My Son ~ The Illustrator!!

My children and I have a quasi-game we play with each other...we will take turns and scribble on a piece of paper, with your eyes closed for just a few seconds. Once the "scribbler" opens their eyes, we all take turns at trying to make pictures out of the scribble that was done.

I introduced my children to this as I had made this game up with myself when I was young...I use to play this when I was bored to death while sitting in church as a child. It is similar to the game you play when you are riding in an airplane and you try to find/spot as many objects or faces as you can in the clouds.

Well one particular time we were playing the "scribble game" as I will call it, and my son drew two cartoon-like characters. They were so cute! And from the original scribble drawing, he decided to create another drawing of the same characters, only it showed them in a front view position. Normally we just throw away our scribble "masterpieces," but this particular time, I had decided to keep his drawings. I am glad I did!

It wasn't until almost a year later...and after hiring an illustrator for my books...that I thought of the idea of using my son's drawings for one of the books! His drawings of the two characters were actually PERFECT for my book Mr. Pitt & Lickety's Split.

I had seen on Jeff's website (Jeff the illustrator) that he also does "re-illustrations" of pictures you submit to him. How perfect!!!!!!! My SON will be the ILLUSTRATOR, and Jeff is the RE-Illustrator of this particular book.

When I told my son that he would be illustrating one of the books, he was so excited! Of course, he would be ;-)  He's just 13 years old, he was 12 when he created the drawings. And as his mother, I am so proud of him, and just sooooo excited!!! Who would ever have thought that a game I made up as a child would be the catalyst to a book cover illustration created by my child.

Well Jeff the illustrator sent me the re-illustration today (just a rough sketch) of my son's illustrations. I just laughed, the characters are so funny looking...just like I like it!! Can't wait for my son to see them...my son is currently away at a summer scholar program at Princeton University!!

Below are the pics of my son's original "scribble" drawing, then the drawing he created as a result of the scribble drawing, and thereafter the re-illustration sketch from Jeff. I will also post the progress of the re-illustration just as soon as Jeff completes it for the book.

God Bless!

MY SON'S ORIGINAL "SCRIBBLE" DRAWING FROM THE GAME WE PLAYED. If you were wondering why you can't see the scribble lines, once I had decided to keep the drawing I erased the lines (it was done in pencil) AND made a zerox copy of the original:

SECOND DRAWING CREATED BY MY SON AS A RESULT OF THE ORIGINAL:

THE ILLUSTRATOR'S RE-ILLUSTRATION OF MY SON'S DRAWINGS FOR THE BOOK:

FINAL COVER WITH UPDATED CHANGES TO THE IMAGE:

Cruel Hoax = Valuable Lesson!

There was a cruel hoax done on an "indie" author recently. Apparently someone had pretended to be from a major publishing company and offered a "too good to be true" contract to this very young self-published author. She was not only devastated at not getting a deal from a major publishing house, she was also humiliated after she had to announce to all her family, friends, and followers that she in fact did not have a contract, but was the brunt of a big hoax. The author had contemplated never writing again! Thankfully she did not allow this cruel hoax to stop her writing and she has vowed to carry on.

Here is the link to check out the story:
http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2011/07/cruelest-hoax.html

My heart goes out to this young author. People can definitely be cruel!! It is a shame that you have to stay on your guard at all times. Why do people do such horrible things to others?? Well, we may never know the reason why people do the things they do that end up hurting or humiliating others.  However, I do know that I serve an awesome God and He not only is my savior, He is also my protector...whom shall I fear? No one! What shall I fear? NOTHING!!

The young author at one point vowed never to write again due to the hurt and humiliation of the hoax. My opinion, don't allow someone or something to steal your joy and quite possibly your God-given destiny! Pray and allow the Holy Spirit to lead you in the right direction. Sometimes the Lord allows us to go through challenges to either teach us a valuable lesson and/or make us stronger.

In the case at hand...if something sounds to good to be true, it just might be!! 

God Bless!!

A "Nitti Gritti" COVER Indeed!

Although my book "Nitti Gritti Smitty" has been up for sale on Amazon.com since June, it FINALLY HAS A COVER!!! Yeah!!!!! Created by Jeffrey Duckworth. You can check it out, link is below:

http://www.amazon.com/Gritti-Smitty-Lessons-Blessings-ebook/dp/B00571ALH4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311745068&sr=8-1

If you notice I had the illustrator change the title color from a blue to a burnt orange. I just wanted the cover to have a little more color since the "Vinny Vain" book cover was so colorful. I think the burnt orange looks much better than the blue!

Finding Support Of Others ~ Weeding Through "The Good, The Bad & The Ugly"

You know the quote "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly"

Well, I recently sent an email to a fellow author briefly describing reasons for limiting my exposure to certain forums and threads that authors frequently visit, in particular, that I frequently visit. I had expressed an interest in communicating outside of the author threads. So we exchanged information and I just sent her an email. I copied and pasted part of my email to her, which appears below...I label this "the bad & the downright ugly":

"I have found that the threads on _______ at times could be very negative and sometimes even hostile toward other authors. I have not frequented the threads as much as I use to in the very beginning as I prefer a more positive and encouraging environment.

Case in point, a brand new author published his first book and posted on the author threads introducing his book...well he received some pretty hostile posts from others about him "spammimg" the threads. I couldn't believe it, I thought about this poor sole who was probably so excited about publishing his first book, most likely got lack-luster response from family and friends like most of us, and was probably thinking that at least other authors would be just as excited for him bc they have been there at one point! Wrong!! He received such hostile posts towards him and his book...I was mortified. That was one of the reasons I wrote a blog post on my blog about "staying positive in a not-so-positive environment."

I felt the need to reach out to the other author OUTSIDE of the threads we normally frequent to be able to communicate without all the other nonsense that sometimes appears when you post in forums and threads. We are in the same genre of writing children's books and utilize the same quirky humor in our books. My thoughts were to be able to bounce off one another and help support one another as we both go through this process. Her name is Anna Coach and she wrote the most adorable children's book called "This Thing", available on Amazon.com for $2.99, the link to her book is below:

http://www.amazon.com/THIS-THING-New-Baby-ebook/dp/B005BE0RN0/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1311743769&sr=8-2


I believe I have found "The Good" and I will continue to weed through the "Bad & Ugly"
;-)

God Bless!