Happy 2008!

OK, so it's a "Happy New Year" about 30 days late...still.  It's not February yet.

I thought this would be a good time to reflect back on 2007.  The year in brief:

• January:  2007 began with a push to finish Scrumptious Yum-o-licious Pie.  I already had the story, and I was hard at work on the dummy sketches and sample color art.
  
• February:  I am not the quickest draw (pun intended), so the dummy art took for-ev-er. 
• March:  The sketches and sample finishes were completed, and off the dummy went to Andrea Davis Pinkney at Scholastic, who had expressed an interest in my work. 
• April:  Then I waited. 
• May:  And waited some more.  I sent a gentle e-minder inquiring about the status of my submission, and heard nothing.  At least one kinda good surprise this month:  some dude bought a t-shirt design I had submitted to Threadless.  But then he turned into the disappearing client.  (Note to self:  do not ever, ever give your stuff away without a contract!  I did get paid, eventually, but the client never came through with a signed legal document or sample t-shirts as he'd promised.  GRRR!)
  
• June:  Finally, I heard back from Andrea about my book.  And what I heard was a big, fat, "NO."  Actually, she wrote me a very warm personal letter and encouraged me to send my "promising" work elsewhere. 
  
• July:  And I did:  I sent it to agents.  Well, not in July.  I spent a fair bit of July just researching agents and compiling a target list.  I also participated in a group show at the Chemers Gallery with the Westside Illustrators.  And I finished up new portfolio pieces in anticipation of the SCBWI conference.
• August:  The conference came and went.  Arthur Levine (a.k.a. Mr. Harry Potter--his imprint at scholastic publishes the series) loved my portfolio!  I put five agent submission packages in the mail and sent two e-queries.
  
• September:  Lo and behold, I got an offer of representation!  I signed with Steven Chudney of The Chudney Agency. 
• October:  Scrumptious Yum-o-licious Pie became The Birthday Pie Surprise, complete with updated color art and a new cover sketch.  I produced multiple copies of the new dummy.
  
• November:  Steven sent it to four editors at four houses:  Knopf/Random House, Simon & Schuster, Candlewick, and Penguin/Putnam.  We got our first rejection, from Knopf.  I started working on my "intro" Horace and Amelia story.  And I got an intriguing nibble of interest from a woman who wanted me to illustrate some board books.  The deal fell through, but I have a fan out there!
• December:  We got a rejection from Putnam.  Then I struggled and struggled and struggled with Horace and Amelia.  How complicated can a gorilla and a monkey be???

So that was 2007 in a nutshell.  All in all, a pretty good year.  Except for those damn monkeys.

2008 is off to a great start, too.  (Well, OK, one bit of bad news to get out of the way:  another rejection came this month, from Simon & Schuster...but back to the good news.)  For one thing, I finally brought some resolution to the first Horace and Amelia story.  OK, maybe not resolution; I sent Steven three different versions!  I'm still waiting for his comments.

I'm also hoping to get lots of comments from the writers' group that I joined this month.  I posted my first story (a new one!) for critique on our group's website today; the first meeting I'll attend is this Saturday.  The group includes my friend Edith, who writes YA fiction, and two other women that I don't yet know (one who writes YA and one who writes YA and picture books, I think).  I'm the only illustrator so far.

In other January news, I started going to figure drawing at the YWCA in Santa Monica every Tuesday.  It's a standard setup, with 5-15 minute poses.  It's really fun to get back to life drawing, even if I'm a bit rusty (the last time I drew from the live model, I was at RISD).  It's important to keep figure drawing, too.  There are few forms as complex or interesting as the human form, and drawing it keeps your eyes and hands in shape.  What else?  I did do some experimental sketches and small illustrations this month, and I'm hoping to develop some of them further.  Sorry, no scans yet on any of this stuff.  My scanner is being finicky and difficult tonight.

Looking ahead to February, I want to (finally. please.) get it together to send in a cover proposal to New Moon Magazine.  I want to make progress on Horace and Amelia, as per Steven's comments (whatever they may be), and I want to play with my new Adobe CS3 Design Premium software!  Looks like there will be some really cool new tools to play with in Photoshop and Illustrator, and of course there will be Dreamweaver and Flash to dig into.  I don't know how long it will take me to learn Dreamweaver, but I want to use it to rehaul my website within the next six months to a year (hopefully sooner, but you never know with this software...I could get overwhelmed).  Well, that's it for now.  Happy 2008, Happy Super Tuesday, and happy trails!

Comments

[Stephanie]

I had a former co-worker who also is a media production specialist teach me Dreamweaver and I found it very user-friendly. This was several years ago but I still have my copy of Dreamweaver MX. If I ever actually finish and sell a manuscript, I'm hoping what he taught me will help me design my own author site. Have fun with the software!