A CHILDREN'S author needs your help to continue a book series which was inspired by his daughter.

Peter Lynas published Madeleine Goes to the Moon with illustrator Charlie Roberts and English Rose Publishing last year.

The 41-year-old was inspired by watching his daughter Zoe play and the picture book's character Madeleine shares her likeness.

But Peter has decided to self publish the follow up, Madeleine Goes To The Sunken Shipwreck, and needs your help to raise £3,000 for the project through the crowdfunding website, Kickstarter.

If he reaches his fundraising goal, those who donate £8 or more get a signed copy of the book and there are various special editions available for people who pledge more.

He said: "Every child who’s seen the first book, from the schools I’ve been to and the parents who’ve bought it, adores it. But if this doesn’t succeed the second book won’t be made."

Peter said the idea for the Madeleine series came when he was simply watching four-year-old Zoe play. He also has a younger daughter called Elin, aged four.

He added: "When you watch kids play they just use their imagination and go into a different world.

"I was watching her play and I just thought what if this room was a moon. It just popped into my head.

"So the way I wrote the book was I tried to think like a child thinks. To put myself in their head and see everything how they see it, not how we see it.

"In the first one she pretends she goes to the moon when she should be tidying her room.

"Whereas in the second one she sneaks into her parents room when it’s still dark with a torch and she pretends she’s at the bottom of the sea.

"She imagines her parents’ room is a sunken shipwreck and she’s looking for treasure so she looks through her mum’s perfume and jewellery.

"But she wakes her mum up by accident and thinks she’s a pirate skeleton and gets frightened!"

Peter is following in the footsteps of Conrad Jones and Simon Gould who all worked together at McDonalds in Warrington before going on to become successful authors.

He worked at the Bridge Street fast food restaurant between 1990 and 2000, working his way up to floor manager.

Peter said: "It is weird because we used to go to concerts together and nights out all the time. You’d never have known it to have been there then.

"Conrad and Simon write thrillers and I couldn’t do that.

"But I don’t think they could do what I do because mine’s more about getting everything perfectly crafted.

"It’s like a puzzle trying to fit everything together so that it reads right because it is designed to be read aloud. I enjoy that."

- To pledge your support for the publication of Madeleine Goes To The Sunken Shipwreck, search for Peter Lynas on kickstarter.com

DAVID MORGAN