Every dog has his day...

Every dog has his day... even me! Now what should happen the other day but the UPS truck stops by and drops off a mysterious package.

And what's in this mysterious package? Mysterious and mysteriouser it gets as I open it up. First I was thinking its a bunch of corrections to a project I'm working on. But instead I see it's from Highlights for Children, but I wasn't expecting anything from them. And Lo & Behold... there's a fancy box inside, not just filled with paperwork... but in fact there's a silver plate with engraving on it! WHAT?!! Amazment and confusion take over as I try to figure out what it might be.

Turns out it's a brushed steel plate with my name engraved on it as 'Illustrator of the Month' for my Squealy Scholar artwork that I recently did (and posted about in the last post)! Imagine that! Me... a prizewinner! LOL! I have to say, my first reaction to all this was mostly embarrassment and it all made me want to run and hide.

But now I'm thinking it was actually nice to get some kind of silly little plaque so I can at least say I won something during the course of my long and prize-free career. Anyhow... no further congratulations required.

My book 'One Smart Cookie' was officially released yesterday. Go Cookie! I had a party all by myself. I think being one of the distant shut in creative vendors in the publishing industry is almost like being invisible lots of times. I don't think wanting to be recognized out of the invisibility is about ego at all. It's just about being recognized in terms of no longer being invisible. I mean if you're trying to make a living selling art and ideas, it's helpful to be able to have a little visibility... just so you can punch your timecard at least.

I keep planning to do some posts about Cookie... but I keep putting it off. I was thrilled to discover www.jacketflap.com the other day. What a great resource for having most all of the publishing world all in one site! Now maybe more than 6 people will stop by my blog.



I finally broke through and wrote out a great little story this morning that had been a simmering for a year or more in bits. I think writing works like that for me. All the parts are there, unconnected mostly... but it requires some alignment of the stars to coalesce it all into a written form. Anyhow, it was a delight and fun and who knows, maybe it'll go somewhere. Of course stories are hard to judge. When they're brand new, they seem spectacular... and contrarily, after you've polished them for a year you can't hardly tell anymore if they're really great or just rubbish.

If I could only get the pictures done as fast as the words.