Visions of Sugar Plums Dance in my head

As promised, here is a peek at some more of the work that has kept me en pointe  lately.

Please welcome our next guest. She isn't a sugar plum, but she could teach you to make one, and she dances (though, admittedly, not well);

she's ChefArella!

ChefArella Is a rhyming story about a princess who wants to be a chef, but whose mother insists princesses should be ballerinas.

If all goes well, the story will be self-published by the author sometime next year (cross your fingers). I have been contracted to do some editing and illustrating.

I recently finished a mock-up, or "dummy" for the project. A dummy allows you to see how the book will split into pages and where the text will fall. It's a rather involved process, but a lot of fun. 

 For now, I will post some of my favorite thumbnails from the dummy. 

No Longer November

Obviously, it's no longer November. The last time I posted, I was excited about NaNoWriMo. Did I "win"?
"We all won!" the cheerily inclusive voice in my head exclaims.
"Ummm . . . no," the hard-boiled voice corrects, "don't be obnoxious."

So, to be honest, no, I didn't write the 50,000 words that I wanted to write in November. I did write about 27,500 words (to make a total of 32,088) for which I am justly proud.

I meant to write the extra 22,471 but life happened instead. To be exact, some jobs happened . . . all at the same time. Wanna see?

Here are a couple of coloring book covers created in Illustrator (or parts of them). They're highly Christmas appropriate, no?

. . . and a few interiors (drawn in Photoshop):

There is another project that has kept me busy lately, and I'm excited to share it with you all. I'll leave you with the tantalizing promise to post about it soon. Really.