Excerpt from Unlucky Charms

Decided to post an excerpt for this image that I put up the other day:

The tree, possibly tired of being hacked at and pelted with stones and filled with tiny hairy people, sprang to life.  John leaped away, and Finchbriton flew free.  The tree snapped a root from the earth like a tentacle, and gave John an uppercut that he only partially managed to absorb with the chickadee shield.  He landed hard on his back, and looked up to see a spindly fist of branches swinging down at him.  He rolled and turned, just as he had done on the set of Galileo’s Revenge, and carved a few twig-fingers from the fist.  Then Finchbriton fluttered in and set the rest ablaze.

The tree pulled back, creaking and groaning, and shook itself like a dog, joggling the some twenty Hairy Men still camped in its branches.  Then it plucked one of these Hairy Men free like an apple and chucked it at John.

“WAAAAH!”  The brownie whanged off John’s shield and landed in a wad a few feet away, then crawled off.  After a moment the tree found another brownie and did it again.

“WAAAAH!” (whang)

“Stop that!” said John.

“WAAAAAAH!” (whang)

Sandy Relief

Tucson: I'll be at Heroes and Villains tomorrow (Wednesday) from 3-5, drawing you pictures to raise money for Sandy relief.  Come say hi!

Unlucky Charms Cover

This was not the original cover, and I'll be telling the story of that soon.  But I am proud of this NEW! and Improved cover of Unlucky Charms, the sequel to Cold Cereal.

Unlucky Charms will be available On February 5th.

Naked Attention Grab

I'm craving some external validation today, so here are a bunch of baby animals.

Cold Cereal NEW! and IMPROVED!

Just occurred to me that I've never posted the NEW! cover of Cold Cereal, which graces the paperback edition.  Tada.

Unlucky Charms is Coming.

Are coming?  It's a title, so...I think "is coming."

UNLUCKY CHARMS IS COMING.

This sequel to Cold Cereal will be in stores in two weeks.  So here's a picture of a tree throwing tiny men at a guy.

To help me with all these drawings of the brownies above, I made a quick little head out of my kneaded eraser.  Then I photographed him with my laptop, atop a toothpick I'd pulled out of my sandwich.  I find it's best in these situations not to explain anything to the people at the tables next to you, and let them work out their own narratives for what you're doing.

Previously, This is So Raven.

Toad of Toad Hall

Chu's Day is out...

...and I can't help but link to a blog post that Neil Gaiman writes about it.  So go read that.  But I hope he won't mind that I stole one of his images, which I present below.

When Gaiman presented his manuscript to HarperCollins, he actually included his own B&W dummy, a drawing from which you can see above.  I don't actually know how many authors do this, but it was the first time that a publisher forwarded along such a dummy to me.

Anyway, it was understood that I didn't have to make the book-dust blower an elephant if I didn't want to.  But man, why NOT an elephant?