How debut author Alexander Slater accidentally became a TikTok sensation

Hi Alex! Could you please tell us about yourself?

I’m an author, illustrator and animator from Hertfordshire, England. My favourite colour is mint green, I have an unhealthy obsession with Lego (my collection is large and ridiculous) and when I’m not writing, illustrating or building Lego, I can usually be found walking my cockapoo, Bailey.

What is Celeste Express, your debut novel, about?

Celeste Express is a cosmic fantasy about a young girl named Celeste Starwing who lives in the space kingdom of Galaxandria. After one bratty incident too many, she is tasked by her father, the King, to reopen the Intergalactic Post Office. But the shop has been shut for 70 years and the people of Galaxandria have largely forgotten about post, much preferring to send messages on magical little devices called Wurms.

It's up to Celeste, her new friend Podge and a whole battalion of Stardust Bunnies to reopen the post office and figure out the mystery of why it closed in the first place!

What was the inspiration behind Celeste Express?

Celeste was inspired by a prompt for an online art competition. The brief was ‘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. But I took one look at her and thought ‘there’s a story here' so I never entered the competition and wrote a book instead!

You’re quite an established artist on TikTok! How did you get started?

It honestly happened by accident. I was massively fed up with my design day job and desperately needed a creative project for myself. I stumbled upon TikTok shortly after it rebranded from being called Musical.ly and discovered people who were making cartoons on the app. I had an iPad and Apple pencil from Christmas which I wasn’t using and wanted to give it a go myself.

One thing led to another and after exactly a year and a day I had a million followers which is bonkers! It was an incredibly creative and freeing time and my experience doing it gave me the confidence to write and illustrate my own books as well which is something I’ve always wanted to do!

Celeste Express is the first in a series. What can readers expect from the story?

I want to take readers on a fantastic cosmic adventure! They can expect creative stories with inventive ideas, funny characters and art that absolutely leaps off the page! Oh, and they can expect A LOT of art as well!

What advice would you offer young artists looking to start posting their work?

If young artists are looking to post their work online: do not, I repeat, DO NOT focus on the number of likes, comments and followers you get. I see so many young artists mistake these numbers as a measure of success and become disappointed when they don’t achieve the response they’d like. We didn’t have Instagram when I was a kid; my parents’ fridge door was the only platform I needed to host my drawings. I was able to develop properly as an artist free from random strangers saying it was rubbish or worrying how many likes it got. 

The value of your work is determined by more than these silly metrics. Just keep making work you enjoy, and you’ll be just fine, whether you share it online or not.