Spreading her wings to tackle international book markets

Athlone born and bred children"s book author, Lorraine Francis, has taken a new journey by producing her first colour picture book, "Sammy and the Skyscraper Sandwich", in tandem with an illustrator. The book will be published in early Spring next year and this adds to the five other highly acclaimed books that Lorraine has written. Lorraine is a native of Court Devenish, Athlone, and for several years has worked in Athlone library both in the Fr Mathew Hall and at the Civic Centre. Lorraine is married to Athlone man, Dave Dockery, and the couple have two sons, Graham and David. Lorraine"s later success in writing children"s books was probably influenced by her own childhood days when she was a member of Athlone Library and was an avid reader of the works of children"s authors such as Enid Blyton, Carolyn Keene and Patricia Lynch. But she had an eclectic reading taste and read at one of the scale, the classics and at the other end of the scale; she read the popular girls magazines of the 1970s like "Judy" and "Bunty". 'I used to love to read, and I loved to write stories when I was in school, but never thought it would be something I could do as a job,' said Lorraine. However, her first love was not writing, but art, which is something she has applied to her writing in full measure, because it is noted that she writes visually, which has given her working partner, Dutch artist, Pieter Gaudesaboos, much material to work with in their joint venture, "Sammy and the Skyscraper Sandwich". Lorraine did a year in the National College of Art and Design after leaving school. Recently she resumed her artistic pursuits, by making jewellery, from polymer clay and objects such as old jigsaws. This has proved to be a popular sale in local shops and craft fairs. Lorraine has artistically converted one of the grey pillars at the library in the Civic Centre into a tree, and she is currently working on converting another one into Rapunzel"s Tower. When she left Art College, she worked with the Department of Social Welfare, and later at Roscommon Library, and then took a career break to hitchhike across Europe with a friend. The two girls hitched to Greece, where they stayed for months and slept on beaches and lived on 50p a day! 'I had some savings and my friend was a teacher, so she was returning after summer. After she left I met a crowd of Australians and got the "Magic Bus" back to London, and worked for a while in a the "Green Coat Boy" pub in Victoria, London,' she said. Lorraine returned to work in the library in Roscommon for a further two and a half years. She then got a job in the library in Athlone RTC, at a time when Gearoid O"Brien was the librarian there. Lorraine transferred to Mullingar library and then went for another career break to New York for a few months, where she worked as a waitress. 'I got into writing through a letter writing competition with An Post,' she said. 'I entered a short letter to an imaginary friend, who missed a school reunion, telling her about it. I was one of one hundred people short-listed by judges Hugh Leonard and Clare Boylan and I was put into their anthology.' Lorraine"s first book, "Lulu"s Tutu" simply arose from the title coming into her head, and she had no idea at first what it would be about. 'But I ended up doing the story and I was going to do the illustrations, and sort of nervously I sent the text away to Poolbeg, and to my amazement it was accepted,' she said. 'The publisher got Dublin illustrator, Anne O"Hara to do the black and white illustrations, and after that, came the second book, "Save Our Sweetshop" which children tell me is their favourite book.' Educational publishers, Fallon"s, bought the rights to the first 11 pages of "Save Our Sweetshop", for primary school readers, and it was great publicity for Lorraine, because it meant that children became more familiar with her name and her books. Later, Scholastic publishers bought the rights to "Lulu"s Tutu" and this helped build up American sales for Lorraine"s books. 'If this makes me sound fabulously wealthy in the JK Rowling league, I can assure you, it"s well off the mark, as I"m still an impoverished writer,' she said laughing. Currently "Save Our Sweetshop" is in Eason"s in Athlone, and "Lulu"s Tutu", and Lorraine"s other children"s fantasy books, "The Origami Bird", "The Great Trolley Race" and "Pandora"s Lunchbox" are on sale through amazon.com. "The Origami Bird" is an interesting fantasy story about a paper bird that a teacher makes and when the wind moves the bird, it thinks it can fly. There are instructions for how to make the bird in the back pages of the book. "The Great Trolley Race" is a sequel of sorts to "Save Our Sweetshop", and Lorraine said the town in those books are similar to her own hometown of Athlone at a time when she was growing up. 'I started writing every day when the boys were at school in the morning, up to lunchtime, and I used to work in longhand, and transfer it to computer, but now I work fully on computer,' she said. She has done signings for her first five books in bookshops all over the country, and has read stories at primary schools. Lorraine has also come 2nd in the Francis McManus Award competition with her radio story, "Rebound" in 2003. 'It started from an idea about marriage breakdown from the point of view of a 12 years old girl and at Christmastime her father arrives to the family home to see his children, and the story features all the tension that brings,' she said. She has joined with Belgian artist, Pieter Gaudesaboos on her latest writing venture, "Sammy and the Skyscraper Sandwich". Pieter is an award-winning illustrator in his native Belgium, and is Art Director of a museum in Ghent, Belgium. Lorraine and Pieter met when he was an exchange student in AIT. Pieter was particularly interested in children"s book illustrations, and when he heard that Lorraine had written children"s books, he proposed the idea of working on a book together. 'We met and bounced ideas off each other, and came up with the Sammy idea,' she said. 'Pieter is into surreal humour, and we came up the idea of a child making a sandwich, which gets larger and larger. I went home and wrote the text and sent it back to him.' It"s the first time, Lorraine has pitched a colour picture book as a joint venture with another artist, and the Athlone writer hopes that the 28 page book will be a success, first in Belgium, where it will be produced by Lanoo publishers in Flemish. 'Hopefully it will be translated into English and other languages, as it will be going to the Frankfurt Book fair in October 2009,' said Lorraine.