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.

A Diamond in the Slush: What Picture Book Editors Are Really Looking For | SCBWI Metro NY News.

While this is mainly for writers, the ideas behind the answers can also be helpful to illustrators.

DH and I spent the better part of the afternoon demolishing the walls and ceiling of the dining room. The walls are down to the studs and the faux drop ceiling is removed from the ceiling dry wall.

We discovered two things.

One is that the wall facing the south side of our property was soaked. Not a big surprise, but not one we were happy about. There is also mold on the ceiling about half way across the room originating at that part. I put a call into a roof repair place and am awaiting a return call. Not expecting one until Monday seeing as it’s a holiday weekend and all.

The other discover was some prescription medication bottles behind the drywall. One was a liquid for external use only. The other was pills of some sort or other, but the label had a date on it. 12-17-62 which means the kitchen is almost as old as we are. Beyond about time for an update.

And in closing, may I say “ew?”