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Join the WISHWEAVER Street Team on Facebook!
Street Teams are a way for authors to involve their followers and fans in the process of promoting their books. In return, there are lots of prizes that will be given away for participating!
- Books. Books. Books., Giveaway, Illustration, Published Work, Uncategorized, What I am Working On, Writing
“Theodore and the Enchanted Bookstore” Book 3 is Out! Another BIG ANNOUNCEMENT! + Giveaway!
BOOK THREE IS OUT!!! Woot!
If you’ve been following me for awhile, you know that I am a writer and an illustrator. Theodore and the Enchanted Bookstore has been a wonderful series to illustrate for author, K. Kibbee. She has truly painted a magnificent place, along with the characters who live inside it, for me to illustrate.
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The Waiting Game Begins: Query Writing (Part Three)
I got a wonderful response from my last blog post about Picture Book Writer Musings: Cutting Characters, so I thought I’d do another post for those interested in becoming a writer, or for those curious on how books get from the writer’s hands to the shelves.
Spoiler Alert: It’s not as easy as it looks!
When I’m asked what I do, as in what job I do, saying that I’m a writer and an illustrator brings about curiosity. The first question asked, like clockwork, is “Anything I would know?” but once I’ve made my way through that one, the other questions follow:
What do you write? How did you know you wanted to be a writer? What are your stories about? What do you do after you’ve written a book? Do you go online and sell it yourself? Do you find a publisher?
Those are just a few of the questions I’ve been asked in the past eight years since beginning my writing journey. The first three are easy ones. Those are related to my personal journey of becoming a writer, to which you can find out more about that
here
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Get to Know Me!
#Boostmybio for #PitchWars 2018
I love the idea of magic and whimsy both of which led to my story, Wishweaver.
There was a day last summer, when a neighbor came by, and she noticed a spiderweb with several milkweed wisps caught in its sticky threads. She said, “She’s catching wishes.” Little did my neighbor know at the time, but she’d inadvertently sparked a story inside me, and it would percolate for a year before getting to where it is today. A Middle Grade Fantasy story called, Wishweaver.
My Book
WISHWEAVER
In the forests of Weyburn, there has always been a Wishweaver—a spider with the magic to grant wishes—but for many years, wishes have gone unanswered, and Whimsy Spider is determined to find out why.
Whimsy has questions, and lots of them: What were they continuing on the Wishweaver traditions for, if there was no Wishweaver? What really happened to the last one? Why hasn’t a new one come to take the other’s place?
With the help of her milkweed wisp friend, Flit, Whimsy will go on a journey to the old Wishweaver Oak in search of answers, but the answers she seeks are buried deep in Weyburn’s past and she’ll have to face her fears in order to find out how to change their wish-less future.
About Me
I spent some of my best career years as a Library Clerk in the Santa Clara County Library system. This brought every possible book to my fingertips and I grew an even larger appreciation for the art of storytelling. With the support of my colleagues, I continued editing Adeline and the Mystic Berries and even participated in
NanoWriMo 2015
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Picture Book in the Works! Process of Making a Book Dummy – Wishweaver
A New Picture Book is in the Works!
I’ve written a new picture book and Book Dummy #5 is now complete.
You may remember that I wrote a picture book late last year called Benny the Bookworm which is an alliterative story in which: Benny LOVES books, but being a worm has its disadvantages. He befriends Beatrice the butterfly to help with the heavy lifting but when Benny pushes Beatrice away to keep the books all to himself, he’ll end up alone in a bind without her there to help him.
While writing Benny’s story, I always had another alliterative tale in mind that could go along in a series. This time around, it was to be about an arachnid. A widow spider named Whimsy.
It was known around Weyburn that should you be in want of a wish, Whimsy was the widow who held them.
And so Whimsy’s story begins.
The name Wishweaver came easily to me, for that is precisely what Whimsy is. I was in love with Whimsy and her story from the minute she made her way into my imagination. So, now her tale has been told in the pages of my book dummy equipped with all of my illustration ideas that could be seen throughout the book (should future art directors so desire).
The process of creating a picture book for me starts with writing the manuscript. Then once I have that fleshed out enough, I take the words and begin separating the possible page spreads and deciding if the story fits better as a 32-page or 40-page picture book. So far, 40-page has been where my stories have ended up. I attribute that to the fact that I love illustrating and I want to show so much through pictures, 32-pages just doesn’t seem like enough!
Next up, comes rough…and I mean rough…sketches of each spread. “The messier the better!” is what my instructor from Storyteller Academy, Arree Chung, always says. Though the perfectionist in me finds this difficult, with Wishweaver I gave it a try. As you can see, Whimsy’s look changes from the rough sketches to the more polished illustrations but many of the spread ideas have stayed the same.
Once I finished up all the polished spreads for the book dummy, I went back just yesterday and completed the spreads for the end pages, title/dedication page, and the cover art.
The process for those is the same: rough sketch to start, pick a favorite, draw a more polished final sketch, and ink it in.
(This next paragraph is a bit technical with the process for making the book dummy hard copy, so you can skip ahead should you wish!)
Once all the sketches are finished and I’ve compiled a PDF through Genius Scan (amazing app to take photos of images/documents and save them together as a PDF), I open the file in Photoshop and overlay the text on each spread. Once everything looks good and all separate images are saved as .PSD and .JPEG files, I go back into Genius Scan and re-upload the documents from Dropbox into a new PDF of the completed dummy. I can email the file to myself and print it off and then tape it all together to make the book dummy as you see it in the pictures above and below.
This story is with my amazing critique group that I found through
Storyteller Academy
- Adeline and the Mystic Berries, Beta Readers, Books. Books. Books., Editing, Querying, What I am Working On, Writing
Be a Beta Reader for Adeline and the Mystic Berries!
It’s finally happening!
I’m just about finished editing Adeline and the Mystic Berries and this time around I want your thoughts before I continue querying agents with the manuscript. I am looking for beta readers, so here I am asking for your help!
But what does a beta reader do?
Rather than tell you myself, I thought I’d jump on over to Dan’s blog and tell you what he has to say. I couldn’t have said it any better myself:
What’s a beta reader?
Well, it’s kind of a big deal. You get to read the whole book before everybody else and then tell me what you think. Also, you get to be one of the first people to post an honest review on Amazon.
I did a few posts on being a beta, so you can read more if you click HERE to learn more, but basically you’ll…
- Read the finished story.
- Give the author (me) feedback by email
- Post a review on Amazon when the book releases.
That’s about it.
What is Adeline and the Mystic Berries about?
If you haven’t read my other posts about this story, that’s okay. Here is the rundown. This is a Middle Grade (ages 9-12) Fantasy story about a ten-year-old girl named Adeline.
Adeline Picot has never seen color. She is an artist whose drawings of the world are breathtaking to any who see them, but to her they’re all the same: black and white. Her imagination and innate talent for sewing are stitched through every hand-me-down she owns, now adorned with crow’s feathers, buttons, and secret pockets. In the impoverished village of Asher, Adeline’s talents are useless, for she has the unfortunate destiny of becoming a sock maker like the rest of her family.
Before taking up her trade, Adeline will finish schooling in Evanox, where being poor with an eclectic taste in fashion attracts the negative attentions of her teacher and some fellow students. One day, when the bullying escalates, Adeline escapes into the Forgotten Forest.
There she will happen upon the last bit of magic kept well hidden through the centuries. There she will discover that her world has not always been colorless, and she may be the only one who can bring it all back.
Still Interested? I hope so!
If you would like to know more about Adeline and her colorless world, send me a message via my
Contact Me
- Adeline and the Mystic Berries, Author/Writer Interviews, Books. Books. Books., Giveaway, Illustration, Interviews, Misc. Fun!, Uncategorized, What I am Working On, YouTube Video
What I’ve Been Working On & GIVEAWAY!!!
My latest YouTube video is up and this time it’s all about what I’ve been up to the past few months as well as an upcoming GIVEAWAY! I just received over 1,000 subscribers on my Ink & Stitches YouTube Channel and it’s time to celebrate!!!
I only have one question for you before the giveaway is up and running…
Would you rather an art print of one of my
finished illustrations, or an amigurumi
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Swatch: The Girl Who Loved Color – Amazing Book and New Tattoo!
I fell in love with “Swatch: The Girl Who Loved Color” the moment I checked it out from the library and read it to my son. Being an illustrator, the concept of a girl named, Swatch, who tries to tame color by collecting each one in a jar, spoke volumes to me.
All of my own artwork is filled with vibrant colors. I can imagine collecting them myself, just like Swatch did across the pages of this magnificent story.
The fact that Swatch realizes color can’t be tamed reminds me that sometimes, even in my own artwork, letting go and not trying to control everything is part of what makes it beautiful. This story’s amazing author/illustrator, Julia Denos, has a style of illustration that I completely admire.
Her colors are wild! They are splashed across every page, swirling and mixing, and creating their own masterpiece.
It is her colors very wildness that I find beautiful.
After reading this book over-and-over again, and never tiring of its words, I knew that this story would always hold a message within it that I would cherish. Being a lover of body art as well, I felt confident that Julia’s work would always be something I would look at and admire.
There is a part of the book that always gives me chills toward the end; one that I look forward to reaching each time I read the story.
**Disclaimer** This post will give away parts of the story that you may want to discover and read for yourself. You can stop here, but I would love for you to continue to see how I made Julia Denos’ work into a permanent momento for me.
When Swatch realizes that color cannot be tamed, she is riding on the back of Yellowest Yellow and she calls to the other colors (she has back home trapped in jars) and they come to her. The last line of the book is “Together they made a masterpiece.”
Not only did I want the image of Swatch riding Yellowest Yellow on my arm along with all the colors, I wanted that line of the story added in as well.
In the image, Yellow’s face is missing. Julia had included it in a prior image of him roaring and so I started trying to come up with my own face to add to the front of the tattoo. It couldn’t very well be headless if I was to add it to my body.
At first I went too dragon/fantasy style with it. My husband immediately reminded me that I wanted to stay true to Julia’s work and this, though it was nice, was far from her style.
After agreeing, I tried again. I drew an image that was more catlike, but still, it wasn’t quite right.
On the third attempt, I had exactly what I wanted. The new face for Yellowest Yellow was based off of what Julia had already come up with in the prior pages, and it reminded me of my Maine Coon cat, Mowgli, as well. We just recently lost him to illness, so this tattoo ended up becoming a bit of a tribute to him.
Josh in a spot that he doesn’t normally go. It’s becoming a new fav!
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Harry Potter-Themed Baby Shower! Part Two
What would a Harry Potter-themed Baby Shower be without decorations?
After I had finished all of the prizes for the “Adopt A Magical Creature” table (See
Part One for what Harry Potter creatures I made and where to get the DIY patterns/instructions
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Author and Illustrator Finally Meet!
Theodore and the Enchanted Bookstore series author, K. Kibbee, and illustrator, J.H. Winter, finally meet!