What Next? 2

The national economy is not so good - really not so good on an extremely local level. Like I don't know how I'm going to gas up the car next week with the prices rising so fast. To that end I have been getting a bit more creative with my marketing efforts. Besides all the usual sending out this, snooping around that, knocking underneath things with a stick to see what dashes out, I am also putting together classes for a few local community arts centers in the fall. My main focus is going to be sequential art for teens - that means comics! Fun! Challenging! Intimidating! More on that later.

What next?

I seem to be at a bit of a crossroads. All my picture book obligations have been met. OM had been the pivot in my life for seven months and is now over. I have submitted my Halloween story and that means it is done (for the time being). Work is slow (more on that later...). With nothing to demand my time or attention I am now feeling obligated to get back into a shelved picture book project.

I finished a first draft back in September and it went through critiques in my Goalies with a bunch of helpful ideas. This project is different from the last though. In the past I wrote a draft, revised, expanded, and polished it before ever turning the least bit of attention to the art. With the manuscript done I looked at it for the first time as an artist and it was fresh again to me - it worked. But like children, every story is different and this one is demanding a different approach for me. I need to know who my characters are before I write their story so I've been scribbling here and there (on a long bus ride with my daughter's fifth grade school trip to DC, at the baseball field while my kids practice). I believe I am finally beginning to know these characters, sisters forced to walk home from school together, and they are coming alive for me.

My design approach is different for this as well, and I hoped for a fresher drawing style but I seem to draw the way I draw. But more ideas are coming as a noodle it out and I am hoping that this time I will let the characters dictate where it goes.

Tag, You're It

I've been tagged with an interesting meme by Elizabeth Dulemba. I am to pick up the book very most nearest to me, open it to page 123, jump to sentence #5 and post the next three sentences.

"The idea for Top Ten Uses for an Unwor[n] Prom Dress came to Ferarro after she spotted a book along the lines of 101 Things to Do with a Bridesmaid's Dress. "I wondered, 'Are there as many things to do with a prom dress? And what if it's an unworn prom dress."

This is from a First Books interview of Tina Ferraro about her book, Top Ten Uses for an Unworn Prom Dress by Alice Pope in the 2008 Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market. Interesting, huh? So why is this book the closest to me? Because I am sending out postcards to drum up some work and am gleaning it for contact persons and addresses. And because I am submitting a dummy package and am carefully sifting through the pages like it is some sort of Wish Book. Should I go for that cool new imprint or the reliable old house? So hard to choose!

I am tagging the bloggers in my fantastic Goalies group:
Christy Evers
Ian Sands
Janelle Bitikofer
Kathy Jacoby
Carol McGarrahan

Go forth and tag!

...Another Post

...and the recent work. I've been working on a story for about a year and finally have all the elements completed to begin submitting it to publishers. The subject matter is a midnight Halloween Trick or Treat tale (in the Victorian era, how's that for fun?), but there is no way I can push the watercolor to do what I want for this project. Hence the new medium. I did an acrylic cover painting and didn't love the finished result, especially the way it scans and the color dies, dies , dies. A more reflective and transparent medium is always going to give a more vivid scan. But I persevered, did another painting and this one has better color and a better design than the first - so there you go. I could do a few more before I call it quits but for now I need to move this one on out!

A sketch from an interior spread.

And many thanks for the encouragement given in my previous post Help Me. Sometimes that's all it takes; that and a couple gallons of dogged determination.

News and Views

So, a quick update on what's been going on in my little world.

My crit group, the Goalies, will be hosting another of our fabulous Schmoozes this coming Sunday at 3:00 at Quail Ridge Books and Music. We are hosting guest speaker Frances O'Roark Dowell, the award winning author of Dovey Coe, Chicken Boy, the Secret Language of Girls (a favorite of mine), the her latest Shooting the Moon. She will talk to us about Things She Didn't Know She Didn't Know about writing for the children's market. She is a wonderfully warm speaker and I want to invite each and every one of you to swing on by. This is free and open to the public, Frances will sign her books, plus free food!

My author/illustrated book ABC Safari has been included in the Bank Street College of Education's The Best Children's Books of the Year! I have another title coming out with Sylvan Dell Publishing very soon. This is the third in the series of wacky picture books focusing on math concepts by author Doris Fisher and Dani Sneed.

My Odyssey of the Mind season is over. Both my teams did fantastically well at the state tournament but fell short of a spot at World Finals.

I've been painting with acrylics lately but that's the subject of Another Post...