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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What are you doing down there?

Third in a series of unknown numbers!

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What are you doing up there?!

Second in a series…

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What are you doing in there?

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Pogle…

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If it feels like work…

When I am not walking the dogs, trying to avoid cooking or getting speeding tickets in West Linn I sit at my desk and try and write books.

This should be the great pleasure in my life, no? I have strived and worked towards having this opportunity for many years. I feel increadibly fortunate to be doing it. I continue to do other types of work as well:  design, sculpture, animation and illustration, but having had  two picture books acquired as well as writing and drawing a graphic novel for Chronicle Books, I was thrilled to actually get results from all the hundreds, if not thousands, of stories that I have written that never made it off my monitor. In fact, many never even got an ending. At least a good one.

But sitting here writing ‘books’ it feels pretty much like work. It IS work. I’m reminded every time I feel like walking away from what I am writing. What I am TRYING to write. It’s challenging and can be creative, and fun and I feel amazingly lucky to be getting the time to pursue this. But it’s also good-old-fashioned, irritating, stress inducing work.

Now, back to work.

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Tea time…

I’ve talked about tea on this blog before. I thought this was a kid’s book blog, you might ask. Well, what do you think keeps me awake while painting said kid’s books? I’m not a huge soda guy, so black tea it is. And it’s great to drink while watching Cold Comfort Farm isn’t it? And while I was in college I worked for a tea importer in Madison known as The Tea Man and spent way too much time learning about tea, painting the interior walls with realistic tea tress and various tea related imagery. And I still babble on about tea when cornered.

Anyway, when it comes to great black teas in bags, not loose, I think there is one that stands way above the others. The Numi brand offers the best bagged teas I had tried. Until recently.

A year or two ago I tried a bag of Steven Smith’s Bungalow No. 47. And hands down it was the best bagged black tea I have ever had. I’ve since kept some around for special occasions. The Assam No. 49 is also exceptional. The Steven Smith teamaker company is based right here in Portland, Oregon. And the man in the title has made a career out of starting tea companies and selling them. Names like Tazo and Stash were his. Anyway, if you like good black tea with perfect astringency that stays bright in the mouth, I highly recommend you take the tim to track this excellent tea down.

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Brave

I finally got to see Pixar’s Brave and I really enjoyed it. By FAR the best animated film of last year. I can’t understand the many mediocre reviews I read about it. Perhaps because I am less a fanboy at my age and it takes me time to go see a film, I avoid the hype that accompanies such things. For instance the hype surrounding The Avengers completely baffles me. I thought it was a work of astounding nothingness. Endless fights that felt no more interesting than those atrocious last Star Wars films. Unless you really, really believe that seeing the Avengers in one film will change ones life in some fundamental way. But Brave worked for me. I expected so much less because of the constant talking down about it. Maybe that’s why I liked it so much. I had zero expectations. I enjoyed Wreck it Ralph, but the video game world isn’t that interesting to me. It worked well as a comedy and I was thinking it should have won the Oscar. But after seeing Brave, I don’t think there was a real contest.

And yes, it takes me a long time to see films these days. But I’m starting to catch up. My daughter and I are seeing more films in the theatre again after 6 or so years of hardly going.

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Being sick

Amazing how being sick reminds me how much I don’t like being sick.

And my friend John emailed me just last week saying he was sick. Coincidence? I don’t think so… What I want to know, is how did the germs make it via email?

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The Secrets to Success

Because I’m either overworked or lazy, todays post is a repost from last year. Think of it as a BEST OF posting…Anyway, here it is again for the new readers since everything on a blog is dead two minutes after posting.

From 2/2012

The Three Keys to Success!

Yup. Here it is. The Three Keys to Success in Kids’ Lit! I imagine you are pretty excited to read this. I mean, THREE KEYS to success! Even I can count that high and I’m an artist.

Ok, here we go…number one…. numero uno…I’ve been thinking, maybe it’s more like 8 keys to success. So, how about  ’8 KEYS to SUCCESS in Kids’ Lit’. That way I have enough room to get to issues like – ‘Make sure you run spell check’.

So, here they are: 8 KEYS to SUCCESS in Kids’ Lit…

1. I was going to start with, ‘Stay focused’. But I keep stopping to check emails and deleted part of the list by accident.

As I think about this, I realized I have more like 13 Keys. So I could call it something like: The 13 Keys to Fabulous Kids’ Lit. And that gives me room to include items like, ‘Smile more.’

But 13 is a horrible number. Bad luck. I mean buildings even skip that number. It’s not small enough to be catchy and not long enough to sell as a novel length How To Book.

Actually I have too many tips. So, I’m thinking ’23 Magic Steps for Success in Kids Lit.’ You don’t want to deal with 23 KEYS. Keys are heavy, they jingle, they jangle, after awhile you forget what they open or why you have them. They end up collecting dust in the drawer with spare change and nearly empty Tic-Tac containers…but 23 STEPS seems like reasonably good exercise, especially if you are like me and sit in front of a computer for 11 months of the year. But I can easily break the 23rd step into 4 additional steps…So -

The 27 Steps To Be Successful In Children’s Lit.

1. Name your book Harry Potter.

2…OK. That first one doesn’t really work, as I seem to remember that name being used already in a TV show or a movie. Or a game. Or a theme park. Or on a package of jelly beans.

You know, I’m going to regroup here because the list just keeps getting longer, which is ironic, as number 11 on the list is, ‘Keep things simple’ and I think number 19, ‘Keep getting better’, isn’t very helpful because it’s too broad.

So there you have it. I have spent months writing this post, and my 3 Steps to Kids’ Lit Success (copyright Mark Fearing, 2012) just keeps getting more complicated. And I am on deadline so I really should get back to writing the book I am working on. But if I can’t break this down to under a hundred steps, I don’t deserve to write step-based or key-based lists at all.

And yes, you could interpret this list as a sideway glance at any How To Succeed list. But I am working on a new post called – ’42 Awkward Lurches to Kids’ Lit Success’. I think 42 is exactly the right number.

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