SNAZZY CAT CAPERS didn't start out with a cat hero. (That's right—you heard it here first.) The Snazzy Cat Capers book series, starring Ophelia von Hairball—the stealthiest, sassiest, snazziest feline—actually started with our inventor fish, Oscar Fishgerald Gold.
In 2014 sometime in the middle of the night, I woke Neil up to tell him about a story idea. "What if there was this fish? What if he was a secret superhero? What if a villainous cat lived in his house?" The rest—well, the rest was a LOT of time and work and fun.
We wrote the whole graphic novel. Neil illustrated it, too. After more than a year of work on it and tons of revisions, our fin-tastic agent, the illustrious Gemma Cooper of the Bent Agency sent it out! Alas, even though it got to an acquisitions meeting and we had a phone meeting for a revision with a big US publisher, Oscar F. Gold, the superhero fish as the star of a graphic novel series didn't fly.
We were devastated for a bit. (MANY, MANY tears.) But after a while, we started talking about how THAT CAT BURGLAR was just so much fun. How her voice was super sassy and just deliciously evil. And THAT is how Ophelia von Hairball the fifth of Burglaria was born as a hero, emerging (with a dramatic tail fluff) from behind a fishbowl.