This is the first children's story I have written and illustrated inspired by my love of all things mushroomy, it's taken me nearly 5 years to complete.

Alongside working on the book I also run The Ivy Cavern gift shop in Scarborough. Its a tiny shop in one of the vaulted chambers under Scarborough's Market Hall which doubles up as an art studio, it's from here that I package all the orders from my online shop and Etsy store ~ FreeRangeFaeries where I create a variety of faerie and celtic inspired artwork and gifts

I was inspired to write Maple and the Crystal Cavern after watching a Paul Stamets Ted Talk all about mushrooms and the 'Wood Wide Web' this is where the forest is connected by a mass of interconnected fungal webs called mycelium.

These webs act much like our internet passing on nutrients to the trees in a symbiotic relationship. I thought it would be a fantastic concept to incorporate into a children’s story.

I invented the Mycelie fungus gnome character’s one day while I was daydreaming on a train and then started to form the rest of the story in my mind. I imagined the Mycelie’s as the gnome creatures 'running' the wood wide web and creating all the trees, forests and soil and also recycling our rubbish. I loved the way this allowed me to also include an environmental message in the book but in a fun magical way.

The mushroom and mycelium research being carried out at the moment gives  me hope for the future as the miraculous mushroom kingdom seems to offer solutions to lots of our problems, from cleaning up pollution, making healthy soil loving, healing the bee population to making eco-friendly products and packaging.

I hope the book offers a fun and magical way of getting children interested in fungi and gives them a hopeful vision of the future.

Find out more in the Book Facts! section