Although I did make comics when I was a child, my first and only real lasting ambition was to be a novelist. I was an avid reader and one of my earliest memories is of reading four Enid Blyton books in a single afternoon, just so I could rush off to the local library and take out four more!

I'm not sure when I first read C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe but it must have been quite young because, by the age of eight or nine, I wrote Prince Sashtan, a "novel" which - according to the dust-jacket - was to be the second in a series "inspired by" Lewis's tales of Narnia!

The other books in the series were never written but, yes, there really was a dustjacket! This page shows the cover. Taking my cue from the library books I used to devour, the cover was reinforced with cardboard (my first hardback!) and covered in a plastic bag (hence the wrinkes you can see in this scan!) The interior pages were unlined and the book was dedicated to my primary school teacher (name withheld!) who allowed me far too much free time to go and work on my opus in the school library!

Click the cover to read Chapter 1 and please do feel free to leave any comments in the Prince Sashtan forum. But be gentle - I was only young!