ALEXANDER SLATER’S Celeste Express is the start of a fully illustrated lower middle grade fantasy series that is filled with lots of adventure, intergalactic worlds, and cartoon-style artwork. Read on for a Q&A with the author.
What inspired Celeste Express?
Celeste Express was inspired by an online art competition. The brief was something along the lines of ‘The Cutest Character in the Galaxy’. Most of the entries I saw looked a little generic and I fancied designing a character with a purpose or a job. I settled on a character who was a cosmic postmaster because I thought it’d be a charming job role for a character to have in space. Celeste came out almost fully formed (only big difference was her hair was pink). But I took one look at her and thought ‘there’s a story in this character’ so I never entered the competition and wrote a book instead!
What kind of adventures will Princess Celeste Starwing and Podge go on?
Celeste and Podge have a whole universe of adventure ahead of them! Running the Intergalactic Post Office will take them all over Galaxandria where there’s new planets to visit, new friends to make and new villains to face!
What can you tell us about the kingdom of Galaxandria?
Galaxandria is a world that works like a galaxy. Everything including towns, countries and even whole continents are made up of clusters of micro-planets, moons and asteroids. The map is always changing as everything is in constant orbit of each other (which annoys the cartographers of the world) and bizarre, fantastical, cosmic weirdness can be found in every corner.
The Galaxandria Kingdom is a country that sits at the very centre of Galaxandria. The locals were very creative with their naming choice after conquering the region believing the whole world revolved around them (which actually it does).
Do words or images come first for you? And how did you create the wurms?
Words and images leapfrog over each other all the time for me. I can see things in my head pretty clearly when I come up with story ideas and will scribble down doodles of what I want to include. Then when I’m writing the manuscript there’ll be times where I can intensely visualise exactly what the illustration will look like for what I’m writing.
I came up with the Wurms as an analogue for mobile phones/texting which in our world have made sending post to each other redundant. But because Celeste Express is a cosmic fantasy, it needed a space-themed twist and the idea of sending messages through wormholes came to me pretty quickly.
What was the most challenging part of creating this story?
Figuring it all out. This was my first time making a book at all let alone on my own. I’m still surprised they trusted me enough to do it! No one ever taught me the right way to make a book so I had to work the rules out for myself; the best way to compose scenes or interesting page layouts, how to approach colouring, etc.
But I’ve got over 15 years of professional design experience and I’m a fast learner. Now I do know what I’m doing and I’m pretty good at pushing myself to improve.
What’s next for Princess Celeste Starwing and Podge?
I would love to tell you EVERYTHING that the universe has in store for Celeste and her friends! But then I’d probably have to throw you into a black hole. For now, I’ll say her next adventure is an utter rollercoaster of a story! It’s got heists, high jinks, a duel across the stars and the cosmic god of cats at the end of the galaxy! What more could you possibly want?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexander Slater is an author and illustrator from London who loves stories with big ideas and bigger heart. He holds a First Class degree in Graphic Design and Illustration from the University of Hertfordshire and has earned several awards in design and cartooning. When he’s not doodling or daydreaming, he can be found cooking, walking his adorable cockapoo, Bailey, or entertaining his millions of followers on his TikTok account @AlexRabbit.
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