A special day for an Author/Illustrator

Today I had the wonderful opportunity to give a couple of presentations at Our Lady of Lourdes here in Vancouver. One hour for the pre-school to third grade, and then another hour for the fourth to eighth grade. I talked about what it's like to be an illustrator, and showed them the children's books I've finished, The Searcher; and The Little Leaf by Jairo Penaranda; and the interactive website I built.

Then we did "How to Draw" to wind things up. It was sort of like career day, before a much larger group. They have a great school there, from what I saw. The faculty were warm and friendly, and the kids were very well behaved. I had a lot of fun, and enjoyed talking with the students. I was amazed at how many very good artists they have there.

A special thank you from me to my friends Kim Wellman who thought the whole thing up and suggested it; to Beth Anderson the librarian at Our Lady of Lourdes for setting everthing up; and to Iris Wellman and my wife Angela for encouraging me to do it.


Here are some very cute kids drawing away.


They were really having fun here, drawing an elephant.


I really liked this young man's drawing of Chip.



At the end I walked down to the door, and as they filed out the kids showed me what they had drawn. It was so cool, to see their creativity on the page. I'm very glad I did this. Several kids asked me to autograph their drawings for them, that was kind of nifty. I also signed many copies of The Searcher which the kids had purchased and brought in.


Some were too shy to show me their work, while one girl was so excited she could hardly stand it. She wants to be an illustrator when she grows up, and gave me a drawing of a unicorn, which is now proudly on display in my office.

TheSearcher'sWorld!

Well, here's some big news for you. The big Flash website I've been working on for over a month now just went live. It's a companion website for my children's book The Searcher. There's still a lot of work to do, like adding a lot more downloads (there is currently only one, a very nifty maze). I'll also have to chase down some errors, and do some more technical stuff, but it's live if you would like to go check it out, click here. It's an interactive site, so be sure to mouse over everything, and click on all the characters, there are sounds, and animated snippets everywhere. As always, enjoy!

The Searcher news

There's a blog article over on HP Apps about how my book "The Searcher" was turned into a nifty little download. The hope is that those click throughs will result in a few book sales. Click here or on the book cover image to go check it out.

The Searcher

After a few years of hard work, many, many lessons learned, I am finally self-publishing "The Searcher". I wrote and illustrated this story. It's about a boy who loses his imagination, and spends the day tracking it down. It's an eclectic story, with many bizarre characters. I learned a lot about creating a book. Valuable lessons that will make my next book that much better. You can go see a preview of it here: blurb.com.

I'm also building a companion website for The Searcher at: TheSearchersWorld.com. Right now it's just a place holder image, with a link to the online store where you can purchase. But soon there will be pages with puzzles, mazes, coloring book pages you can download, and a book trailer to watch.

Christmas Bazaar

Last Friday I participated in a Christmas bazaar to raise money for Dornbecker Children's Hospital in Portland, Oregon. I took some copies of my children's book The Searcher (still looking for a publisher), some refrigerator magnets, and some t-shirts. I sold two magnets. Nothing else sold. Some might view this as a failure, but I don't. I think every little bit helps. I think we have to keep doing things to help those around us. I hear a lot of people talking about how messed up the world is today, I think it's up to us to make it better. So does Ooky. "Ook-ook!"