How we lost 1 dog and ended up with 8...

Last Thursday I sat on the couch and stroked the fur of my beloved elderly miniature poodle, Willie, and told him it was okay to go if he felt it was his time. He died peacefully at 1pm. We didn't even get a chance to call the vet for euthanasia; they were closed for the day. I felt lucky that he died so beautifully, lucky I was with him and that he wasn't in terrible pain.
I did not feel lucky that he died.
We raised him from a tiny puppy, took him everywhere, taught him an assortment of silly tricks, gave him bad haircuts and incomplete trims. He was cute and very puppy-like in appearance, even as a little old man. And he was my shadow.
I knew I was going to miss him with an ache that wouldn't soon ease. I buried him with heart-shaped rocks.

Two days later by an odd combination of events, we found ourselves at the local animal control shelter, not to find a replacement, but just to observe life. We could have been anywhere else that day. We could have left the shelter early. We could have taken home the big old dogs we befriended there, convinced it was the right next path for our lives' journeys.
But we were there at closing, at the right time to see an old van pull up, and a sad young man bring out a big bin. I knew it was puppies or kittens in the bin. I thought, what kind of person brings a whole litter to a shelter? How irresponsible.
I actively avoided the drama, but it sucked me in: My 12 year old daughter was trapped inside the now-locked shelter, and the keys were with the animal control officers who were talking to the guy with the bin.
And since I saw prison inmates helping in the shelter, I wanted my Emily out of there as soon as possible.
The officers let Emily out of the building.
I let myself relax, then, enough to hear the man's story.
He's unemployed (so's my husband, and the guy across the street, and a few of our good friends, and a few relatives... Here in Michigan it's a common start to a story).
He lost his house. He and his family (wife, two teens with Down's Syndrome -- and that's another story in itself, but to me it said, here's a family with compassion and mercy) were moving to a relative's house for a while. They couldn't bring the dogs.

He found good homes for 3 puppies and the two parent dogs. Mom: full-blooded American pit bull terrier. Dad: half small Rottie, half big chihuahua.
In the bin: EIGHT puppies, age 7 weeks.

The Humane Society sent him away -- too many pups.
Animal Control was closed til Tuesday.
They asked me to foster the pups just til Tuesday. It didn't take long to say yes.
I promised the man we would find excellent (stable, appropriate) homes for the puppies. I turned down his offer of $25 for food until Tuesday.

Katie (age 20) and Emily were thrilled. My husband Charlie... not so excited.
But we did it.
It was an exhausting mix of sleeplessness, cooperation, and cramming our brains with Puppy 101 information from the Monks of New Skete (that's how I'd raised Willie), and Wikipedia, and an Animal Planet dvd.
Many times I felt like Octomom, torn in 8 directions.

I swear, puppies are liquid. Not that they pee a lot (they do) but that they disperse and spread like only a liquid can. This idea came to me at 3:30am as I tried to corral them enough to not lose them to the dark bushes and any hiding predators (we have hawks in the woods behind us), but not so much that they were inhibited about 'doing their business.'
Frantic that we might have 8 puppies forever, I put a note on my Facebook page. Friends came immediately, and some eventually adopted puppies from us. One of my fondest memories is of a bunch of neighbors and my kids and me (and Charlie) on the lawn with the puppies, giving them love and reporting on potty accomplishments and comparing each pup's personality and physical traits.
It was so sweet, and it took me right back to when our across-the-street neighbors had newborn puppies 6 years ago and they let then-6 Emily gently hold them that very day they were born.

As of yesterday, we've found homes for every wonderful pup:
Othello went home with Mary the first night.
Lady MacBeth became Bella, at Tyson, Beth's and Sydney's house. And we've seen her twice since. Yesterday she nearly licked my chin off. I'm convinced she remembered me.
Feisty Helena went home with Diane and Steven, dear friends who swore they were only coming over to help pet the puppies. I'll see her a lot. :) (She likely has a new name too, a comics-related one, because her big dog companion there is named Squee)
Henry became Zeus after going home yesterday with Michelle after a neighborhood picnic. He was perfectly behaved there and lots of people fell in love with him. I teared up kissing his forehead goodbye. If that adoption doesn't work out, I have another lady waiting to take him.
Tybalt will become Zeus also (!) next week on Friday, when he goes home with Heather. It's not yet a good time for them to take him.
Rosalind, Rozzie, is up north vacationing with my son and his wife. She will live here until they find an apartment that allows pets (or negotiate with the current landlord).
Boots Tewksbury is Katie's now, and he will live here until she moves out, maybe this fall. (She's taking a break from college)
Clarence is ours. He's the right combination of spirit and docile, intellect and playfulness, for Charlie, Emily and me.

Those are all Shakespearean names -- did you notice? It all started with a hamster named Hamlet.
I'll probably still tell my funny Willie story in my author events at libraries -- kids always laugh on cue. I won't tell them Willie is gone now. I don't want to cry at author events.
But, maybe soon I will have funny puppy stories to tell, too.

The vet gave us tips on avoiding aggression, and he answered a million questions, and he gave them their first shots.
The neighbor kids come to play a few times a day.
We still have to get up in the middle of the night. Charlie's become an active participant in their care -- he handles the morning shift. I am grateful to have Emily and Katie around -- they're experts in the puppies' care too. Katie's teaching them to sit. I think they've caught on. I also think they've gone backwards, a little, on potty training. (argh)
We aren't looking for new puppy homes anymore -- we're all set.

I looked in the mirror a couple days ago and noticed I was smiling.
The sadness of losing Willie won't evaporate, but I feel very lucky to have had, for one day, the distraction of eight new puppies to love. (the next day it was 7, two days later it was 5, today 4...) But, really, as losing Willie taught me, I'll always have those puppies to love, even if they're in new, far-away homes.

And now, I have to get back to revisions for Ellie McDoodle: Best Friends Fur-Ever, due in stores in 2010. If you see Shakespearean names in the finished book, you'll know why.

(No photos of the pups - my digital camera broke last year. No drawings uploaded yet - I've been in survival mode. At some point I'll upload some)

FAQs: Has your life changed since becoming an author?

Today another writer asked me, "Has your life changed since becoming a published author?"

My answer: Oh, yes.

I go to bookstores and libraries about as often as I used to (once a week or so), but now I usually look for my book on the shelf.
If they have it I offer to sign it.
If they don't, I show them my copy and give them the elevator pitch: explain how it's often compared to Diary of a Wimpy Kid (a book almost everyone knows), and how it appeals to both reluctant and avid readers, boys and girls alike. Usually they say they'll check it out online.

I travel more now -- visited 23 schools in March alone. I have stayed in very nice hotels I couldn't have otherwise managed. Hunted for Petoskey stones, learned more about the Underground Railroad, flew my family to Manhattan. I love mixing travel, art, books and kids. There's nothing better.

I used to wonder if I'd ever find where I fit into the big publishing world.
Now I have a better idea of my strengths and weaknesses.

I used to wonder when I will be financially solvent, when I will pay my bills without worry, when I will be able to buy whatever I want, within reason.
Now I know... it'll be a while.

I used to wonder what it would be like to do author presentations in big, fancy libraries with famous names on them, to compare books with famous authors and illustrators, to walk into a bookstore unnoticed and spy on a person buying my book off the shelf.
Now I know. It's fabulous. It's amazingly wonderful. It's better than I thought it would be.

I used to marvel at how Real Authors put together word after word, sentence after sentence, metaphor after brainstorm, on and on, to a completed book and a sequel and a series. I thought they were brilliant -- that they had a magic muse that spoke into their pens and typewriters.
Now I know:
It's with thoughtfulness, hard work, B.I.C. (body in chair, I tell kids at my school events), writing when your brain won't produce anything great, pushing yourself through rejection, through fallow times, through melancholy and depression, through anxiety and panic, through uncreative lulls.
It's with faith that when it's finished, the book will be worth reading, even though there are many times before then that it seems impossible.

I used to think that when I got published my insecurities would end.
Now I know they merely shifted. I still worry about whether the next book will sell. I still write down every idea for a new book, scrabbling to get it down before it escapes me, and I wonder if it'll ever see real, typeset words on real paper between real paper-over-board covers.

Once in exasperation my agent said, in a crowd, "Yes, Ruth, you're my favorite." I felt mortified -- flashback to my childhood: were the others going to beat me up for garnering probably-temporary favor? -- and I felt embarrassed -- of course she was being facetious, wasn't I perceptive enough to pick up on that? -- and I felt exhilarated -- maybe she really meant it, just a little!
I guess I haven't grown much since I pushed my brothers and sisters out of the way so I could have alone time (alone nanoseconds) with Mom.

I used to think learning was a curve, starting low, climbing, then falling, with a finite end. Now I see that it never ends -- and in fact the amount of stuff to learn is an ever-growing mountain.
The more I know about writing and illustration and books, the more I want to know about writing and illustration and books -- and the more I realize I don't know.

My editor said a few years ago that we want Ellie McDoodle to steadily climb the charts, not to shoot to the top right away.
I didn't understand why, then.
Now I do.
Each stage of this publishing life has meant an adjustment for me. I don't know how I would have handled it if it had happened big and quick.
I'd sure like to find out how I will handle it, when Ellie gets to the top. :)
(meaning, I hope it gets there!)
I love where it's at right now, too.

Are you a writer? Keep at it. B.I.C. It's worth the effort and the pain.

Kids Read Comics Convention! Free!

Coming up soon! This weekend!
Friday/Saturday, June 12-13: The Kids Read Comics Convention in Chelsea, Michigan at the Chelsea District Library (and some at the River Gallery and Chelsea Depot). It's FREE! Every bit of it is FREE! And there's a zillion things to do there. Tell everyone you know. Bring the kids. Register in advance for some of the events. All the programming is listed here and it's very impressive.
Masquerade ball and auction, Arts Jam, lots of informative and fun sessions.
Ever want to write or draw comics or comic strips or find out more about how it's done? This is the place for you!
Got kids who love to write or draw? They will adore this convention.

I'll be doing some drawing and doodling at it, and I'll be checking out some of the other presenters, too. I'm so excited to be a part of this -- read all about it on the Kids Read Comics Con website.

Wish I could be there for the whole thing!
But I'm in New York City this week, flying into Detroit just in time for the Saturday part of the convention -- I'm visiting Columbus Elementary School in New Rochelle, and then speaking with a book discussion group at the New York Public Library -- the big building with the lions out front, at Fifth and 42nd.
I'll also sign a few books at the wonderful Books of Wonder store and meet with the brilliant people who help put together the Ellie McDoodle books, the staff at Bloomsbury. (I loooove Bloomsbury. I have the best Editor. And the best Publicist. And the best School-Library expert. And the best Art Director. And the best support staff in the world. I'm lucky to be working with them on the next two books. :)
AND -- the icing on the cake -- I'm meeting up with two dear artist friends, one is flying in from Moose Jaw, Canada (and originally from South Africa) and the other is ferrying in from Staten Island. It's our first time all together in the same place. I can't wait.
So of course I am bringing a sketchbook to fill! (and a spare, just in case there's a lot to draw)

If you want to see earlier sketches of New York City, go to my website and click on sketches at the bottom of the first page. It'll take you to a page with lots of sketchbooks, 3 from SCBWI conferences in NYC.

Doodling proves useful -- big surprise?

This article gives the details on a February 28 report in Ap­plied Cog­ni­tive Psy­chol­o­gy about a study on the value of doodling: Test subjects giv­en a doo­dling task while lis­ten­ing to a dull phone mes­sage had im­proved re­call over non-doo­dling subjects -- and we're talking about a 29% improvement.
Doodle! It makes you retain information better! (I knew it all along)
I loved the teachers in my high school who understood that doodling helped my retention of information. They let me doodle during class and I was grateful -- it was a big motivator for me, to get even more work done.
I let kids doodle during my author presentations. After almost every session, there are a few kids who run up to show me how they've covered nearly every inch of the paper. Invariably, they're expanding on something I said -- and it doesn't appear at all to me that they're drawing instead of listening.
They're drawing while listening.
Like I do.
Kids are so smart -- they're learning early what it took me years to figure out (and what it took science decades more to prove).

March is Reading Month 2009

This month I signed (and added a sketch or two to) more than 1000 books. Final count is about 1345. In one month. Wow!

By tomorrow, my last school event in March,
I will have visited 23 schools: St. Clare of Montefalco in Grosse Pointe Park; Cedar Street Elementary, Steele St. Elementary, and North Aurelius Elementary in Mason; Flanders, Beechview, William Grace, Lanigan, Highmeadow, Forest, Kenbrook, Wood Creek, Gill, Hillside, Wooddale, Longacre and Eagle in Farmington; Bath Elementary in Bath; Madison Elementary in Dearborn Heights; Wexford, Forest View and Willow in Lansing; and, tomorrow, Cherry Creek Elementary in Lowell.
Plus 1 conference (MRA in Grand Rapids), 1 library (Farmington Public Library), and 1 bookstore (Barnes & Noble in East Lansing).
I made connections with many wonderful librarians and teachers and a few booksellers.

I am especially grateful to Sue Kalisky of Highmeadow and Lisa Salowich of Wooddale for sharing their room at the Amway Grand Plaza with me. We met in Farmington and they offered to hang out at the MRA. We enjoyed a delightful dinner at a Tapas Restaurant (my first -- can't wait to return!) and an enlightening visit to the new Grand Rapids Art Museum. It would have been difficult to present at the MRA without staying overnight. How kind of them to invite me in.

Nancy Morris of William Grace also extended a kind invitation to tour a little in Portland, Oregon, when I am there for a writer retreat in July-August. I can't wait.

Many thanks to the schools who hosted me. What a fabulous month this has been. Thank you to the students and staff who were so kind to me in my visits, and to the tireless organizers of all the events. I know it's tough bringing in an author for a visit; there's a lot to manage.

I am still smiling about all the fantastic student work in the various schools, the art on the walls, the writing exercises, the creativity shown by both teachers and students. I'm astounded at the brilliance I saw in so many schools.

Special thanks to Denise Gundle-White at Wood Creek for organizing all of my Farmington events as part of their Book Parade.

(Want to host me at your school or library? Details here on my website: http://ruthexpress.com/art/ellie/schoolvisits.html )

On a more personal front, this month I also juggled 2 bridal showers for my beautiful and fun future daughter-in-law, 1 dress fitting for our junior bridesmaid, thankfully no funerals in March (3 in Jan-Feb), helped paint the dining room, hallway and living room, helped my husband through the loss of his job and hopefully gaining of a new one (crossing fingers) and also through the loss of our car, rental of a new one, and -- maybe today -- purchase of a replacement, read my writing buddy Amy Huntley's fantastic new book, The Everafter (I laughed, I cried; I was greatly impressed with the emotion, the voice and the structure), and I wrote and drew a few "Extras" for the Ellie McDoodle: New Kid in School paperback edition which comes out this summer. (And, if you saw any of my presentations this month, you know I also had to do revisions for those "Extras")

Soon to come, more revisions! Yippee! This time for the third Ellie book, Ellie McDoodle: Best Friends Fur-Ever, the first draft of which I finished in record time, right before March began.

My editor's sending me the revisions letter (and if you saw any of my presentations you know that's a thick dark line listing more than 100 items to change) sometime in the next few days.
And if you saw my presentation you know there will be another revisions letter, too, hopefully smaller, arriving in the coming weeks, after I make all the requested changes and redraw every single page for this set of revisions.
And if I am lucky, then the book will be done and it will go to prepress sometime this summer for publication next summer.
It takes a long time and a lot of hard work to create a book.
And to live life which, no matter how tightly I plan it, is always bringing something unforeseen.

Whew.

So why do I do this?
Because I am in love with my job. And with my life.


(from my 2006 NYC sketchbook just after meeting my editor and many of the brilliant people associated with creating the Ellie McDoodle books)

New! The wireless interface for reading!

Check out the above comic by Penny Arcade here:
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/9/

It's all about a new wireless platform for readers.
Can't wait to see more of these in stores and libraries! ;)

Lots of great news - Beverly Cleary Award nomination!

Ellie McDoodle is nominated for the Beverly Cleary Children's Choice Award for 2010! I am thrilled. There are only 6 nominees. One is my friend Katie Speck. It's an honor just to be nominated (but I hope I win).




(this true cartoon of my son shows why I don't tell kids they can grow up to be anything they want, if they just try hard enough)


Ellie McDoodle is mentioned very favorably in an article in Publishers Weekly about a new trend in children's illustrated books. A few books are mentioned as derivative (I can imagine that's a painful label) and I was glad to see Ellie grouped with The Princess Diaries as books that break new ground.




The third book is being created right now! I sent the first draft to my editor on Feb 27 (met the deadline! Woo hoo!) and the revisions letter should arrive at my house sometime in the next few days. I'll have just a few weeks to redraw everything, then will send it back to her, and I'll have a week or two off while my editor considers all the changes. She'll write another revisions letter, I'll do my best to improve everything, and the final art/text deadline is June 1. It'll be a busy spring.











I'm doing a LOT of school visits these days. In March alone, I visited so far:
- 17 schools (Grosse Pointe, Mason, Farmington)
- 1 library (Farmington)
- 1 MRA conference (Michigan Reading Assoc)
- 1 unofficial library visit (Harper Woods) and that's only the first two weeks of March!
I still have a few author visits every week for the next few weeks (Bath, Dearborn Heights, East Lansing, Lansing, Lowell, to start).
Life's busy. I'm happy. I LOVE presenting to audiences about the Ellie McDoodle books.
If you'd like to book me for a visit (hurry before my low, low rates go up in the autumn), go to my website, go to the For Teachers page, and all the information is there.
I still have a couple days open this month if you'd like something now.
Otherwise, I am booking now for summer and the next school year.
It's never too early to book a day/week with me, and you might find you're saving a bit by locking in my current rates now.

I sketched lots of teachers, librarians and authors at the Michigan Reading Association Conference at the Amway Grand Hotel in Grand Rapids, Michigan, this weekend. Watch for pages uploaded here soon. Presenting was great fun! I had lots of handouts made specially for my sessions. They went fast -- I'll upload copies to my website soon, for use in your schools.

As we come up on another spring - finally! -- I encourage everyone to find a child and give him/her a journal. It could be a folded piece of paper. It could be a bound one from a bookstore. It could have lines or blank pages, fancy or plain, expensive or cheap. Your choice. Just encourage a kid to journal. It makes kids into better writers. And encourage them to draw, too -- because studies in Art Literacy show that when kids create art it makes them better writers as well! Weird sort of confluence of talent, don't you think?
I'm pushing my 11 year old daughter to journal more.
My teacher was the first person to give me a journal and encourage me in such a way that it stuck. I was 15, and have kept a sketch journal ever since. I have sketch journals from trips, births, funerals, weddings, field trips, daily life... hundreds at my house. (My daughter and her fiance are building bookcases at my house this week -- yippee!!!!! -- to accommodate all the books and sketchjournals here) Keeping a sketchjournal helped me through many tough times in my life and it grounded me during the happy times.
Encourage a kid near you -- that kid might grow up to thank you in front of large crowds at conferences... as I did this weekend.
Aside to the wonderful Elizabeth McCarthy, art teacher at Harper Woods Secondary School when I was 15 in 1974: I will always revere you. Thank you for singling out this miserable teen and giving me a lifeline in the form of a sketchjournal, a tool that still helps, 35 years later.

If anyone can help me sniff out Mrs. McCarthy's location, let me know!

By the way, I am a multiple-award-winning writer and illustrator. I am America's Most-Harried Home Cook, Dr. Mom, Kudos Working Mother of the Year, Suave's Family Manager of the Year, and several other honorary titles.
You can just call me your pal, though. ;)
And now, back to work for me!

Charity begins ad hoc

(I'd say charity begins ad hom, and I'd argue it's accurate, but since ad hominem is commonly used for negative, it's better to avoid it here)

My friend Peter Davis wrote this brilliant poem about Neanderthal charity.

My friend Shutta Crum started a wave of charitable contributions by writers for writers, when she offered, in the spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, to critique three manuscripts for free, and challenged other writers to make a similar contribution to the greater good of our readers.
Quite a few did!
Michigan's SCBWI email group was awash in offers of all kinds -- rhyming picturebook help from Debbie Diesen, magazine/internet help from Patti Richards, non-fiction help from Buffy Silverman, picturebook help from Boni Ashburn, school visit or independent publishing advice from Kevin Kammeraad, novel chapters and query letters crits from Kristin Nitz ... it's heartwarming.
Congratulations to those lucky writers who won the crits, and thank you to the generous writers who offered them.
I hope Shutta's idea spreads beyond Michigan.


Our daughter gave us some Italian cauliflower yesterday. It's the weirdest plant I've seen in ages. This link takes you to the Park Seeds catalog image. It tastes like soft broccoli. I hope Park Seeds will be charitable about letting me post the pic here.
I'd draw it but I'm supposed to be writing a book right now, and that's a pretty complex floret...

Back to work. <3

Stuff I otter do...

<- my otter. Maybe he needs his own book to star in...

In the old days we illustrators kept clip files or morgues of photos and illustrations of random things to refer to later, and to draw from.
It's hard imagining what a $100 bill looks like when you're on a tight deadline at the newspaper and none of the account executives have anything bigger than a $20 on them; dig through the clip file and it's there.
I had dozens of pictures of money -- and five file drawers stuffed full of other images on a hundred topics.
Nowadays I just search online for help with what I'm imagining in my head. Combine a bobcat, a snow leopard and a person for a caricature? No problem: Google Images has changed the way I live.
I've dismantled part of the morgue; it's hard to get rid of all of it, but it's been years since I used any of it.
I otter just get rid of all the files, to make room for more books...

That's my biggest vice. I can go without food or new clothes. I can't go without books. And it's not just me -- my husband and kids are all voracious readers.
Our books are all over the house, disorganized and sometimes hard to find. We have a few hundred in each of the kids' rooms, a few thousand in the basement, a zillion in the living room, and who knows how many in my studio.
My daughter's middle school had a used book sale in November, and she got a prize for donating the second largest number, 500, and we bought and brought home almost as many from the sale...
I otter get some shelves. Floor to ceiling.

The book depository here (Sarah Sullivan's at Through the Tollbooth) is what I crave for my collection.
My pal Debbie Diesen has a wall like that at her house, too.
I otter write something compelling so I can make enough $$ to hire someone to build that kind of shelf wall for me (because I'm no carpenter).
So that's it. My 2009 Resolution is not to eat less or exercise more (those are mandates, not mere goals): It's to write lots of compelling stuff. Compelling = a good hook.
Back to work... :)

A fairy good start to 2009 ;)

Happy New Year!
This pin's from at least 15 years ago. I drew it for my grandpa, along with 11 others, representing the months of the year. When he died, the family returned to me all the drawings and cartoons and pins I'd sent him over the years. Someday I'll compile it all into a book.
If you'd like to make buttons for your grandpa, check out this cool site. It's where I bought my button maker 25 years ago.

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Look what I got from Rebecca Thornburgh: A fairy name!
According to the fairy site:
My fairy is called Fire Saturnfilter
She is a trouble maker.
She lives where fireflies mate and breed.
She is only seen on midsummer's eve.
Her dresses glow with fiery colours.
She has delicate pale pink wings like a cicada.

Ah, yes, a troublemaker -- that and the fireflies part are true to life. ;)
Here's what my fairy really looks like, if you ask me...(I drew this a few years ago as part of an illustrator group exercise)

^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v
I like Thornburgh's art.
For one thing, not many people have the guts to sketch in church. I always do, and now I see she draws in church too.
But I also like her warm, whimsical painting style. Check it out here. (She's even illustrated a few witch family books -- the thing I most wanted to do in the future, when I was a little kid)