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I received some very exciting news this week! I was emailed by the senior designer of Capstone Publishing to illustrate a new title due out in both the educational and trade markets Fall of 2015!  I was excited to hear that they found me on childrensillustrators.com. It's crazy how I have been advertising on that site for about 5 years, even taking a two year hiatus at one point, but then thought to give it another try since some other people have had some success. The price to renew went up $150 but there must have been a reason because I received a job from Heinemann Publishing and now this one from Capstone this year. I guess I made the right decision to give it another try! Keep checking back for updates!

I'm still here! Just doing some summer traveling and working on a few projects, especially a book with Viking that I'm excited about. Sketches are due soon so all my energy are going into it.

Some fun news- I'm illustrator of the month over at Childrensillustrators.com. Thanks to the team there for picking me, I feel very honored. I signed up with them this year, you can check out my portfolio here.

Yesterday I went to the bookstore to have a look around and try to get out of my funk. I wasn't looking for anything in particular, but rather, was just open to whatever popped off the shelf at me. Do you ever do that? Just wait for the 'right book' that you might need to read at that moment, to compliment something that's going on in your life, to kind of scream at you and make you stop and pick it up and have a look?

Well, it happened to me in a big way yesterday. In all the times I've walked around B&N, and looked at every shelf in the children's book section, I've never seen this book before. But yesterday, there it was, face-out, calling to me. Its called Tear Soup, and is about the grieving process. Its exactly what I needed, and I was kind of blown away. Its written for children and adults, and illustrated in a picturebook style that's also appealing to grown ups. The authors also have a website, called Grief Watch, which talks about grieving and has links to all sorts of helpful places to visit for help.

So if you're in a sad place like I've been, and need a little help, this might be a place to start.
A heartfelt thank you to all the people who've emailed condolences about my Isabella. I haven't responded individually to each of you, but I am so grateful and warmed by all of your well-wishes. And I'm sure she is too.

The sun is out today, yay! I'm feeling a little better, and am itching to get started on some new work. I feel like I've been on hold for a quite a while. I think some new fresh art and projects will be blooming forth soon. Not sure what it will be, exactly. I will share.

In other news, the ChildrensIllustrators portfolio site is about to be back up and running. Any of you who've had portfolios on there know they were hacked into, and have been down for a while. I checked, and about half my images are gone, so I'll have to do some new uploading in the next few days. At least some of the images survived - I know some people had them ALL go away.

So I am now off to go 'live life' and maybe draw something. There's an idea.

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