Day of Delight is my first book, written for children. It is a culmination of work written intermittently over the last few decades and is now collected together, with lovely artwork.

This work is written under my real name of Marian Moxham, rather than my stage name, Marianne Segal.

The Day of Delight is a collection of poems relating tales of fun, fantasy, half-truths, myths and fibs suited to children from age 5 to 14 years and older. Younger years may also enjoy listening to the poems being read out loud to them.

I really enjoyed the flow and ‘the unexpected’ from the writing. It gave me a lot of pleasure. It is similar to the song-writing process, but of course without the extra, creative layers of sounds to think about and include. Yet, with book writing, there is also a second layer of creativeness, alongside the actual writing. This other part, is the artwork and the visual presentation.

The ideas for the drawings and paintings need to come from the descriptions in the text. When the artwork is done, there is a visual pleasure in choosing where the text and artwork sit on a page, and what sizes they might be; perhaps, also, changing font sizes to create an added effect. I like to get involved on this side of things, after the graphics designer has set the initial presentation for me.

In a funny way, I liken this to being in the recording studio and tweaking instrumental sounds around the vocals – creating a soundscape. With the book-manuscript it is tweaking a visual-scape. Both feel very inspiring and creative to do.

I am doing less live work now, and hopefully more book writing will overlap into this space. I am enjoying the transition onto this new path and have begun work on the follow-up book.

An audio version of The Day of Delight is due to be recorded shortly and I’ll update you on this and any other new happenings, as and when they take place.

Thank you for reading.