LIFE'S UNEXPECTED LITTLE PLEASURES By Linda Mitchelmore

Back in the late 1990s when I first started writing short stories and having them published, the illustration of my stories never crossed my mind. It was enough to see them in print. Back then artists were commissioned to illustrate most magazine stories and water colour seems to have been the preferred medium. Almost all my stories were illustrated and I found it flattering that an artist had read my story and painted something that illustrated it perfectly, as though he or she had got inside my head and 'seen' what I had seen when I was writing it. My Weekly were particularly good at matching artist to story. I had, back then, a wonderful working relationship with a sub-editor and was able to ask for a particular artist to work on my story. Privilege indeed! Woman's Weekly, too, are excellent at finding an illustration that gets right to the heart of a story, and I must confess I often write stories with a longer word count so that an illustration will - hopefully, but not always - be put with it, even though most illustrations these days come from an image bank.

But, Scandinavian magazines still tend to use artists and commission the illustrations. I've had many, many short stories published in Norway and Sweden, and two of my novels have been serialized in both countries. I don't know what anyone else thinks, but I find the illustrations rather old fashioned, even given my novels were historical. But it has still been a pleasure to discover an artist has read my novels and short stories in translation and produced a work of art to illustrate them.

When we write novels and have them published we expect there to be an especially commissioned book cover of some sort. These days a graphic artist will be used, and I have to say I've been very pleased with the book covers Choc Lit have commissioned for my novels and novellas. But I still have a special fondness for those first magazine stories and I have three illustrations framed and hung on the wall opposite my desk. I've recently sold three more short stories to mainstream magazines and there is a little frisson around my heart wondering what unexpected little pleasure of an illustration will be put with them.