The Next Big Thing: Global Blog Tour

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcoooooooooooome to the Global Blog Tour! Big thanks to mighty fine Paul Schmid for tapping me as next in the tour. Paul is a Sendak fellow and a jolly good fellow all around. His latest title comes out in June, until then you'll want to take a gander at the books Paul already has out.

Questions!

1) What is the working title of your next book?
HOW TO NEGOTIATE EVERYTHING by David Spellman and Lisa Lutz, illustrated by me. It comes out May 21st—that's tomorrow! Holy mackerel!

2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
Lisa is the author of the hilarious SPELLMAN FILES series (now optioned for TV and everything!) which chronicles the lives of a dysfunctional family of private investigators who spend more time investigating each other than they do their cases. In the fifth book, TRAIL OF THE SPELLMANS, it's your standard case of sibling brainwashing gone awry, and it's all because of HOW TO NEGOTIATE EVERYTHING.

3) What genre does your book fall under?
This is a picture book slash self-help slash business slash reference book.

4) What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
Lisa probably has better answers for this as she's done some time in Hollywood, but I would love Don Rickles to play Sammy.

Callista Gingrich was my inspiration while drawing the turtle character, as long as I can't be sued for libel for mentioning this.

5) What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
From the publisher's website: There’ll be no more hearing “no” after this clever picture book teaches you how to get everything you want.

6) Who is publishing your book?
The totally awesome Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers with the world's most dapper publisher, the always ace Justin Chanda. Justin's casual wear inspired Sammy's outfits in the book, especially the cover. Here's a picture of Justin in his pajamas:

7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Lisa says it took her a few hours, total, to write the first-draft-to-final manuscript. Whenever she repeats this fact I have to go lie down in the dark, except then I remember that Lisa is a genius and has been writing for years and I turn a lamp on and have some sangria. It took me months and months to illustrate HTNE.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
It's a pretty silly book, maybe if Machiavelli had written a book when he was a toddler?

9) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The first few spreads of the picture book are actually in TRAIL OF THE SPELLMANS, Lisa originally had David Spellman write the picture book for his younger sister and instead of describing the art for it, she thought it would be fun to show illustrated pages within the novel. I was lucky enough to do the art in TRAIL OF THE SPELLMANS for the fake picture book, and because David has no known artistic talents, an illustrator needed to be invented. So then it was necessary for me to become a fictional character and be mentioned as David's ex-girlfriend in college. Why was this necessary that I was an ex and not simply a family friend? I think Lisa was inspired for me to be dumped fictionally? I'm not allowed to use the word "meta," but if I was, I would use it somewhere here.

10) What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?
The names of the editors and art director are hidden in the art. A lot of puns are hidden in the art, or maybe hidden is the wrong word, there are blatant puns. Lisa and I met after I won a contest for Spellmans fans. The prize was to fly down to San Francisco for the weekend and spend time with her and her former employer (real private investigators!) learning how to be a PI. Lisa was teaching me how to follow someone covertly from a few blocks away. But then I walked by a candy store and of course, had to go in. Which ruined the tail but (I think) cemented our friendship. I'm so happy to have worked on a project with one of my favorite authors and people. Thanks to Lisa Lutz for writing this book!

That's it! Thanks, Paul and the Global Tour gang!


AND NOW... I have the great honor of passing this Global Blog Tour onto a person who is NOT made of 98% water but 99% sunshine, author/illustrator BETHANY BARTON!

Goofing around with another language

I took Russian in junior high through college because I wanted to be a spy. I'm not saying that didn't not work out... But currently I can't speak Russian to save my life, or the life of a fellow covert operator. Now at best I can look up words on the internet, and a new, favorite Russian word is DONKEY, which in Russian is pronounced ah-ss-yol. These bodies are roughly piroshky shaped.

My favorite conference of the year, and you can still register!

Still time to register for a simply smashing conference! Mac Barnett! Sophie Blackall (who at this very moment is ziplining with a baby sloth in an exotic locale)! Robin LafreakingFevers! Kelly Milner Halls! And those are just the keynoters. We'll also have art directors, editors, agents, a magic donkey, cotton candy machines, lasers, gyroscopes, jet packs, jet puffed marshmallows, the original Declaration of Independence, pygmy goats... How can you resist all this? REGISTER HERE, NOW, DON'T DELAY!

The conference is April 20-21 in Redmond, there are loads of extras you can sign up for still, too!

Sign up while there are still a few spots left, this is sure to be

 another fantastic event with amazing faculty.

When Life Gives You Lemons Head to the Big Apple?

The past few months have been pretty rough personally, very lemon-y, and I'm really looking forward to taking a break soon in my favorite city.

Despite the lemons, there is a lot of lemonade coming up in the work department—I'm thrilled to be illustrating BLANKETY BLANK for Parragon Books (based in my second favorite city, Bath!)! The book may even be out at the end of this year, I'm not exactly sure, and may only be available in the UK—but if you know me, you know my feelings on the United Kingdom and how completely amazing this is.

**03/27/13
Pics of BLANKETY BLANK have been removed! Some of the blanketyblank are in the witness protection program
**

Next week I will see a favorite author and friend, the disarmingly alarming and charming Lisa Lutz. We'll get to see some people at Simon & Schuster to talk about our book, HOW TO NEGOTIATE EVERYTHING !

I am soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo excited for this book to come out, May 21 seems ages away, and there are so many things I want to do to spread the word about it. Painting defenseless animals up to look like the cover is my number one thought right now. Hiding review pages in food truck hot dogs or tacos is my other thought.

This is one of my favorite spreads from HTNE. Tell me, what's more fun than drawing salad?

And maybe more good book news in the next few weeks!

Will end with a few pages from my sketchbook from this time last year when I also went to New York for some vacation. I would probably repeat all my activities on those pages minus the stomach flu part and the feeling like a giant blimp part. Bon voyage!

Julie Andreeeeeeeeews!!

Blogging at the SCBWI Conference blog this weekend, and Julie Andrews is going to be in the building today. We are not allowed to take pictures of her, but we are allowed to sniff her.

Happy Holidays Already! Sale on Etsy Right Now:

I never know what day it is, so my Cocoastomp CYBER MONDAY ETSY started yesterday!

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Use coupon code CYBERMON12 anytime between 11/23/12 and 11/26/12 to receive 20% off your order! 

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Also for the month of November use coupon code NOV12FREESHIP for all domestic orders, too.

**********SANDY DONATIONS**********

I ♥ NY & NJ and it is the season to give back! With every purchase made from now until December 31st, a portion of the proceeds will be donated to OccupySandy.

Oodles of holiday cards, prints, kitchen-y things, kid-friendly art, and more up soon at Cocoastomp on Etsy.

Happy Halloween! Free Halloween Card for You!

I was playing around with ink last week, thanks to being all fired up and inspired by the incredibly talented Raina Telgemeier. I used some nibs, but Raina uses a brush, and talk about mastering your medium! I don't know how she does it, but even her line work with a cheap jumbo marker has a fluid, brushy, lyrical quality.

Raina drawing on the back of some wrapping paper, it still looks like a million bucks!

As you can tell, I'm a huge fan of her work, and you should be, too! If you haven't read SMILE or DRAMA or her adaptations of Ann Martin's Babysitters series, go out and buy them pronto.

The inking I did:

Above are the beginning illustrations of the Pease Porridge nursery rhyme. I wanted these three little scenes to be in some fun, card format, and was looking at all sorts of pop-ups, but man, most pop-ups are expensive to make and mail. This isn't really a pop-up, but it will sit-up, and it mails flat in an A9 envelope which takes standard postage. To make the final artwork you see in the pdf below, I used the scanning and sandwich method of ink plus digital color as outlined in Matt Madden and Jessica Abel's two DRAWING WORDS & WRITING PICTURES and MASTERING COMICS. I love those books!

If you, too, would like to make a wee Halloween carousel card, this is my cheap, tawdry, home-printer ready version of those lovely old carousel books.

My little Halloween scenes stand up on their own two feet... or pages. 

A real carousel book of Sleeping Beauty from the Smithsonian website.

Make your own! Download the pdf here. 

The first scene

If you have cardstock, you can print on that double-sided, but if you only have regular copy paper, you'll want to glue these onto a heavier piece of construction paper or something. If printing on cardstock and doing the double-sided printing yourself, be sure you put the top of the first side back in correctly so it prints back to back with the top of the second side. You can cut off a 1/4 inch of margin on all outer sides of the paper once they are printed.

The second scene standing up, and a chance to show off my eyeball lights

The third scene

The interior cut marks on the pdf are a little shy of what you'll need depending on what sort of paper you print on, you can snip the teensiest bit more and test if the pieces lock into place correctly.

The last scene is for you! With space to write a name, or your greeting to a friend! In this case, my dog.

Happy Halloween, everybody! 

I will leave you with spooky air plants which look great with eyeball lights: