I am a grandfather. My next milestone birthday is 80. I am originally from Europe (Germany, to be precise, born and grown up in walking distance to France, not far from Luxembourg). About 30 years ago, my professional career in pharmaceutical development led me to the United States, where I still live—near Philadelphia.
I haven’t always been a children’s book writer and illustrator. Early on, I worked for a while as a gag cartoonist for German-language print media and funny books. However, for most of my life, I made my living as a physician and scientist. I also did (and still do) ordinary painting and drawing, but I no longer sell any of it. If you’re interested, you can find my ‘regular’ artist website here.
Over the years, among other things, I did many fantasy paintings, though not of the conventional variety (which means perfectionist, pseudo-photorealistic dragons-fairies-and-spaceships paintings). My fantasy paintings were allegorical, rather pessimistic riddles—a joy to create, but too “idiosyncratic” to be sold. In these, I only used black and white on dark brown ground.
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My first artistic reaction to becoming a grandpa was to start a series of more optimistic fantasy paintings for older children, adolescents, and young adults—still not dragons-fairies-and-spaceships variety but imaginative in a different way. They are highly allegorical and loaded with references to art history. And since their intended audience was my granddaughter, they became rich in citations of our family history and heritage. This new generation of fantasy paintings also acknowledges that there is good and evil in the world. Fo this, I add elements of traditional Western, Christianity-infused folk tale symbolism.
The lead actors in these newer fantasy paintings include a teenage girl and many, rather funny fantasy characters of various types.
I hoped that, when old enough, my granddaughter would decipher, enjoy, and cherish these paintings. It soon became clear, however, that these newer paintings were too complex to stand alone, without me providing keys to their interpretation. So, I began to write down the imagined stories they tell. At this time, late 2025, however, the resulting manuscript is, at most, half done.
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Mid 2024, I paused work on these newer fantasy paintings. After all, my granddaughter would need ten or more years until she would be ready for them. So, I decided to create things that she could appreciate much sooner, as soon as she would be ready to listen to longer stories or even read them herself. Hence, I began writing ‘regular children’s books’—two so far, with a third one in the making.
It had to be books because books she can take home and spend time with. After all, she lives far away, in Europe, and we see her in person only once or twice a year. So, we don’t have much time together, and with these books, she has us grandparents always nearby, sitting on her bookshelf.
My children’s books are, of course, much ‘milder’ than my newer fantasy paintings. They are very friendly and humorous. No evil is present (even the monsters are loveable) and there is no violence, no hate, no foul language. And there is no hidden political or ideological agenda.
In these books, a colorful, diverse group of fantasy-figure friends around the magic painter Saxxur lives in family-type harmony and is not under threat. Still, the books are not boring at all, and there is suspense. And in many places, they are quite witty. So, I am sure even adults will enjoy them. After all, I once worked as a syndicated gag cartoonist.
The main message of these books is simple and positive: Try being a good person, always, even if life and other people make it difficult.
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Since painting and writing for a granddaughter is addictive and I like to daydream, I allowed my little universe of fantasy characters and their habitat to grow into what I now call my GOGGOL UNIVERSE.
It is called Goggol universe because it is built around non-human folk called Goggols. The magic painter Saxxur in my children’s books is one of them. So far, i.e., in my first two children’s books, Saxxur is the only Goggol character. Many more Goggols do, however, appear in my large fantasy paintings.
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Originally, the first book (Siggi, Jo-Jo, Saxxur and the Seven-Legged Scareling) was intended to be a one-off Christmas gift — one single specimen of book, written, illustrated and printed only for our granddaughter. This means, I did not plan to publish it and make it available to a wider audience.
It took me many months to get it done. The writing, the painting, the development of the characters and the set in which they act and, not the least, learning to master the computer software for assembling and preparing the book for printing … all this was, at times, hard work that seemed to never end. But this was OK. After all, I did it for our granddaughter. And I enjoyed every minute of it— in retrospect, at least.
With the second book (also primarily intended to be a Christmas gift for my granddaughter) my learning curve was not so steep anymore. Still, it took about as long to finish as the first one — not the least because it is much thicker, has three times as many pictures, and the much longer text needed much more work.
By the way, having seen how many iterations it took to optimize some of the elements of the story and their aligned illustrations I consider myself tremendously fortunate to be both the writer and the illustrator. If I had been only the writer and would have had to pay an illustrator, these books would not have been possible. But illustrating it myself meant there were no limits to what I could do.
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I also wanted high quality books. This meant excellent paper for color printing. And it meant hardcover. However, for my first book, which is 38 pages long and was originally formatted 8.5 x 11 inches landscape, insisting on a hardcover edition also meant that I could not use Amazon’s print-on-demand services. They don’t do hardcovers in this format and for only 38 pages. So, I had to use another print-on-demand company, called Lulu, which, on the other hand, made it impractical for me to offer the hardcover version for sale through Amazon. So, I eventually decided to create a second version (reformatted to 8.5 x 8.5 inches) of my first book, which I then could have printed and sold through Amazon—though still not as hardcover. Once I have finished my third book, I plan to combine the first and the third one into a single “double book” which will be longer than 85 pages and, therefore, can be a hardcover even with Amazon.
The second children’s book (The Laundered Ghost) was designed from the beginning to be viable as an Amazon hardcover. It is long enough (95 pages) and 11 x 8.5 inches, upright (portrait format). It is, however, also available as paperback.
Since my granddaughter is bilingual, there is an English and a German edition of both books.
