Insomnia Zombie

This is Ted.

I drew him on my napkin at Dino’s Restaurant in Latrobe, PA.

He says “hi.”

Here’s that jack-o-lantern sketch updated to fit the format of the book. I’m not telling what the title of the illustration is because that’s also the gag line.

And we all need to do our gagging on cue.

AnnaLaura Cantone

I first came across AnnaLaura Cantone’s illustrations a while back as I flipped through a Houghton Mifflin Kids catalog and found Prudence and Moxie by Deborah Noyes. The combination of the illustrator’s looseness and her confidence in her mark making made me rip the page out to explore her work a little further.

Of course the page went in the pile, as pages tend to do. I finally found that catalog page as I was cleaning our office space last week, and I took a minute to see if I could find more of her illustrations.

Her Web site looks as though it’s under construction, but the animations that run on the front page are awfully cute. After some more searching I found a LiveJournal page with a ton of her illustrations, but no real explanation of what I was looking at (not in English, anyway) except for the few self-explanatory book jacket images.

I’ve bookmarked the blog page and will be returning periodically when I need to remember where I want my illustrations to be. Loose. Confident. Quirky without apologies. Definitely worth another look.

(The trail photo is from September, taken while riding my bike on the Great Allegheny Passage.)

I’m already tired of the snow. And the winter. And the scraping of the car every time I want to go somewhere. And the gloves that you can’t use to do anything except keep warm. And it really isn’t even winter yet for another two days.

I’m not sure I can survive three more months of this! Steaming cups of hot chocolate, now that’s what I’m talking about.

We’ve had one day this month above freezing, so until that day the snow just kept hanging around with no way to melt away.

Oh, and the day it was above freezing? Yeah, all day freezing rain. It was the front edge of a nasty storm that dropped another seven + inches of snow on us overnight (please see ruler picture to the right). So the freezing rain froze, and the snow piled beautifully on top. No, seriously, it was beautiful. (Just take a look at the ruler picture. The trees? In the background? See? I told you.)

Maybe I didn’t appreciate the other seasons enough. Maybe I complained about the humidity one time too many. Maybe I sat at my computer too much instead of going outside.

Why can’t spring and fall last as long as summer and winter?

On the bright side: After Tuesday, the days start getting longer, and then winter will have to hit the road.

Tuesday.

6:38 PM.

I had originally drawn this sketch with the intention of turning it into a greeting card, but instead it’s spent the last few years collecting dust on my hard drive.

“But,” thought I, “if things were rearranged around a bit to fit the format of the book…”

I’ll post the new sketch as soon as it happens.

I think I’m finally finished with this one; I really don’t know what else I can do with her.

I’m about to send her off to Tomie dePaola, and we’ll find out on January 3 what he thinks.

Here’s the latest on Heidi.

The background texture is a combination of a watercolor texture I painted a while back and a photo of my concrete driveway. I tinted the watercolor a reddish tan to help with the steampunk look, and the driveway layer I left as gray.

Starting this year, SCBWI is taking over sponsorship of the Tomie dePaola Award, although Tomie will still be choosing the winner. I’m not expecting much of a look from Mr. dePaola, but it does give me a subject for my next postcard.

They’re looking for an illustration based on the opening paragraphs of the classic Heidi by Johanna Spyri. Tomie claims he wants to see “an image, a style, a vision that I’ve never seen before!” (exclamation mark included) I’m having my doubts that that’s entirely true, but I’m going to enter anyway.

This is the sketch I came up with:

I wanted to add a little bit of my own twist to the illustration by giving her a steampunk attitude. The timeframe would be right-ish, and the goggles were especially helpful for a reflection of the Alps.

Addendum: As an aside, here are the scrap paper thumbnail ideas I was playing with. I guess technically I went with #2.

Right.

So my MacBook belched up a huge hair ball, and decided now would be a good time to never, ever allow itself to go through that whole “Start Up” bull again. After some pleading on my part, it decided to let me sneak in through the Safe start mode, so I backed up anything I could get and could possibly ever use on a computer again.

That’s when it realized I was eating it’s brains.

It complained my OS reinstall DVD had fingerprints. (It didn’t.) Then it ate said OS reinstall DVD and laughed, “Neener, neener.” Then it totally deleted the idea that it had ever even contained a hard drive to boot from.

All this in less than 24 hours.

So.

I called our local Apple Store last evening, and the nice young man (Benji) scheduled me for an appointment this morning. And, well, my laptop isn’t all that new. O.K. Fine, it’s like four years old now. So, so totally out of warranty.

Me: Crap. I’m so not going to be able to afford this…

Walked into the Apple store this morning and, after drooling over the iPads, I finally got a sit-down with my own personal Genius Bartender, Mike.

Mike: I don’t know if we still have Tiger on our Network. Would you like to upgrade to Leopard?

(Me: Crap. I’m so not going to be able to afford this…)

Mike: (Plugs in magical “Network.” Plugs in computer. Ejects DVD–huh?) This should take about five minutes.

(15 minutes later…)

Mike: O.K. You’re good to go.

Seriously? I sat as still as I possibly could for a few seconds so as not to draw attention to myself and the fact that I hadn’t paid them. For anything.

I closed the lid and looked around to see if anyone was watching me leaving with a new operating system on a newly serviced laptop.

Apple employee as I snuck out the door: Have a nice day!

But the no-longer-under-warranty bill. The Tiger-to-Leopard upgrade. Do they know where I live? Are they going to accost me at a later date? When I’m sleeping?

I’m thinking I don’t think so. I’m thinking this is what I paid for when I bought the thing in the first place. I’m thinking Steve Jobs must have figured out how to take a flying leap over his old buddy Bill.

Thank you, Mr. Jobs. That’s not sarcasm. I really mean it this time. I will recommend your stuff. Apple products for everyone!

P.S. And thanks for giving me iWork (which I paid for the last time) for free in Leopard.
P.P.S. And thanks extra for employing Mike who resuscitated my little digital corner of the world.

Now to reinstall absolutely everything.

Fresh from (my part) of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators’ pre-conference writer’s critique, and my little brain is whipped. These guys are good, and it was enough to make me want to take a long step back from the book.

Maybe into the next state.

I read three of the short stories from the book, and the reaction was mixed. I would have liked a funner, maybe more excited response, but there you go. I got some helpful feedback and ideas on how to make things work, but I guess I was hoping I was further along in the writing process than maybe I actually am. Like some of that stuff I had written was already working.

Bummer.

But their ideas were good.

No. They were great.

Which makes me feel just a wee bit more inadequate as a writer than I had felt even before I sat down at their table.

Ugh!

I ate a lot when I got back to my room is all I’m saying. And to make myself feel even more inadequate, I think I’ll read a little Neil Gaiman Smoke and Mirrors to put myself to sleep.