Here’s some news from Lyn Stone.

If I’ve learned nothing else in this life, I think I’ve just about grasped the fact that everything connects. Sometimes in the most unexpected way. But when I was summoned to London for a meeting over coffee about a possible new commission, I didn’t imagine it would somehow involve an antique Cornish fisherman’s pipe.

Before we start, it’s just the pipe that we’re talking about, not the antique Cornish fisherman. You don’t find many of them in Costa Coffee at Victoria Station, in sou’wester and gumboots, waving a net full of haddock about. It would put people off their lattes. But hold on – a new commission you say? Work? Prestige? Money? Indeed. But at the moment, I’m sworn to secrecy. Bit of a downer for a blog, that. If I’d wanted a vow of silence I’d have been a nun – and that’s a *completely* different blog post. What I can tell you is that the commission – once secured – is a new project that could last for about eighteen months, and so will mean a busy time for me. But why all this talk of Cornish fisherman, you ask? Well, I have been asked to illustrate a book, which is a follow-up to something I did a couple of years ago. Two of the main characters are fisherman and a fairy. My (potential) client likes old photographs of Victorian fisherman, and after showing me the sort of thing he imagined, brought from his bag with a flourish, the genuine antique Cornish fisherman’s pipe. I am a wise and forward-thinking creature, so I photographed the artifact for future reference. I intend to have some fun with the characters, as it is a fantasy world, so I can use the traditional clothing as a starting point and then develop that it into something fantastical and hopefully unique. The book only part of a raft of work needed by my client, that will involve me with all sorts of modern technology. So it’s going to be a challenging, but very interesting time for me, and I hope I’ll soon be able to share more of it with you, in my blog posts, as the project unfolds. So there are more posts in the pipeline.