Time flies – in memory of Jack Alun Time flies. So thank goodness books remain. Possibly gathering a bit of dust, but not becoming dust. That’s what people do, I suppose. I’m reading for the nth time Jack Alun’s blog, Neither Here Nor There, written in the middle of a lockdown in the COVID time. He’s stuck in Wales dreaming of France describing writing a new collection of poems that would eventually become ‘Invisible Spaces’. He describes feelings of being cut off geographically and culturally and ‘marooned in a neither here nor there sort of Neverland.’ I am sure he spoke for many who experienced the isolation in all sorts of ways but here I am, years later, stuck in Wales, looking back wondering what happened to all that time and, in particular, how we can ever bridge the gaps that time and space increase. Le temps passe vite. I had to look it up, by the way. French is such a slippery thing, sometimes so elegant and then sometimes, it just lets you down a bit. I remember Jack making me roar with laughter at his tales of going to Paris on a French language course and rapidly deteriorating…
We’ve had a lot of interest in our latest book, STORI time, by Richard Eccles, and one of the main talking points has been the cover and the internal illustrations. So, we thought we’d bob along and ask the incredibly talented artist, Steph Towell, to tell us a little bit about herself and how she came up with the idea for the book’s amazing cover and also about the process of making something that looks so clever and complicated and yet so full of personality! ‘I’m an illustrator who’s constantly building on my style, trying new things even when I haven’t perfected the thing I tried last week. I’m happiest when I’m experimenting, whether that’s sketching my D&D characters, learning a new craft, or attempting (with mixed success) to grow vegetables. Outside of art, I’m a dog lover, a PlayStation completionist, and a “give‑it‑a‑go” kind of person in every creative direction. The cover artwork for STORI time draws directly from my background in character‑focused illustration. I naturally work with expressive, slightly fantastical figures, so I leaned into that strength to capture the chaotic, humorous energy of an open‑mic night. The crowd of onlookers performers and is built from the same…