustrator is a very expensive, time consuming process. I pitched my story to a few editors and was rejected by all of them. I ended up talking to my friend’s boyfriend who introduced me to Midjourney. He told me how he creates his own artwork using AI. I asked him if it was possible to create a children’s story using it and he gave some prompt ideas to find the best images for my story. It took me a great deal of time to get the images right but the process was exciting. The best part of it was that I didn’t have to wait on anyone, I could just do it my way and on my time.

While the images are not exactly as I had in my imagination, I am happy with how it looks overall. This book has been waiting to be written for years. I just needed a bit of encouragement, and AI, to make it happen. I self published it initially as a Kindle version because I couldn’t quite figure out how to make it paperback. However, after everyone asked for a hard copy I had to figure out how to do it. After a few months I finally made it happen. It was my goal to have this completed before my second child was born, which happens to coincide with Canadian autumn.

So, if you have young children, or friends with young children, I encourage you to go out and get yourself a copy!