Earthling! is an Oregon Spirit Book Award Nominee!

The graphic novel I worked on for 18 years….OK. That’s not true. I didn’t work on it for 18 years. At times it may have FELT like 18 years. Actually is was about 3 years. But in dog’s years that’s 21 years…never mind.

Anyway, my graphic novel Earthling! has been shortlisted in the Oregon Spirit Book Awards, Graphic Novels category along with – Hereville: How Mirka Met a Meteorite by Barry Deutsch and Squish: The Power of the Parasite by Jennifer and Matthew Holm.

Both of the other nominated books and great and feature unique approaches and one-of-a-kind voices. I’m honored to be listed with them.

Read more about Earthling! here, and read a review of Earthling! at the New York Times.

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A page here, a page there…

Here’s two disparate pages from a project that just may never see the light of day. It may live only on my computer. When I speak at events about writing and drawing I often explain how most of what I do never sells. There is a lot of ‘other stuff’ I don’t finish or no one wants to publish. This is part of that other stuff.

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What’s this blog for…

No. I don’t see this blog as being mainly about self promotion, yet here I am self promoting. But, if I don’t who will!?

The Horn Book recently recommended Earthling! in an article on graphic novels for kids. Here’s what they had to say:

Gr. 4-6 In this sic-fi graphic novel, Bud gets on the wrong bus and ends up at Cosmos Academy, an intergalactic school whose students fear Earthlings. With the help of new friends Gort, Bud devises a plan to return home before the aliens figure out who he is. Action and humor (especially in the characters facial expressions) are successfully captured in bright cartoon panels.

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Earthling! review on the web and TV

A nice review of Earthling! at the Book Wisdom website and on TV in Colorado as April’s Book of the Month.

You can read more about Earthling (including the entire first chapter online) at the Earthling! website.

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Earthling!

As I mentioned before, I have a habit of talking about my books. Sales calls are an especially good time to launch into a long discussion of my books. “So you’d like to talk to me about buying Comcast’s digital package, let me tell you about my books…” And I can talk about them on this blog.

Earthling! is the all ages graphic novel I completed last year. You can check it out by clicking here.

Earthling! went through a lot of changes before it was finally released. Below are two drawings from that process. One is an early piece of development art for the two main characters. This is a scene when they are trying to pick out which star might be the Sun that Earth orbits. It’s just hitting Bud that he’s a gazillion miles from home, and doesn’t even know where to start looking. Click on the image to see it bigger.

This is a quick sketch from my drawing book of an early spaceship school bus.

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Dead Projects. What to work on, what not to work on.

Here are four pages from a graphic novel project that, most likely, I will never finish. I wrote the entire draft, and drew two dozen pages but I don’t think it’s ever going to make it onto my ‘To Do’ list.

It can be difficult to pick and choose what you spend your time on. I’m like most creatives and I have no end to projects I’d love to tackle. But you only have so much time in a day, a week – a life. I’m happy with the story, but the amount of work it would take to finish it doesn’t make sense. It is a ‘hard sell’ for a publisher and I’d probably end up trying to self publish it. But a 130 page graphic novel isn’t something you do part time. And as I make a living doing this work every day I spend doing something that is greatly less marketable, means I am putting off that other project, which I probably love just as much, which is more marketable. As a writer/illustrator making choices about what you want to do vs. what not to do is, unfortunately, a big part of your life.

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Earthling! Does every story need to end with a fight?

Above is a page from my graphic novel for young readers called Earthling!. One of the issues that haunted me while creating Earthling! was my hope to end the adventure story without a hand-to-hand fight to the death between two main characters.

It is so easy to have your main characters fight to solve the big issue at hand in your story. But with plenty of Hollywood movies providing endless blood-soaked-battles, why do it in a young readers graphic novel?

I ended up with a chase. Laser blasts. Some threats. But for months my ending also had a big direct confrontation between Bud and Principal Lepton. Fisticuffs ensued. But I always thought it was the wrong way to go.

Ultimately I found a way for the tension to be released in an exciting fashion sans punches. It felt resolved and complete. The characters actions were true to who they were and I did it without a big fight. There is, of course, a confrontation, actually several confrontations. And the characters are allowed to see things from new perspectives. But I hope I accomplished that with as few punches as I could.

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Troll hole as night falls

clicking makes it biggerer….

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Earthling! and Big Planet Comics.

Earthling!, my graphic novel, has been pulled off the shelf as one of the best comics for kids of 2012 at Big Planet Comics. All I can say is that Big Planet Comics is well known as a great store and the other books mentioned are super-awesom. That’s the technical term. So Tim and I are super-honored!

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Earthling! starts off 2013 with good karma

Earthling called out as a good read by Geekdad over on Wired. Nice way to end 2012 or start 2013…Whichever you prefer.

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