I thought this old illustration would work well for today's Illustration Friday topic and be oh-so appropriate for the upcoming holiday season:
I painted an early version of this image in art school and then re-painted it shortly after I graduated. Looking at it now I can only think how much better it would look if I re-painted it yet again. It's kind of fun (and occasionally painful) to look back at old work and see where you've improved (and where you still need some work!). This painting had a brief life some years ago as a greeting card for a charity card company and it's been more recently revived as a greeting card once again in my CafePress shop. Need Christmas cards? Get them here!
Recently, a long-held goal of mine came to fruition.
I've worked a long time for this.
It is a happy moment to celebrate.
Horray! Okay... Now, let's get real.
I'm at the base of Everest. I've gained a
ticket to entry (yay!). But now, there is brand new, large and gigantic mountain to climb. Because with each goal reached, there are 100 new ones to conquer.
(But that's what it's all about, isn't it?)
...Here I go!
Happy post-Thanksgiving! Hope everyone had a wonderful day, including those of you non-American visitors who didn't overdose on turkey and pie yesterday.
We're still struggling a little bit with the Google+ thing, so this week's list is in a slightly different format. We'd love feedback. What do you like about the format? What would you like to see us change?
And we have a special treat! This week's WOW Wednesday Post was from Inara Scott, so we have a giveaway of the first book in her Delcroix Academy series. Enter by 12/1 for a chance to win. The form is at the bottom of this post.
Bad things usually happen when Danica Lewis sees someone threatening one of her friends. That's why she does everything possible to avoid getting close to anyone, belieiving this way she can supress her powers and keep them hidden. But when recruiters from the prestigious Delcroix Academy show up in her living room to offer her a full scholarship, her days of living under the radar may be over. At Delcroix, everyone treats Dancia like she's special. Even the hottest guy on campus seems to be going out of his way to make Dancia feel welcome. And then there's her mysterious new friend Jack, who can't stay out of trouble. He suspects something dangerous is going on at the Academy and wants Dancia to help him figure out what. But Dancia isn't convinced. She hopes that maybe the recruiters know more about her "gift" than they're letting on. Maybe they can help her understand how to use it...But not even Dancia could have imagined what awaits her behind the gates of Delcroix Academy.
And the winner of last week's giveaway is: Ruth Setton. Congrats, Ruth! :D
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A re-post, but aren't all zombies "do overs" ????
Jabberwocky - Game Cinematic (unreleased)
This is a cinematic for a video game that I pitched at the studio I used to work for. It was fun coming up with the characters and story. Unfortunately the game has been shelved. I have been hesitant to post this, but it's all over the web now so I may as well, right? Perhaps some day it will see the light of day again. I hope it will. I loved working on it.
Where have I been? At home (sewing, cooking, cleaning, homework help), out in the world (running, running errands) and back home again (hosting, more of the above). I'm awash in
gerunds.
I posted seven Etsy listings today, including this
King Winter, Snow Queen, and Snow Child set, and a
Green Yuletide Angel. I've been working at this cottage industry for over two years, and I still am surprised that the activities taking photographs, tweaking of the photographs, and listing the dolls take about as long as the creation of the dolls themselves.
Incidentally (Natural Kids Team related), I read a new-to-me version of Tolstoy's "The Turnip" called
Hugin and his Carrot, posted by fellow Natural Kids Team member
SuperSkivvies. It has a song! I don't know the tune to the song, but I will find out. I have ways.
Mary Ann did it. So did Charlotte, Emily and Anne. But why do some of us?
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| Heathcliff, in the new film of Wuthering Heights |
Mary Ann Evans wrote as George Eliot. The Bronte sisters adopted male pseudonyms too. They lived in an age where women were denied the vote, were barred from most professions, and, until 1870 if married, could not own. So it is not surprising that they disguised their gender when presenting their work to the world, especially when the work contains darkly sexual undertones, as does Wuthering Heights.
But now, we’re past all that, aren’t we? Feminism has fought important battles. We’ve had a woman prime minister (soon to be lionised in a new film), we can do any job. We are often the highest earner in the family, we own property, we speak our minds.
Of course there is a long history of authors, both male and female, using pen names and initials, and it was particularly popular in the 1930s,40s and 50s. D H Laurence was not hiding his gender, and nor was C S Lewis. But the practice waned in the less formal Sixties, and with the rise of feminism in the 1970s, one might expect that it would die out. It did not.
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| JK Rowling giving evidence this week |
The most famous recent example, of course, is JK Rowling. Read some accounts and her publisher ‘insisted’ that she dropped Joanne or the more neutral ‘Jo’ for JK in order to attract boy readers. Other reports suggest that she and her publisher agreed on the strategy, but again for the same reason. Watching her give evidence this week to the Leveson Inquiry, I wondered if there was another explanation. I was struck by her concern, even right at the start of her career, for her privacy and for that of her children. Maybe adopting initials felt like a good way of preserving her own identity, even before her magnificent success.
But the result, I think, has been the growth of a myth that women authors have to ‘do a JK’ to avoid being shunned by boys. I was talking to a YA writer the other day, and she told me that the first ‘boy’s’ book she wrote came with a suggestion from her publisher's marketing department that she adopt initials - even though her first books were written, very successfully, under her own name. She refused.
16 Comments on Tiffany-Mae or TM? by Keren David, last added: 11/28/2011
Over two weeks ago I announced my plan to visit all the New England Society of Children's Book Writer and Illustrator blogs listed at the organization's website. And here I am finally getting to a couple more.
I sort of know Jeannine Atkins (we're Facebook "friends"), who blogs at Views From a Window Seat. Hers is another blog that portrays a person living a real writer's life. She submits, she teaches, she attends literary festivals. And you can read about all that activity at Window Seat.
Nandini Bajpai has published short form work, which interests me, since I dabble in that kind of writing, myself. Interesting material from her recent posts: her experience with NaNoWriMo and her part in what she describes as a "Big Fat Indian Wedding."
I've had a busy few weeks. That's why I haven't been posting much lately. My granddaughter was baptized on November 13th. I was away in Chicago for a few days last week for the 2011 NCTE Annual Convention. Upon my return home, I had to get cracking with preparations for Thanksgiving. I hosted my family this year in my "new" dining room.
I have also experienced some major computer problems recently. My computer was with the techs for a few days. Then...I still had some problems with it after I brought it home. The following morning, I couldn't connect to the Internet. I think I've finally solved my connectivity problem. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
We definitely had a Thanksgiving to remember. We were joined by our newest family member--my adorable granddaughter Julia Anna who was born in early August. She was smiling and in a really good mood. She was the hit of the party!
Some Christening Photos
(Julia wore my daughter Sara's christening gown.)
Thanksgiving at My House
A few posts back, I wrote about my father. Today, I share about my mother.
My mother has a name that she does not like. I'd tell you what it is, but then I'd have to kill you. Well, she ever found out, she'd kill me. Suffice it to say, she was named after two relatives, both of whom died young and tragically. More about that in a moment.
When Mom was a child she was very sickly. She missed an entire year of school due to asthma and persistent pneumonia. She learned to love stories. She read a lot of books, and she acted out stories with figures on the covers of bed. One time when I was little, I found a tiny ivory dominoes set. She casually remarked, "Oh yeah. Some relatives brought it when they came to see me before I died."
She's 81 now, so I guess she showed them. She grew up poor on a farm. Her father figured she went to school on the bus and she could come home on the bus. She had an aunt who lived in town and taught piano and elocution. She stayed with her aunt so she could do things after school.
She took Spanish in high school,and when the teacher assigned Spanish names, she called my mom Enrique. Soon the kids were calling her Rickey, and Rickey she has been ever since. She used this opportunity to reinvent herself. She was no longer a sickly child; she was an intelligent, adventurous, young woman.
She headed off to Texas Tech University, where she studied Journalism with a minor in Spanish, gaining her degree in 1949. She wrote for the school paper, and was nominated as a campus beauty queen. She modeled for (tasteful) photographs. When you think of how few women when to college back then, it's pretty impressive that she earned a degree.
My dad wanted to marry her right away, but she didn't want to go straight from her father's house to her husband's house, so she took a job in Kansas, working for a newspaper.
They married in 1950, and Mom applied for jobs with advertising agencies. One of them required sample work and was very interested, until they figured out Rickey was a girl. She ended up working as an assistant.
When my oldest brother was born, she stayed home, as women in the fifties did. But she was not willing to be ONLY a stay at home mom. She became involved in politics, serving as precinct and county chair for the Republican party. She dressed me in a play suit with an elephant appliqued on the front. I knew about voting when I was tiny - I went with her while she served as a poll worker. I enjoyed these times, and learned how to behave and deal with adults other than my parents very early.
She served as treasurer for the church women's organization for several years. During that time, the group put on an annual bizarre and fed everyone in town. It required a lot of organization and a lot of financial bookkeeping.
When Dad decided to be a weekend rancher, Mom was right out there, helping to vaccinate the calves.
She reared three successful children, and when I was in high school, went back to work. She managed a Hallmark store, and enjoyed selecting the decorative items to stock.
When I was in a bad car wreck and Dad had heart surgery, she worked herself silly waiting on us and caring for us. When some visitors from our church came to visit, one said, "I came here to cheer you up, but when I saw the love and care in this family, it made me feel happier."
Mom cared for both my little ones while I worked. When my husband had heart surgery, she came to our house every night and either bathed the children or made dinner. I don't know how we would have made it through that time without her help.
When her father died and her mother was left alone on the farm, she took her into her home and cared for her until her death.
I learned the following things from my mother:
Don't accept a negative fate. You can make yourself into what you want to be.
Education is impor
As you’ve doubtless heard by now, Marvel followed up the Fear Itself event mini-series with issues 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3. Let’s be kind and say the reception to these issues was mixed, at best. If you’re like me, those “point” issues put some titles on probation. Let’s see what happened with the set up. Spoilers ahead.
7.1 was the Captain America issue. It was a cheap “Bucky isn’t dead, after all” revival set up to springboard to the Winter Soldier series. I’m very curious whether this was planned all along or this is a retcon. Either way, it doesn’t effect the Captain America series.
7.2 was the Thor issue. Thor died in Fear Itself. You might be saying to yourself, “if a major hero like Thor died, why wasn’t this a bigger deal and why wasn’t I reading about it in the mainstream media?” Either the mainstream media has gotten a clue about how short-lived superhero deaths tend to be or something’s up. Suddenly, there’s a new thunder god to replace Thor in the pantheon. And magically, everyone remembers this new thundergod as having done all of Thor’s adventures. The magical power of stories and all that jazz. Or, the worst elements of the Sentry and One More Day, should you be less charitable.
Over in Thor #8, things pick up right where 7.2 left off. Odin has taken his dead brother’s body back to Asgard and locked everyone out of the 9 worlds, so you’ve got a few trolls and such wandering around on Earth. Interestingly, there _is_ one person that realizes the new thunder god is not the original. And that person is Loki, who goes about trying to figure out what happened. Towards the end of the issue, we have appearances by a couple Lee/Kirby era Thor characters and find out that the new thundergod is not what he seems. We also find out that dead for a god is probably not the same thing as dead for a mortal. There’s at least one layer of red herring from 7.2, possibly more. Basically, Fraction is going somewhere with this and had all this come out in a double-sized , there might have been less rolling of eyes. I’m not issuing a free pass on the story arc just yet, but I was very close to dropping Thor based on Fear Itself 7.2. I’m not dropping it yet.
7.3 was the Iron Man issue and another one where the first words that come to mind are “One More Day.” In a nutshell, Odin undoes the death and destruction in Paris and Tony Stark ruminates on whether or not he should kill the Grey Gargoyle for killing everyone in Paris when he was possessed and part of “The Chosen.” I can see where Fraction was trying to go with this, interspersing some cleaning up of the scope of destruction with some moralizing and soul searching. The conundrum was supposed to be that they couldn’t charge the Gargoyle with mass murder/genocide if everyone came back to life. The problem with the execution of this is you can’t wonder whether you should hold him responsible when you’re saying nobody blames The Thing for being possessed. Massive internal logic flaw. This whole thing felt like somebody decided the scope of
Christmas in Harmony. Philip Gulley. 2002. HarperCollins. 96 pages.
My first memory of Christmas was in 1966. I was five years old and standing in line at Kivett's Five and Dime with my mother and brother, Roger, waiting to see Santa Claus, who looked suspiciously like Bud Matthews, the man in our town who did odd jobs. He smelled like Bud Matthews, too--a blend of Granger pipe tobacco, Old Spice aftershave, and sawdust. I enjoyed this novella by Philip Gulley. My first introduction to Harmony was
Home to Harmony. Home to Harmony is more a collection of short stories about one town--one community, one church--than it is a traditional novel. It introduces readers to some wonderfully eccentric (quirky) characters in a small town. Christmas in Harmony is a novella set within that community of characters. If you haven't met these characters yet, this book is a good place to start. Especially if you are looking for cozy-type Christmas stories. Not that the book is too sweet--far from it! It's very funny, in places, as different members in the congregation have strong opinions on how to have the right Christmas Eve service. One member STRONGLY believing that they should try something new, a progressive live nativity scene, where members drive through town stopping at each place on the map. (One house for the sheep, one house for the shepherds, one house for the wise men, one house for Mary and Joseph, etc. The last stop being of course the place where you find the cocoa and cookies.) Others want a more traditional service--the reading of the nativity in Luke followed by cookies in the basement, I believe. So along with the tension of the present Christmas, there are remembrances of former Christmases. Stories about Christmas trees, shopping, seeing Santa, etc.
I am enjoying reading Philip Gulley, for the most part, and this novella would make a great introduction if you are in a seasonal mood.
© 2011 Becky Laney of
Becky's Book Reviews
I love it when I get to see designs I've done used in fun, clever ways, like in the above greeting card design from the latest issue of
365 cards. I illustrated the retro phone as a stamp design for
A Muse Studio a few years ago and seeing it again made me realize how much I like it. I particularly like the way card designer,
Carly Robertson used it here. Love the little twinkle sticker in the center of the dial! and Let's Chat is the perfect wording to go with it.
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By: Paula Mills,
on 11/25/2011
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Paula Mills
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New work done last week - I thought this one fitted the topic for illustration Friday perfectly - 'round'.
Everyone seems to be looking for character driven picture books like these.
http://robsanderswrites.blogspot.com/2011/08/c-character-driven.html
By: Sue Bursztynski,
on 11/25/2011
Blog:
The Great Raven
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This was yesterday's post. I have suddenly realised that putting "Residence" into the link meant you had to be logged in to find the page that way. And of course, you can't log in unless you're a member. But you can just go to Insideadog and find the page. However, to save hassles for everyone, here it is. I'm working on this morning's post, whoch is about my visit to Bendigo Catholic College.
I don’t have an e-reader yet. When I was growing up, you never saw one outside of science fiction. You’d read novels set hundreds or thousands of years in the future and everybody in them would have shelves of book spools or tablets. Come to think of it, in the TV series of
Hitch-hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, made in the 1980s, the alien Ford Prefect handed earthling Arthur Dent what looked like something we’d recognise now as an e-reader.
Now that they’re all over the place, not that far into the twenty-first century, what
are they going to do in three or four hundred years? Have a chip installed in their heads, perhaps, to deliver books directly to your brain? Urk!
There’s something magical about choosing a book on-line and downloading it straight to your e-reader or even your phone. A friend who had bought his Kindle at the supermarket demonstrated by buying my novel
Wolfborn from Amazon and downloading it straight to his e-reader. “Ooh!’ I breathed in wonder.
Another nice thing about it is the lightness instead of carrying a load of books with you, you can carry a whole lot on your little reader that goes in your bag or pocket. You can change the font size– terrific for people with poor eyesight.
The fact that a lot of these readers have pre-loaded books means that you might read something you wouldn’t choose in a bookshop of a library; one of my students is reading
Frankenstein because it came free with the reader. That has to be a good thing.
And yet – for me, there’s nothing like the feel and smell of paper, the curling up in bed with your book, the overcrowded book cases in my study. You could put an entire encyclopaedia on e-reader, I suppose, but why not just go on-line where it would be up to date?
Because I don’t read non-fiction just for research, I like to browse the bookshops and libraries for books I might enjoy; you’d have to have some idea of what you want to get it from a web site. It’s just not the same as
discovering that book about astronomy of the Middle Ages or the Faeries of Brittany.
Tell me you can do that on-line, ordering from a catalogue!
Guys, this post is shorter than most I’ve done so far because it’s getting late and tomorrow I’m heading up to Bendigo with a bunch of other writers from Ford Street Publishing to do some workshops at a school there. Wish me luck and if you’re going to be there, do come up and say hi!
I painted an early version of this image in art school and then re-painted it shortly after I graduated. Looking at it now I can only think how much better it would look if I re-painted it yet again. It's kind of fun (and occasionally painful) to look back at old work and see where you've improved (and where you still need some work!). This painting had a brief life some years ago as a greeting card for a charity card company and it's been more recently revived as a greeting card once again in my CafePress shop. Need Christmas cards? Get them here!
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Such a perfect illustration for the theme this week! And what a great perspective too!
Great painting, love the snowman house idea!!!
Wow! That would be a fun house to visit. Great idea!
Love it! Agreed, great use of the theme and the upcoming Holidays.
I actually follow you on Deviant Art - happy to find your blog!
Thanks everyone for your kind comments!
Melissa - Thanks for following me on DA! It's good to see you on here too!