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I was a studio artist for Hallmark U.K. before becoming freelance, and my wife Jan, our two children and I moved to the Isle of Bute, off the west coast of Scotland. We started silk-screen printing our own cards there, under the name of ‘The Payne Family’. In 1985, we moved to Norfolk in East Anglia, and The Payne Family changed a bit, designing and publishing only children’s pop-up cards.

In 2000, we changed tack completely – gave everything up - moved to an old farmhouse in the Dordogne in the South-West of France and started writing instead.

Apart from the titles shown on JacketFlap, we have written well over a hundred stories for dozens of books for packagers (most under pseudonyms), with different degrees of collaboration between Jan and myself, and I have illustrated a few books, though never one of our own. ‘The HippoNOTamus’ (Scholastic) illustrated by Guy Parker-Rees, is our biggest seller. We also write animation scripts for television, and I’m in the middle of a novel.

This ‘About Me’ can’t be just about me, I’m half a team. Jan has just written ‘the best book in the world’. That’s not a proud husband’s brag – it’s the name of the book – a non-fiction book of the weirdest, most interesting, record-breaking and strangest facts gleaned from around the world. My job was just checking the facts. Her most recent gainful employment was a commission from the BBC for seven stories to be broadcast in 2009. All our ‘Annie’ stories have been read out on the BBCs ‘Little Toe Show’. The Annie books have also been made into talking books and we’re trying to persuade the BBC to adapt them as a children’s drama series.

My current project, apart from the novel, is trying to marry storytelling with my paper engineering past and do a pop-up book or two. I haven’t got very far with the pops. If anyone is actually reading this stuff, please feel free to criticise the gallery photo of the only spread to reach dummy stage so far – (the circus car, based on an old pop-up card of mine). I haven’t shown the idea to anyone yet, but I'm thinking about it.

Tony Payne
Dordogne
8th Dec 2008

I was a studio artist for Hallmark U.K. before becoming freelance, and my wife Jan, our two children and I moved to the Isle of Bute, off the west coast of Scotland. We started silk-screen printing our own cards there, under the name of ‘The Payne Family’. In 1985, we moved to Norfolk in East Anglia, and The Payne Family changed a bit, designing and publishing only children’s pop-up cards... More