Bats Rule!

It was a very long winter and spring working on “work for hire” writing projects along with the usual spring gardening, greenhouse and yard chores. I have eight (8!) books coming out in August, which you can find by searching my name as the author. My latest Boxcar Children Mystery was released in March, which you can see here: The Mystery of the Stolen Dinosaur Bones

I’m also excited that What Was Hurricane Katrina? is on the August list. I’ll post more about it once it is released.

So that’s a total of nine books, egad. Only one other recent project isn’t on the Amazon radar yet, but it will be soon. I finally got hired to write about robots! I am totally fascinated with them. I guess my engineer genes rear up once in a while. But I miss illustrating, which was after all, the original career quest.

And to note, so far, it pays better. Sorry, writers. And I’ll also tick you off by saying it pays better because it’s HARDER. It is. For me anyway. Especially when I stop practicing.

So it was fun when the writing work dried up to carve out some time to get back to illustration. These spreads (a spread is two pages with the book spine down the middle) are from a project I haven’t sold. It’s a concept book of opposites, with a nonfiction theme about the world’s smallest and largest mammals on the planet: bumblebee bats and blue whales. So the backdrop, somewhat abstract, is Thailand, where bumblebee bats reside. And blue whales appear just about anywhere if they feel like going as long as it’s an ocean, so I think it works. Here are the first two spreads from Bats Inside, Bats Outside:

The text for the next spread is:
We spy a PRICKLY turtle,
And a SMOOTH little snail.
(spiny turtle, green snail, both of which reside in Thailand)

As always, I have no idea if this project will ever sell, but it’s been fun playing with the new style of illustration – designing a page, painting lots of paper, then using computer programs to put things together. Let’s face it, I’m too lazy and indecisive to cut and glue paper down permanently.

Happy almost summer!