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Practical guides for portraits and on-set workflows,
plus occasional stories and field notes.
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The Story Under the Story
Storm-proof is a children’s book project in development, but its emotional core reaches beyond childhood. On the surface, it is about a boy learning to prepare for storms. Beneath that, it asks a larger question about the human need for steadiness: how do we build structures that protect us without hardening into armour? That tension between preparation and connection is what gave the story its shape and what continues to guide its development.
Some projects arrive like a business plan.
Some arrive like a sentence you can’t shake.
Storm-proof started with an image: a child in bed during a thunderstorm, listening to the house shake, trying to make sense of the noise, the uncertainty, and the feeling that the world can change faster than you are ready for it.
From there, the story began to unfold. A boy named Tommy decides he does not want to be surprised by storms anymore. So he starts preparing. He organizes his room. He makes a shelf for the things that help. He learns routines. He learns where the flashlight goes, where the batteries are, what to check, what to do. In one sense, it is a story about preparedness. About steadiness. About the quiet comfort of knowing where things live.
But that is only the outer layer of the story.
The deeper part of Storm-proof is about something many children, and many adults, know well: the difference between being safe and feeling calm. You can build strong walls. You can make good plans. You can become the responsible one, the organized one, the one who has it together. And still, somewhere inside, the storm can keep going. That is the turn in this story. Tommy learns that preparation matters, but it is not the whole answer. The house can be strong without becoming a bunker. The windows can open. The door can let the right people in. Calm does not always come from control alone. Sometimes it comes from connection.
That idea is personal for me, which is probably why the project stayed with me. I have long been interested in the ways people learn to hold steady through uncertainty, and in the structures we build to protect ourselves. Sometimes those structures help. Sometimes they harden into armour. Storm-proof is my attempt to explore that honestly, but in a form simple enough for a child and meaningful enough for the adult reading beside them.
Right now, the project is still in development. I’m working on both a picture-book version and a longer written version, and I’ve been using AI-generated imagery as a visual development tool while I explore tone, character, setting, and pacing. Those images are helping me think through the world of the book, but they are part of the draft process, not necessarily the final destination. The goal is to keep refining the emotional core of the story and, in time, move toward a finished edition with a more fully realized visual identity.
So that’s where Storm-proof stands at the moment: part story, part sketch, part personal excavation, and part children’s book in the making. I’m sharing it now because some projects need to be seen while they are still becoming. Below, you’ll find a link to the current draft materials and visual explorations.