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?