It’s been a while! Things have been busy around here, switching jobs notwithstanding,  but I wanted to give a shout out that my new children’s book, a collaboration with Jorge Eduardo Sanclemente, is now available for purchase! You can read more about it at Bright Bird Press, in the press release, and at the Lulu product page. I’ll have a portfolio page up soon.

This project began as a short story I wrote back in November 2011. It was a cold evening, and I was in my home office listening to a Powerpuff Girls cassette tape, and a Fats Waller cassette tape I had bought at the Central Ohio Jazz Society. It was the perfect mix of happy, fun, bouncy music that sparked my child-imagination.  I jumped from my desk and busted out some solo Charleston moves, or pretended I was Beatrice and wriggled around like I was five.

I’ve been told Beatrice looks like me, and there might be a reason for that: I posed for her dance moves. During our lunch breaks (Jorge and I were co-workers at the time), I demonstrated different Charleston moves. Jorge did a fantastic job capturing the energy of the dance, and the infectious enthusiasm of Beatrice. His process began with drawing sketches in pencil, then scanning them into his computer for clean up and coloring in Photoshop. Aren’t you loving the watercolor style?

I couldn’t be more proud of this little project.

I’d suggest this book for readers aged 5 and older. 5-years-old children probably need help from a parent, guardian, or older sibling. 7-years-old children can probably handle this on their own.

We decided to publish on Lulu because they allow for split royalties… making for much easier taxes if this book takes off. Unfortunately, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Blurb, etc, don’t allow for split royalties so if you collaborate with someone, you have to pay out and hope everyone is honest with each other about that 50/50 split.