In Which I'm Dressed Like a Bunny.

Cold Cereal Commercial!

Dragon

They're Not a Lover of the Cover That is Graven with a Raven. A Fairy in the Dairy is the Jacket That'll Hack It.

In 2010 I finished the first draft of a novel called Cold Cereal.  It’s the first of a trilogy about a kid who discovers that a breakfast cereal company is stealing glamour from leprechauns and fairies and magical beasts, and slipping this stolen glamour into their magically delicious cereals, and using these cereals to raise an army of sugar zombies and conquer mankind.

It’s meant to be funny.  Whether you find it funny will have a lot to do with your tolerance for this sort of thing.

I went through the usual battery of sketches for the cover of this novel:

Many of them eventually focused on my main kid (Scott) drawing a sword Excalibur-style out of a box of cereal, as if it were the prize inside.  This was an idea that my editor kept pushing, and which she kept insisting was mine.  I think I probably had originated it during some spitballing phone conversation, but the truth was that it made me uncomfortable–Scott doesn’t have a sword at any point in the book, and it’s exactly the sort of conceptual image that we accept as adults but which would have struck me as dishonest as a kid.  I’d be waiting the whole book for the sword scene.

Well, it did make for an okay cover image.  Painted in Photoshop, type design mine.

I ended up liking it.  My wife liked it.  My agent liked it.  My editor liked it.  She showed it to the Sales department, and they didn’t like it.

So we reeled back to an older idea: that of Scott approaching the cereal factory at night, seen only by the plaster eyes of mascots that overlook the entrance.

Now everybody was happy but me.  I was on the faculty of the Illustration Master Class in Amherst that summer (2011), so at the end of my keynote I put this cover up on screen.  I suggested that the students might enjoy critiquing one of my pieces after several grueling days of listening to the faculty critique theirs.  I remember being concerned that no one would feel comfortable digging in.  Instead, several students may have dislocated their shoulders from so much vigorous hand-raising.

They had, in fact, much better ideas than I could execute before the book went to print.  But I took as much as I could to heart and turned in this revision.  

Then I got to work on the 40-some pages of interior B&W illustrations, and started writing the sequel.

The sequel, Unlucky Charms, had its own cover struggles.  I thought I’d knocked it out of the park right away with a dreamy image of two of my heroes approaching a giant raven:

Turns out someone at HarperCollins is afraid of birds?  Or something?  Anyway, they said it was “too scary.”

The next was “too sexy.”

The third idea turned into one of my favorite digital paintings.

Everything just kind of came together–or at least, it did after I made a 3D staircase model in SketchUp to help me draw the vines.

I REALLY like this painting, which is why it pains me a little to tell you that it isn’t the cover of Unlucky Charms.

I believe Cold Cereal has been selling only modestly (I’m not sure because I only get sales figures twice a year, and it hasn’t been in stores all that long).  When a book isn’t performing to expectations the only thing you can really change about it is the cover.  So may I present the cover of the paperback edition of Cold Cereal:

And the redesigned Unlucky Charms, out this week:

I like them.  Again–Photoshop, dodgy type design mine.

I’m writing the third book, Champions of Breakfast, as you read this.  I already have an approved cover sketch.  They went along with the first idea I pitched.  It’s TERRIFYING.

Unlucky Charms is OUT!

To compensate you for this nakedly promotional post, please accept this disquieting picture of Queen Elizabeth II.

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)

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.

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.

Birdie.

Bunny.

This Is So Raven

Piece I just finished for the sequel to Cold Cereal.

Sequel to the Best Fan Letter of All Time

Dear Abraham Superlincoln (again),

My two through four favorite books are these: Wonderstruck (Brian Selznick), The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Brian Selznick), and The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkien). Although, I do very much like Frankenstein Makes A Sandwich and Other Stories You’re Sure to Like Because They’re All About Monsters and Some of Them are Also About Food. You Like Food Don’t You? Well All Right Then.

We love the Dracula with spinach between his teeth and the Phantom of the Opera.

In fact, my two friends Adam and Ian K. are writing a book of short stories inspired by your Frankenstein Makes A Sandwich and Other Stories You’re Sure to Like Because They’re All About Monsters and Some of Them are Also About Food. You Like Food Don’t You? Well All Right Then.. They’re short stories not poems, mind you. Sorry. So far, I’ve written one called When the Man in the Moon Had to Blink. It was written by guub in co-op with Equivalent Fractions. Ian K. wrote a sequel to Godzilla Pooped on my Honda. It was written by Ian K. in co-op with Miss Prime Minister. Adam wrote a story about why Medusa cut her hair.

I’ll try and send the stories once we finish them.

Your most likely #1 fan (I don’t think anybody is more fanly then me),

Gargantuan Space Scum

Fan Letter Fan

Everybody can stop writing fan letters now.  We've summited:

Hello Abraham Superlincoln,

My name is Gargantuan Space Scum. No. Actually, it’s Ian. Ian O. You can’t forget the O. Because I’m Ian O. and my friend is Ian K.. So we don’t get called Ian. We get called either Ian O. or Ian K.. Anyway. I am a 4^th grader and I live in Seattle, Washington.                             After I read your book Cold Cereal, my friends Adam and Kate read it. Then we started talking about Gorn, Weet, Noats, and Gorn-free, the Gornless Gorn substitute. Then we came up with a new type of Weet. Hole Weet. We thought it could be a new, healthier, type of ingredient that Goodco puts in their cereal. That’s my suggestion for a new ingredient called Hole Weet. If you like it or don’t like it or whatever, please write back.

Then also, one day I was eating cereal. I was thinking about your book because I was eating cereal. I thought of some new book titles for your next two books (if you make the Cold Cereal Saga a trilogy).

Frozen Oatmeal (or Frozen Porridge)

Sub-Zero Museli (or Sub-Zero Granola)

Those are my suggestions for book titles. If you like them or don’t like them or whatever, please write back.

               This letter has been written in crude handwriting by Gargantuan Space Scum.

P.S. Your book, The True Meaning of Smekday, has been officially proclaimed by me as my number one, all-time favorite book ever.

P.S.S. Your book, Cold Cereal, has been officially proclaimed by me as my number five, all-time favorite book ever.

Happy Beltane

So for May Day, here's something appropriately pagan-ish from Cold Cereal:

Know What's Fun to Paint?

VINES.

Head Games

“You!” he barked as he dismounted.  “Stay there!  Keep those hands where I can see them!”

 The normal-sized man with the tiny wrinkled head raised his arms.  “These hands?” he asked.

 The rider was all in black, with some thick and undoubtedly bullet-proof vest and an oily black gun slung over his shoulders.  He reached back to touch this gun as if drawing some shallow sense of strength and security from it, which of course he was.  He also had a small stone around his neck on a tether, a coldstone, and this was busily giving off purple sparks.  But in the glare of his headlamp the rider hadn’t noticed.

This old man was strangely built, like he hadn’t enough head but had entirely too much neck.  “The park isn’t safe tonight,” the rider told him.  “You should return to your home.”

“Mind turnin’ that off, lad?” the old man asked.

“Sorry,” said the rider, and he reached up to switch off the pink light of the helmet.

“Yeh have somethin’ in your eye,” the old man added.

“I…huh?” 

The rider pulled the goggles up and over his helmet.  And then he winced when he saw that, while the old man was still standing before him, his head had just now disappeared.

(From Cold Cereal)

Cold Cereal Available In Stores

I mean, obviously.  But my new book, Cold Cereal, is also now available.  I'm visiting schools in the midwest at the moment and couldn't make the time to really mark the occasion of its official on sale date earlier today, as I was too busy teaching children about the concept of the Uncanny Valley vis á vis pictures like the one to the right.

But Cold Cereal is available!  Now!  I was super flattered today to see that its audiobook performer, Oliver Wyman, called it the best kid's book he's ever read.  So.

Here are some Mick paper dolls for your amusement.  If there's enough interest I'll put high-res versions up somewhere and people can use 'em for bookmarks.

One of My Favorites From COLD CEREAL

WARNING: Mild Spoilers Ahead

And Now a Word From Our Sponsor

(Our sponsor being my new novel, Cold Cereal, available in February)