...and bonjour, September. What's up with the Frenchified bye-and-hi? Just a shout out to my Pimsleur language CD's, which I listen to (sometimes) while illustrating. I did take two semesters of French in high school, and I hated every minute of it. I never could get my head (or my mouth) around the language. So why am I trying? My husband, Geoff, has been slaving away on a big fancy museum for Louis Vuitton, and as one of the few perks of his job, he gets the occasional trip to Paris. Someday I might go along as a stow away, and I'd like to know a phrase or two. Hence the hours and hours of Pimsleur lessons in my iTunes music library. The Pimsleur approach is learning by mind-numbing repetition. If you were a fly on the wall when I had my Pims on iTunes and a paintbrush in hand, you'd hear me endlessly telling the woman on the train that yes, I'm American, and does she speak English, and no, I don't understand, I don't understand French. Ne pas un peu.
I digress (what are blogs good for, anyway?). August zipped by so quickly. The month began with the SCBWI conference. Other than the horrible ear infection I developed mid-conference, it was great, as usual. I discovered a new author/illustrator to add to my list of favorites: Peter Brown. He has a series of books about a hilarious drooling bulldog named Chowder--gotta love him! Peter taught some helpful workshops; I attended one on "Developing an Appealing Illustration Style," in which he walked through his very systematic process of finding/refining his "visual voice." I must admit that I feel in a bit of a "style crisis" myself right now, and I am going to try some of the methods suggested in his workshop. I began my children's illustration portfolio with lots of painterly, texture-heavy pieces, but when I got positive response to work that was spare and graphic, I headed in that direction. I do like the flat, clean look of the gouache and the deep black of the ink and the graphic appeal of a limited palette, but I feel like I'm using a coloring book by the time I get from the sketch to the finished art. I definitely need a change, and getting there is going to involve a lot of experimental illustration. In that spirit, I have reworked a small detail of one of my flat gouache-and-ink pieces into something a little beefier. (Click the thumbnail to view a larger image.)
I did it fairly quickly, and in a "just for fun" spirit, so it's not perfect...but I'm pleased with the direction it's headed. I've put the Horace and Amelia dummy on hold for a bit while I tinker with style. I don't want to put stifling pressure on what should be unfettered exploration.
Back to the SCBWI conference. Besides meeting Peter Brown, two highlights for me were the portfolio display and my private manuscript critique.
There's always a big portfolio display at the conference, and organizers put index cards next to each entry so that people can leave comments. I had several nice comments on my card by the evening's end, but the best was from Arthur Levine, the hot-shot (but super-nice and non-pretentious!) editor of Harry Potter fame. He was short and to the point: "Love it!"
I've got the card taped to my portfolio now. (By the way, my website has been updated, as promised!)
My manuscript critique was equally encouraging. A few months before the conference, you send in your manuscript, and SCBWI assigns someone to critique it. Could be an author, an agent, or an editor; I think first-timers usually get authors. In any case, my reviewer was Sara Pennypacker, author of some very funny middle-grade books (See Clementine, for instance). She loved my Horace and Amelia story, and she nominated it for the Sue Alexander Most Promising New Work Award. The winner of this award (chosen sometime in September or October) gets a trip to New York City to meet with interested editors. I looked back at previous winners (who are personally chosen by Ms. Alexander), and I didn't see many picture book texts among them. There seems to be a bias towards longer works (YA and middle-grade novels), but who knows. In any event, it was great just to be nominated and to know that a professional, successful author thought my stuff had potential. And I've been milking the nomination for all it's worth in my query letters to agents, which leads me to my next topic: the great agent hunt.
Much of August was devoted to searching for an agent to represent my work. It will be challenging to find one willing to take on a picture book author/illustrator (supposedly not the easiest genre to sell), but I think it's my best strategy. I need someone with connections in the publishing world whose sole goal is to push and promote my work (after all, they don't get paid if I don't get paid).
Prior to August, I had started a list of potential agents, but I needed to come up with more names. The research alone took days. Several resources proved tremendously valuable in drafting my target list. In addition to the always-popular Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market, I discovered a new book, Jeff Herman's Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents. Also found some very helpful websites: Agent Query is a great (and free!) way to search for literary agents by category/area of interest. Publishers Marketplace lists publishing deals on a daily basis and specifies not only the publishing house to which the book was sold, but also the acquiring editor and the agent (if any) who facilitated the deal. The list is not exhaustive (i.e., not every deal that goes down is listed), but it is substantial. One of the site's best features, as far as I'm concerned, is the ability to search the "deals" database by categories. I was able to search specifically for picture book deals and see which agents were selling picture books and which publishers were buying them.
The only catch to Publishers Marketplace? It's not free. Yes, you can sign up for a free weekly newsletter, but I found that that service didn't give me access to the database info that I really needed. The good news is that a subscription is only $20 a month, and you can subscribe on a month-to-month basis. Worth the money, I think, for easy access to information that would be time-consuming and difficult (if not impossible) to track down otherwise.
After compiling a list of about 15 potential agents, I set about assembling submission/query packages. A lot of energy went into drafting query letters and making multiple copies of my book dummy for Scrumptious Yum-o-licious Pie. I was pretty satisfied with my submission packages, and five of them went into the mail on the 28th. I also sent out two "e-queries." Some agents accept e-queries, and others require them. The two that I approached via email fit into these categories. The disadvantage of the e-query, as I see it, is that you don't get your physical materials in the agent's hands. At most, as with the e-queries I sent, you get to attach jpeg's or include links to your website. The advantage of e-queries is that they're fast. So fast, in fact, that I got my first rejection a mere two hours after hitting "send." (I was prepared a swift response; while researching this particular agent, I came across a message board where authors were comparing her response time to their e-queries; I think the record was a mere 5 minutes.) At least she's polite when she's dashing your hopes: "thanks for your inquiry, carlynn, but not quite for me at this time. --rs." Sigh...one response down, six to go. As any snail mail rejections start coming in, I'll turn the materials back out to the next agent on my list. Until then, fingers crossed!
In other news: I got paid for my Big Buck Hunter Pro design (still no legal contract--working on that--but at least I got my money). And I've started a new story about two sisters who run a charm school for some unlikely pupils.
Ahead in September: I will continue my experiments in style and try to find a visual look that's child-friendly and uniquely "me," and that makes me excited about getting to the drawing desk. I hope to make progress on my Horace and Amelia dummy when appropriate; I think I can hammer out all of the thumbnails at the least. Depending on how the illustration experiments go, I will try to put together some images that could be sold by a licensing agent (different from a literary agent). I was hoping to get this done in August, but the agent search was a higher priority.
Finally, I'm giving myself a September challenge. It can be hard to remember that no one will ever want to buy your work if they don't know that it exists. Sounds obvious enough, but self-promotion is not my strong suit. So I'm giving myself a goal of approaching a new person/organization/business with my art at least once a week. Four weeks in September = four potential clients. We'll see how I do...until then, Happy Labor Day and happy trails!
