Dear Reader,
The next step for me was to find an illustrator. Before all this, I had found clip art online and made a rough illustrated version to share with my grandchildren. I can't draw at all. I made a little stapled booklet to share with them. This was the cover of the first illustrated version. I cut the fish out from one clip art and glued it in the tree.
Obviously, if I was serious about publishing this, I needed to hire an illustrator. I thought about using some local talented high school kids I knew, however, the publicist frightened me away from that when she talked about using the right pixels and other terms unfamiliar to me. I decided to hire a professional.
Once again, I searched the internet. It is amazing how this whole procedure could be done via the internet. I had already subscribed to "Writer's Weekly" via email, and they had a section of recommended illustrators. I narrowed down my favorite ones and finally contacted Chad Thompson to see if he would like to illustrate my book. His resume included seven years of working at Disney.
I was glad he enthusiastically agreed to do the illustrations. We signed the contracts, and the work began. For those thinking of pursing publishing your own books, the illustrator was the biggest expense, but I couldn't do it and I think Chad's work was awesome and well worth every penny.
It was a fascinating process. He would send me a page as he was working on them. Opening up the emails each time was like opening up a present. I would see my story come to life! Now to be honest, he started with the cover and that was a little agonizing. It was the hardest to find the tree that I liked best. I gave him a little hard time with it because I knew the cover was so important. He was probably frustrated with me, but once we finished that, the other pages were easier, for me, that is.
When working with an illustrator, I found out, you not only send them your story, but also a detailed description of what you want each illustration to show. Here I naively thought the story was obvious and what the pictures would look like, but I soon learned everyone has their own vision. Chad would do whatever my vision was, but I had to explain it to him.
Here is a sample of what he would send me.
It truly was like Christmas every time I opened a new email. I loved his addition of Twitchy clinging to acorns in most of the pictures. I asked him to give the boy in the picture a little bit longer hair in recognition of my grandson who was inspiration for this story. I asked for diversity of kids in the scene where the balloon went over kids at play, which Chad said was his vision too. It's all the little things like that which had to be communicated.
I really appreciated his vision of the turtles, but this ended up with a little problem which was easily solved after the sample copies were printed.
Originally, the story had only two turtles--one wiser, one younger. I loved his idea of putting one older, wiser turtle with two younger turtles. Instead of asking him to change the illustration, I changed the words. Fortunately, "two" was not one of the rhyming words and "three" had the same number of syllables. So, there are a handful of copies with two turtles--they will be collector's items one day worth money, just kidding.
I know I paid for the works, but as I said before, it seemed like a Christmas gift each time I opened an email. After the initial sketches were done, next came the colored pages.
What an awesome gift seeing the book come to life in illustrations. My journey through this was fascinating to me, working with my publicist, editor and illustrator in California, Pennsylvania and Florida without ever really meeting them. We live in such awesome times to be able to collaborate like this.
My publicist next added the text and other necessary pages with ISBN, title page, etc. to complete the book to be sent to the printer. Thus "A Fish in a Tree" was officially born.
I hope you liked learning about this process.
As Always,
Debbie
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