I have been putting out fires since finishing the illustrations for Smoky and the Feast of Mabon. I uploaded all the files to the publisher and they only had a few minor changes. I received color proofs last Monday and they looked great! The books are in production now according to the publisher and I expect to see my F&Gs in early April. (An F&G is the picture book equivalent of an ARC for a novel.) Somehow, when I get the F&G the book finally feels “real” to me. I can’t wait.

One of the things I finally got around to was the last touches on the kitchen/dining room renovations. See the photos here. Chuck still has to help me get the last piece of furniture up from the basement, but I decided to take the pictures this afternoon after hanging the curtain rods and curtains in the dining room.

I am so pleased with the huge change. The rooms do not look as if they are even the same house as before. And it’s all so clean! It feels so much bigger, too.

Next home renovation project — the bathroom. SO not looking forward to that. There needs to be major plumbing replacement, so most of the budget will be spent on stuff that no one sees.

Red Lemon Club: Online Self Promotion for Creatives.

I am still working hard on the final illustrations for Smoky and the Feast of Mabon by Catherynne M. Valente. The book is now up on both the publisher’s web site and amazon for pre-order which really puts the pressure on me because people are ORDERING the book already. LOL

After I finish up with the book, the next big project on my to-do list is to make this site fully functional and work harder at bring me paying illustration jobs. I am learning all about marketing and SEO specifically geared toward creatives. The link above is my newest find.

Of course, having the info and taking it and implementing it are two entirely different animals. I have yet to figure out a good way to go about the implementing part where I actually follow through before another project distracts me. I have been on Twitter for a few months now (@lyonmartin) and the community I have found there tells me this is a common failing among my fellow artists. Seems we are all easily distracted.

I am itching to get back to my daily doodle. And my daily exercise routine. I don’t know why, but the stuff I do to keep myself sane the rest of the time slips away when I am finishing a book. The drug of choice this book has been cheese doodles. Go figure.

While trawling the internet for reference for my book art I came across this little gem of a video. I just wish there was more of the speech instead of excerpts.

I have been hard at work with the book art spreads for Smoky and the Feast of Mabon. It is official. I have “book brain.” This is the place I go when in the final throws of book illustration before the deadline and final art goes out. I call it book brain because my characters take over my head. I think of nothing else and even dream my characters. I wander around the house in a blur and I am amazed I have not managed to injure myself while cooking.

Tomorrow, I have to drive my DD into the city. I have two fears. The first is that I will space the trip entirely. And the second is I will be so immersed in book brain hi-jinx, I won’t remember to stop at red lights or look before merging.

Hopefully my characters are happy with all the attention I paid to them today and will let me get a good night’s sleep without demanding I attend to them at 4 am in the morning in a repeat of this morning. I can only hope.

I have been hearing wonderful things about the YA novel “Going Bovine.”

I spend a lot of time haunting the children’s section in the local public library, so when I saw a copy on the new arrivals bookshelf, I snatched it up.

It took me several weeks before I had a chance to pick it up and begin reading it. In fact I had to renew it once or twice. I had a huge stack of books on my to-be-read pile, so it took a bit for me to work my way down to it.

It was not my type of book. I mean, usually I am a bit more of an escapist in my reading material, I like bits of magic and fantasy. I’m not much into the teenage angst stuff, most likely because I have an emo teen occupying a room in my home at the moment. There is only so much angst and drama any one adult can deal with and remain relatively sane.

But, the writing was well crafted and there was more than one well turned phrase, so I figured I would persevere and maybe learn something about craft and “what sells” to use in my own writing.

I determined to read two or three chapters a night for my before sleep treat.

I followed through until last night. (SPOILER ALERT) The main character was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was admitted to the hospital.

I couldn’t read any further. My own stint in the hospital is still raw. It will be a year at the end of this month, but I still can’t watch some hospital scenes on TV either.

I closed the book in the middle of a chapter, in the middle of a sentence. And cried myself to sleep.

Now, I did not have a terminal disease (obviously cause I am not dead and/or dying) but I did almost die because of someone else’s actions. I went to surgery directly from walking into the emergency room. And spent almost two weeks in recovery, and months beyond that getting back to ‘normal.’

I am not usually one to dwell on the past. I am just too busy most of the time to worry about more than what I have right in front of me. So this nagging phobia of hospitals and emergency rooms and surgery is troublesome, to say the least.

Hopefully, this will pass. Before I need surgery again. Which I am told I do. For completely unrelated things. Honestly, I have too much to do to lose more time in a lengthy recovery.

In the years I’ve been displaying art and sharing articles on my web sites, a number of people have “borrowed” my work without asking and used it for their own purposes. I am like most creatives in such instances and look poorly on the infringement. Most people are apologetic and will remove the material quickly, however more than one has claimed “fair use” and refused to apologize for the crime or remove the offending materials from their site.

As part of the copyright law, Fair Use is shrouded in mystery because it is not clearly stated what is and is not meant by the term. I remember a case where an artist was sued by the New York Times (I believe, it was years ago and my memory is cloudy) for copyright infringement for using images in a collage. The newspaper won and the artist had to pay damages.

Joan Beiringer’s Blog has this to say about the subject.

During the last year, there has been a lot of press on what is fair use in art, photography, music and the written word. Fair use is a very complex concept because the law does not provide clear guidelines on what is fair use and what constitutes an infringement. Unfortunately many people believe the “old-wives-tale” that all you need to do is change art a certain amount and you don’t have to worry about getting sued. However, what is allowed in fair use is more complicated than that…

Visit her web site to read the rest of the article and find more links to other information on copyright law and fair use.

Happy New Year. See you in 2010!