It’s funny to think that Squarehead was developed almost by accident.  A Facebook status, “Square head, round thoughts”, prompted a drawing from Margit. A few months later came the book, which she illustrated beautifully. Squarehead turned out to be such a nice little chap, we both fell in love with our own creation.

I generally write very dark thrillers (I’m a screenwriter in another life). Squarehead is the complete opposite. Not the kind of character I would ever have thought of writing.

Sweet natured he may be, but he’s also tenacious. After we’d created the artwork for first book, both Margit and I got busy with other things and he languished on a hard drive for about year.

Finally, we took a look at him again and found we liked him just as much. A friend, Louis Downs (who makes the ingeniously beautiful Hawk Wargames) suggested that we should try raising the money to print the book via Kickstarter – a crowd funding venture for creative projects. It made sense. Squarehead was born online after all. Why not give it try?

Well, our Kickstarter went like a rocket. We had the money in the first three days. Suddenly we were in the publishing business. Fast forward to smiling pair in the photograph at Gomer  Print in Wales, holding our first hardback editions.  Almost like a real book!  Pity we forgot such things as ISBN numbers and bar codes.

A year later we’re just publishing another book – this time with backing from Virgin Startup. It’s been astonishing to see how many people genuinely love Squarehead. He’s taken us on a journey that has introduced us to all kinds of interesting and clever people. We’ve found help and encouragement round every corner.

Another Squarehead story is in the planning stage and should appear around March next year.  Soon he’ll also be appearing as the frontman for a range of healthy organic snacks for kids – so keep an eye on the Ocado/Wholegood range.

This story is beginning to look as though it could run and run…