On learning not to google.

This June has been a little dramatic weather-wise. It's been extremely humid during the day and then thunderstorms-really good ones- at night. I don't like the hot humid days but I like the thunderstorms. When I was little and there was a big summer storm at night, my dad would stop whatever he was doing and he and my brother would go straight to the porch and I followed. We would all stand there and take it in.

I still have that instinct now. Maybe at my own peril. But in this new apartment, I am without a porch. When the storms start lately, I feel a little like I'm wearing pants without pockets. I have nowhere to put my hands. I park at the window and watch the storm anyway, but it's not quite the same. I can't smell the rain and I'm a little too protected.

I'm discovering that the pants without pockets feeling is also a little how it feels the first month your first book is published. I am no longer in charge of A Sick Day for Amos McGee. Almost everything that goes along with that is wonderful. Amos McGee gets to be someone else's book from the library or someone else's bedtime story or someone else's book they don't like very much. I really like that. I think the process of making art can feel selfish. But once the book is a book and not 32 separate drawings, I like that's it's someone else's experience.

Okay, most of the time. That lack of control can get to me. I have an extremely thin skin and I'm often nervous. Since this is my first book, too, I'm just not sure what to think. So this last month I have taken to attempting to spy on the book. This means google. This, I have found, is a mistake. It has only expanded my horizons to the fact that I know nothing about nothing.

So, I'm circling back to my original illustrator intent. The book is someone else's now. I hope they like it, but if they don't it's okay. Everything is oooookaay. I should get back to work.

That's it for now!

p.s. I can't figure out what the glitch is that won't allow the pictures get bigger when you click on them, but I'm working on it...