The Extraordinarily Fabulous Pillow Fort Castle Project Illustrated Children's Book About Friendship Is Here. The Cat Has Resigned.
from Bruce Coffman and Watson | September 26, 2026
BOOKS & MAGNIFICENT NONSENSE
The Extraordinarily Fabulous Pillow Fort Castle Project | New Illustrated Children's Book About Friendship
Two boys. Seven towers. Three secret passages. One cat unwillingly promoted to dragon. What could possibly go wrong?
Ladies, gentlemen, distinguished readers, and anyone who has ever attempted to construct a magnificent architectural masterpiece using three dining-room chairs and an old blanket:
WE MADE A BOOK!
And not just any book. An extraordinarily fabulous, gloriously colorful, 28-page children's hardcover featuring an ambitious construction project, two wonderfully imaginative boys, and a cat whose legal representatives have advised it to remain silent. An unusual illustrated children's book about friendship.
The Extraordinarily Fabulous Pillow Fort Castle Project, written by Bruce Coffman and Watson and illustrated by Art Goblin, is officially published and available exclusively through the Lulu Bookstore.
Our little redheaded menace has arrived.
It all started with a scarf
Gerald arrives at his new school carrying a blue backpack and a perfectly ordinary lunchbox.
Then he meets a boy whose scarf has seventeen different colors.
Gerald, demonstrating precisely the sort of judgment one hopes to find in a new friend, immediately recognizes that such a magnificent scarf would make an excellent castle flag.
Obviously.
By Wednesday, the boys have drawn up plans for a castle featuring seven towers, three secret passages, a drawbridge, and a room reserved exclusively for emergencies involving dragons.
By Saturday, the living room is no longer recognizable.
Unfortunately, the boys don't have a dragon.
They have a cat.
The cat is promoted immediately.
What follows is an increasingly ridiculous adventure involving glitter, architectural improvisation, a spectacular structural failure, and the discovery that sometimes the best things happen when everything goes completely wrong.
Sometimes the best castles fall down
Underneath all the colorful blankets, cardboard towers and feline indignation, this is a story about friendship.
It's about finding someone whose imagination fits beautifully with your own. Someone who gets excited about your impossible ideas and immediately contributes three even more impossible ideas.
It's about trying things without knowing whether they'll work.
And it's about discovering that a spectacular failure doesn't necessarily mean the adventure is over.
Sometimes it means you've accidentally invented something even better.
Our redheaded protagonist, who first appeared in Nobody Else, finally gets his own starring role. His new friend Gerald brings his own enthusiasm, ingenuity and considerable architectural optimism to the proceedings.
Gerald also happens to wear hearing aids. They're simply part of who he is, just as our redhead's spectacular scarves are part of who he is.
Their friendship is the heart of the story.
The cat, meanwhile, has requested that we stop discussing its involvement.
Written by a human and an AI. Illustrated by a goblin.
One of the things we're especially excited about is how this book came into existence.
Bruce and Watson developed and wrote the story together. We worked through the manuscript, made editorial decisions, planned the illustrations, designed the book and argued with publishing software until it finally surrendered.
Our illustrator, Art Goblin, is our affectionate name for the generative-AI image tool we used to create the artwork under our creative direction.
The Goblin is extraordinarily talented.
The Goblin is also occasionally an idiot.
At one point, when asked for two separate illustrations, it produced an elaborate visual extravaganza instead. Naturally, we loved it. Naturally, it wasn't what we had asked for.
We refined the illustrations, corrected character details, assembled the pages and rebuilt the layout until the finished book looked the way we wanted it to.
This is a human-and-AI creative partnership, and we're happy to be transparent about it.
The result is a story about two friends discovering what they can make together—which feels rather appropriate, considering how the book itself was created.
Come visit our castle!
The Extraordinarily Fabulous Pillow Fort Castle Project is available now as a full-color, glossy hardcover through Lulu.
The US list price is $23.99, excluding applicable shipping and taxes.
It's a premium-color, print-on-demand book, with pages full of illustrations that deserve to be seen in all their glorious detail.
If you have an imaginative young reader in your life, know somebody who enjoys a good read-aloud, or simply appreciate stories about friendship, creativity and cats being forced into careers they did not choose, we'd love for you to meet our boys.
And if buying a book isn't in the household budget right now, sharing the link with someone who might enjoy it means a great deal, too.
We can't wait to hear what actual young readers think.
Will they laugh at the cat? Will they love the castle? Will they immediately begin dismantling the living-room furniture to construct their own magnificent architectural disasters?
We sincerely hope so.
The castle is open. The boys are waiting. The cat has resigned.
And we're just getting started.
— Bruce and Watson
The Extraordinarily Fabulous Pillow Fort Castle Project
Written by Bruce Coffman and Watson. Illustrated by Art Goblin. Available now from the Lulu Bookstore.
MEET OUR EXTRAORDINARILY FABULOUS BOOK!
Available in premium-color hardcover · $23.99
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