The second half of this year has been a bizarre one. There's been practically no work around, which meant I buried myself chin-deep into my own projects. Finishing Kochi, setting up
bearfoo.com (Weapons Grade Plutonium! updates today. yes?), and a handful of things besides which i can't yet mention. The key to getting work, far as i'm concerned, is to just keep working. Blithely ignoring the fact that no one's hiring you, because they're obviously wrong.
But one thing I did concentrate on was a children's book I wanted to do. I worked up the concept, did a few pages of finish art, asked around for contacts and sent a bundle of proposals off to various publishers. Now, it should be said i've been sending work to children's publishers for literally a decade (balls), probably irritating the hell out of them, and got nothing but rejections, ignored, and 'what the fuck is this supposed to BE?' letters. It never stopped me though, the enthusiasm for a new idea FAR outweighs the fear of being rejected. It's a joyous short-term-memory idiocy i think.
But this time it was different. A publisher got back to me the very next day, saying they were interested. The day after, another. The day after, another. At one point five different publishers were weighing it up, which is just ridiculous to me. Everyone's on crack. Or having a very-laboured and complicated joke.
Within a few weeks I'd chosen who seemed best for the project, and am very excited to say I'm working on my first children's book ^_^
Now I'm obviously limited on what I can say. It's for a rather big children's book publisher (their sheer enthusiasm for the idea convinced me). I'm writing and drawing it, in fact so far they're letting me run riot. And its about a character of mine already floating about, you may have seen him.
The only panic in my eyes was the time. This book is scheduled to come out next summer, which means it needs to be finished for february. Thats nearly 50 full-colour pages written, pencilled, inked and coloured, half of which are INTENSELY detailed, in about two and a half months. And i'm working large size too, A2 for the original art. If we pull this off, i can modestly say i think it's going to look fantastic. But i'm working this baby all through christmas and out the other side just to try and get a good head start, i'm back to working 13 hour days, 7 days a week where possible. And don't get me wrong, i love working like this, a proper long day drawing this bobbins is such a buzz for me. But two weeks in to the schedule, and i can already feel the mental blocks forming.
So if I haven't emailed you back or I go full-hermit over winter, this is the reason why. I'm so bloody excited to do my first children's book, I've always wanted to do one, to proper bum the mainstream and see what they make of me. And as soon as I'm allowed to announce what it's all about, i will. If you've been following me on
that there stupid twitter you may be able to piece it together from my ramblings on the subject, but for now it's a secret.
FUCKING YAY ^_^
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