Month: January 2017

Between Worlds

 

Land of Imagination, 12 x 16, Watercolor, $75

I’m getting paintings together for an exhibition at the Spiral Press Cafe in Manchester, Vermont, and, I’ll be honest, I was having trouble getting into the mood to paint landscapes.  The glow of Iceland has receded — a symptom of having read too many political posts in the intervening months, and the Vermont landscape isn’t turning me on the same way it normally does at this time of year. 

Wrapped up in finishing and publishing my first illustrated book, I was much more hungry to get to work on the illustrations for the next one. That’s when my favorite Élly — Élly’s the star of my next book, The Truth about Trolls, tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me that she needs at least one place to live in during the course of her story, and would I mind getting inspired so she can have some place magical to look at? 

So I looked at my car window and found some magic yesterday. Then I remembered some magic we’d seen in Iceland and in Michigan.  Now it seems I’m seeing magic everywhere.

Trolls are surprisingly logical.

Prints can be purchased on Etsy here.

“A is for All-Nighter” – Kindle Edition Now On Amazon.

Ironically, in an age when digital publishing makes everything easier and faster, getting the Kindle edition of this book out was the toughest part of being a new publisher.  Because “A is for All-Nighter” is illustrated on every page, converting it to an iPad-friendly format was not as straightforward as I would have thought. In publishing, as in life, however, there is little you can’t teach yourself with some persistent googling.

The Kindle edition of “A is for All-Nighter” is  $1.99 or $.99 if you already purchased the print edition on Amazon. 

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Resolutions are Made to not be Made

So I made a new resolution this year to not make any over the top resolutions. It’s an adjustment from my usual habit of promising myself that, somehow, I will eat no carbs or go oil-free vegan and run every single day because January first will cast a magic aura of average human willpower that I have somehow missed all of the last 40-odd January firsts and seconds and thirds and so on.

So this year, I’m resolving to pick the battles that matter — keeping the kids on track, keeping the house from falling down around our ears, keeping my sanity — and that I have a teeny chance of winning (well, all except for that sanity part).  The diets, the supermodel exercise routines are going by the wayside in favor of something more sustainable – moderation.

(repost of a cartoon from 2015)