It is almost 5 years now since Canadian author, Giovanna Lagana, first contacted me and asked whether I would be interested in illustrating a couple of educational children's books. Would I! - it had been an ambition since schooldays. Just 10 weeks later, and lots of to-ing and fro-ing with a e-book publisher, signing contracts, etc, the illustrations were complete. There followed a year long wait before we saw the final ebook and it went live. Then, nothing, zilch, nada.

We enquired after sales figures a few times but were told that there had been none. We knew this couldn't be right as we had both purchased the ebook ourselves under different names. Another year went by and still nothing so we pulled the ebook off the site and continued looking for publishers with the dream of one day seeing the story in print. This year, we discovered several sites where the ebook was offered in its entirety, free of charge. This proved beyond any shadow of a doubt that sales had been made and where we could, we contacted the sites to notify them that they were breaching our copyright. Lesson one.

Meanwhile, I had got a taste for book illustration and was eager for another project. "The Adventures of Sailor Sam" pretty much wrote itself. My handsome tabby, Samson (already a local celebrity) was only too happy to model for me and I drafted in family and friends to play the human characters. The story was rejected by several publishers. I was thrilled to receive a letter from Dorrance Publishing accepting the story but the jubilation was short-lived as the letter went on to say that it would be illustrated in black and white by their in-house illustrators and I would be charged around $4,000 for the privilege. Strange I didn't see any figures like that when I answered the call for submissions! Lesson two.

Having amended the small typos in A Perfect Nest for Mrs Mallard, I was looking forward to receiving a set of flawless copies. I was therefore horrified to notice that two of the photos towards the rear of the book had become pixelated. How that could possibly happen when no changes were made to the pictures is a mystery unsolved. I have had to submit another revision and everything is now on hold until a further proof has been approved. Meanwhile, I have been invited to sell and sign my books at a festival in the park this weekend and all I have is 30 copies with a typo and 8 copies with faulty photos. Obviously I was not born under a lucky star.

I was devastated today to have two small typos pointed out to me in my new book. This is after it has been proof-read by 4 colleagues/friends and almost two dozen copies sold in the past few days at work with nobody noticing. Once you actually know that a mistake is there, you see nothing else. I will be submitting a revision to the printer this evening but it has really put a big downer on my day and on my pleasure at see my book finally in print.

On a day when it is certainly weather for ducks, Mrs Mallard has finally left the nest accompanied by a record-breaking 16 ducklings.

At last my work on "A Perfect Nest for Mrs Mallard" is complete - or at least the writing, illustration and set-up. Marketing (for me the most difficult part) is never done. I was up with the dawn yesterday morning, trying to get in a hour's painting before I went to work and last night saw me chained to my computer until nearly midnight, trying to get the PDF just right before submitting it to the printer. How many times did I go through the process only to notice a small typo that a spell checker would not pick up or a thin black line at the edge of an image?

Having ordered a proof copy, I will be on tenterhooks until it arrives. That first thrill of holding your creation in your hands can be immediately dashed by turning the page and seeing a typo staring back at you. Why didn't you spot it during the hundreds of times you viewed the file prior to submission? The proof of my first children's book literally made my blood run cold! My illustrations were cut in half and paired with the wrong half of other pictures, and worse still - I had nobody to blame but myself for page-numbering the book wrongly (although I had read the guidelines so many times...you seldom notice your own mistakes).

Hopefully, experience will make this proof a more of a pleasure to receive.

I am really hoping that this weekend, I will be able to complete "A Perfect Nest for Mrs Mallard" but the last illustration is proving a devil. The school caretaker provides Mrs Mallard and her ducklings with an escort safely across the carpark and to the lake. I decide against a portrait of the caretaker (sorry, Terry - I know you were looking forward to your 15 minutes of fame), as scale-wise it would have made Mrs Mallard and her babies too tiny. So, I have them marching across the page in front of a halted car. This causes a further problem, as I don't want to show a real number plate and can't think of a good fictional one. I've tried masking the plate with the legs of watching schoolgirls (rather manga style) or having the truncated legs of the caretaker walking past but as yet, nothing is pleasing me. Think I need to give it a rest for today and come back to it refreshed tomorrow (although I've tried the same tactic for the past 3 nights and still no breakthrough!)