College tutor Spencer Hill and his partner Vicky Oakey have produced a cartoon collection centred around horses. The book is entitled ‘Cartoons from the horses mouth’ and will be published next month by Quiller Publishing under their equine imprint Kenilworth Press.
The book contains over a hundred colour cartoons describing the experiences of horses from their perspectives, and is based on science and experience as Vicky not only has an Msc in equine science, but considerable experience as a groom and rider.
Spencer explained that he originally produced the cartoons as a practice exercise. Take a subject and see how many cartoons you can generate from it. When he reached 25 he realised he had struck cartoon gold and decided to see what interest there was in syndication with one of the equestrian magazines in the UK. There wasn’t any, so they pushed on and got the number to a round 101 and self published with lulu.com instead. The idea was to see what interest there was in the collection, whilst simultaneously producing a dummy book to take to a publisher. They drafted a list of the most likely publishing houses and approached them in order. The first one was Kenilworth and they were immediately interested. A contract was drawn up and a release date agreed. The book is available to buy at www.countrybooksdirect.com
Vicky and Spencer are now working on a sequel using the same approach as with the first batch; Vicky will sit and tell Spencer stories of her experience with horses, or explain equestrian concepts to him, and Spencer turns them into cartoons. Spencer has an article on his website www.spencerhill.co.uk which explains this transformation process in more detail.
We are keeping our hooves crossed that the book will be a success!
