My Book an eBook

So after eleven years in the making, Lissy-Lost!, my first book written and illustrated by moi, has taken the digital leap to an eBook. 

"L2" (Lissy-Lost!) as my daughter so lovingly calls this book, is now available from Barnes & Noble for the mere price of $3.99. (And you can even download free eBook reader apps at BN for your PC, Android, iPad and Pod and more!)

When I purchased my Nook color I never really thought about having L2 go digital. But after getting the book reprinted I thought why the heck not jump on the bitmap bandwagon.

It started off as an experiment to see how it would go. I download books on my Nook every so often--OK all the time--but only to see how other books look:  illustrations, layout, overall feel. (OK, I love story.) But the L2 paperback book is glossy, colorful and can be flipped to pictures and passages. Pages can be dog-eared, bent and even colored in if you are six (my first book altering art pieces had coloring and signatures in them--Marie still laughs at me as I still sign my name in my books--in a family of six as a kid you had to claim your things).

So now that L2 is out there floating on the waves of electronica, how do I market it?  Any suggestions?  I have read a few blogs and such going over the same problem or challenge. Blog about it, tell folks on FB...umm I ran out of ideas. Why? Because my brain is usually in CREATE mode NOT market mode and moves on to the next shiny thing. 

I have a book signing at our Pinckney Library next week and will have books there to sign and do a small program for kids and I will mention the new "eL2". But how do you sign an eBook? Collect signatures in a drawing program? I did download a kid's coloring program on my Nook and actually thought about having Ruth McNally Barshaw of Ellie McDoodle fame sign her name with her finger and draw her Ellie at the Comic Jam in Chelsea last week.

Will my next book be an eBook? Perhaps not. I like the paper. Heck, L2 is a 30% post-consumer waste and the printer supports the Plant a Billion Trees Program. But with Holly Wild, or HW, you will be able to stick it in a pocket, it will need no batteries or charging and can get it wet in a tent on a dark and spooky, stormy night. And I want kids to draw in it, fold it, color it--interact with it. Make it personal and sign their own name in it. Afterall, reading a book is a personal experience.

Like we writers, illustrators and editors said when we met over a month ago over dinner, we (the public) won't be handing down eBooks to Grandma's grandkids when she dies or saying fondly, "Oh, that was Grandma's favorite app! Who gets it?" There will be no wear and tear and aging of these eBooks. My daughter and I collect old, old kids books and run and fight over who saw what first when we shop for them. I can't see this happening with eBooks. (AND the names and coloring of pictures in those books make them more so endearing.)

Sign my Nook drawing program?

I love my Nook because I do love books. I still use our local library (mostly for a pickup point for MEL books) and even request books from them on my Nook. I'm not right, I know. But my Nook is handy--a portfolio, email and FB at a WiFi touch and I can pull it out and jump into a book at any time--and the kid drawing program occasionally soothes my artist ADD--but give me paper or a paper book anytime for pure fun.

I still love the creating process of sketching and drawing and try to stress this to folks young and old that I meet. After I sold a book to a family last weekend at the Ann Arbor Artisan Market I showed them the sketches I did while doodling and how they became the final illustrations for the book.

I'll always like the primitive feel and smell of pen and pencil on paper. And to draw with a Nook finger is a bit like an Etch-a-Sketch. So I can't see doing any eBook signings anytime soon.

But if you purchase a copy of L2 online at Barnes and Noble, I'll email you a bookmark!

But if you want the old-fashioned paperback it is available for purchase at many fine stores listed on my website.

People Watching at the Market

What does an artist/illustrator do when they can't hit the woods to study wildlife? They study and sketch "People Life" while sitting in a booth at an art show or artist market. People watching.

It's a fun change of pace from birdwatching. And people can be just as entertaining and colorful too, as they go about their nesting, food gathering and flocking activities!

And sometimes illustrators need illustrations of "extras" for backgrounds.  An interesting array of characters, footwear, hats, clothes and characters are set before you.

(Music making, talking, looking and watching specimens)

Varied body types, ages, cultures are all on parade. Enjoy. Get in on their fun. What are all of these people talking about? Pick up snippets of conversation. What is happening? From these sketches you can see that it is summer. Just like "field notes" in the wild, date your sketch.

(Food and art gathering activities and specimens on the move.)

What was the weather like? This was a hot Sunday. Sunglasses, shorts and sandals? Even the day of the week can tell alot about how people dress. How people carry things goes beyond paper or plastic. Backpack, belly pack or bag? How do they move. Are they coming home from church, shopping, going fishing...

(Get front, side and back shots before the flock senses danger and scatters.)

(Flashy male specimen with plumage)

...or selling their art?!

Whatever the occasion take time to take notes. As you People Watch, you may get people watching you watching others. It's a great conversation starter. People are fascinated by someone putting pen to paper.

Go to the beach, go to a fair, go to a farmer's market. Get out and people watch and draw them before they know it.

Spring Memories

I was going through my sketchbook on this blustery chill morning after we built a fire in the wood stove. Ah, memories of days gone by!

One of the ultimately important reasons to carry a sketchbook anywhere. Getting down the story of the BIG in SMALL moments. Can you remember spring?

Now that the morel mushrooms are gone and the nesting bird's homeland security songs are done let's take a walk back in time and sketches to the SMALL moments that made the BIG jump from a yellow-green world to full vibrant green. It's a good rainy day (another) to put off laundry and gardening and instead dream, create and finish projects begun in the winter. So here is to spring and all of the firsts.

The first hummingbird sighting.
The first tiny mouse ear maple leaves wrapped up in shimmering spider webs. Webs that H.B. (what my mother used to affectionately call hummingbirds) will make into a tidy nest. Then there is the first dandelion and the first violet that come with the first toad trill and tree frog song. Singers who come after the first spring peepers and chorus frogs.

The BIG Spring Picture

The first blooming wildflowers along the creek at Brighton Rec Are. The first warblers in search of bugs and nesting places. Skunk cabbage and marsh marigolds poking between the scouring rush pencils. The smell of cut grass and cherry blossoms comes before the fragrant cursed autumn olive blossoms.

The SMALL Spring Picture

And the first beginnings of the first warm, green small worlds hidden in the grass. Warm. Remember warm? Time flies and lately so does rain, so take time to investigate your world and enjoy it when the warm weather does return.

Get out and draw on nature. May you make each moment a beautiful memory--to call on later.

HERE There Be MONSTERS!

OK...so I went from a spring frolic through he woods in search of herps--to a hunt for MONSTERS!

As a an illustrator and artist, my IMAGINATION often runs amok! And this time, with the aid of my cheap microscope and pond water, my imagination certainly ran a-muck and stayed there.

Cyclops, and worms and larva OH MY!

What started off as an innocent day of exploration at the local marsh transformed into MONSTER MANIA! MANIA! MANIA! What wonders lie in a drop of pond water. Beings like cyclops, water fleas, worms and the best and most FEARED of all...mosquito larva.

Water Monsters! What a great way for kids to learn about microinvertebrates...and also an important lesson about NOT to drink pond water. YIKES! I could not even begin to count all these hairy, wiggly, swimming, twirling, darting and dashing creatures that lived in my cup of pond water. More than once I had to make sure that my coffee cup was not at hand and mistake my portable "Monstarium" (A McDonald's yogurt cup used as an aquarium) for my beverage. Despite these creature's grossness and ickiness, they are necessary and important to the health of our vernal ponds, marshes and lakes.

With my Mad Scientist Laboratory up and running I used my pink plastic dropper to place the squirming fellows onto a slide to sketch them. Ah, high school Microbiology I all over again! After every "visiting" session under the 40x objective I returned the creatures to their watery nursery. One day after the Monstarium had been in the sun, I spied a "wiggler" (mosquito larva) hopping about underwater. My little Frankenstein monster seemed happy in his home. It was after I added moss to the cup that things got kicking (Moss is the fave food and habitat for "water bears", a creature I have been hunting for over a year.) The "wiggler" got bigger and more tiny water bugs danced about.

Now, any monster that can breathe out of its butt has my vote. Especially when it transforms into a flying, blood-sucking creature feared by many and is an annoyance to all. I must say, that when I went back to the Monstarium a few days later to check on my creature it had hatched. I opened the lid and out it flew--the wiggler was now a full-grown mosquito--and out of its watery nursery. Oops! Wait til the rest of my Bear Track laboratory pals catch my hatchling buzzing their noggins at night. Now THAT'S scary.

With that experiment over I decided to put away the microscope and sketch my new pet crested gecko, "Peaches". The crested gecko was thought to have been extinct until recently. It was discovered in 1994 on the island Caledonia and has come back with such gusto that they are up on the pet trade market. This amazing reptilian acrobat has a prehensile tail like our opossum and is arboreal--and has cute "eyelashes".

As a cold-blooded, cricket-eating tree climber that eats its own skin, I say you could not ask for a better dragon/monster model. What a great model. (It does look kinda like a reptilian Chihuahua.)

Then I met a young fellow citizen scientist (age 10) in Petoskey. He had two geckos of his own--and proud of them. Their names were "Lightning" and "Strike". Dang! Now those are super-cool names. Why didn't I think of that? But I guess "Peaches" (with his side-kick "Kenny")could strike fear into hearts if he is someday transformed into a dragon. And I may even borrow the name "LightingStrike" for his cartoon dragon character name.

But for now I will continue my "water bear" search and sketch creatures big and small for creepy characters.

Chasing Ideas and Characters All Over the Place

So I'm off to an illustration workshop in Petoskey, MI tomorrow given by Matt Faulkner. Our assignment was to illustrate a pencil sketch of a dream within a month of the workshop. OK, I have colorful dreams. But let me tell you, when someone says, "Drop everything and Dream!"...I can't!

Oh how I tried. I drank lots of water before bed--that just brought about lots of midnight trips. I tried eating spicy foods--nope, nothing. I tried to fill my mind with crazy images and read before sleeping.
The result was a silly cat dream, a mastodon and a raging buffalo. Nothing to write home about or illustrate. It was the toughest homework ever. So while chasing this dream across the land and through the swamps, an image and story struck me like a hammer blow.

Chasing this dream all over was the work of The Trickster. And this time it was not Coyote who called me. Images poured in and sketchbooks came out. Rabbits! Tricky rabbit. My favorite story, The Adventures of Great Rabbit, an Algonquin Tale. It was perfect. It made me realize that sometimes we chase our dreams, our ideas, our illusions and our anger all over the land. And during this focused chase, we lose a bit of ourselves and always seem to come back full circle. We end the chase where we started it, get frustrated and continue the chase again and never let it go.

Rough sketch of "Muchabig Rabbit"

In the story, Wild Cat lost his tail chasing his enemy, the Great Rabbit with biggish ears. So I pulled out my sketch from when I had actually seen Rabbit in the tree above whilst riding north on M127. I had sketched the scene as we zipped by. Ah, the beauty of quick gesture sketches. Then last week on our way to Petoskey we hit that stretch of highway and I started sketching plants and trees along there to go with the tale.

Pencil sketch of  "SpitFire Cat"

Coming up with an interactive scene to illustrate, I was reminded of memories of sitting around a campfire and smoke annoyingly wafting into our faces. A friend told me that when that happens, just say, "I hate rabbits!" and the smoke will change direction. Ever since then, it has been a silent chant of mine around a bonfire. I don't know where he got this idea from, but it works and it works for a story illustration.

A scene where SpitFire Cat is about to be tricked again!

So now I have my homework done. It was more than a pencil sketch. And hey, it was a day dream and not a night dream. It got me to rewrite the tale in a colorful way and something to illustrate for a magazine story or portfolio piece. Now I am ready for the class and excited to see what Matt has in store for us on Wednesday.

Like wildcat, if you sit still long enough, the bunny will run down the trail right to you!

Springtime and the HERPING is Fine!

Happy Herping one and all! It's that time of year when we run outdoors in search of eggs and hidden surprises. OK, if you're me that's what you do.

And last week was no exception--especially after having done a brief hospital stay. I was more than ready to get UP and get OUT and the Brighton Rec. Area, our first choice, is one of our favorite hiking and herping places.

So, Lori, what the heck is a herp? A herp (short for herpetology--the study of amphibians and reptiles) is a turtle, frog, salamander, or snake. The day had warmed nicely, (remember warm weather?) so by the time we hit the trail the frogs were in tune and were having a grand ol time. There were the chorus frogs (sounds like a thumb running over a comb) and the spring peepers (high, shrill peeping song) and wood frogs (sounds like quacking ducks). I could tell it would be a good hike if I kept my ears and eyes open .

When herp hunting and hiking don't forget to do some "log rolling". This is a great way to spot tiny red-backed salamanders. I was successful in finding a few this day. It was Marie and Lisa's first time to see a "red-back" and were surprised to see that the lil guys are no bigger than a worm. Tightly coiled under rotting logs they stay cool and moist. While you're investigating look the red-back salamander neighbors, worms, mites, sow bugs and of course the small white, round "sally" eggs.
And, while you're "log rolling" don't forget to "roll back", meaning replace the cover material over the herp to keep it safe and moist. If the cover item is too heavy, roll it as close as possible and keep the disturbance of the habitat to a minimum.

Spring creepy crawlers

As the day went on, I sprawled out on a fallen oak and took in the sights, smells and frog song and watched vernal pond life waking. Water mites, mosquito larva and beetles danced in the sun on the water surface and below. Very hypnotizing and calming. That's when Marie, who was on her own wildflower hike, called me over to see a Blanding's turtle making her way to the trail through the leaves.

Spring Hide and Seek

This turtle, Michigan's species of special concern, is known for their bright lemon-yellow throat. Whew! I knew this female was safe out here in the woods, but out in suburban areas her kinfolk would be crossing the roads to lay eggs and dodging cars. I've seen so many of these beautiful Blanding's end up a scarred and dead turtles. It's not pretty. And it's not like they are a small turtle and easily missed. Some folks seem to think of them as a disposable, moving target and this valuable herp is at risk this time of year. So keep an eye out for turtles as you go about your day.

As this was a day of "sally's", frogs and turtles--and no snakes, I decided to go back the next day and try my luck at another vernal pond.

Crossing a stream and up through whispering pines I came to another popular frog pond and went into the woods.

I had taken my exploring equipment and a McDonald's yogurt parfait (which after emptying and wiping clean, makes an excellent mini aquarium for observation) into the woods for a relaxing pond sit. I was kept company by racing chipmunks and thumbnail-sized spring peepers who hopped like popcorn through the leaves.

Sitting there, I was entertained by the wood frogs and their never ending circular spinning and chasing and warbling song, I noticed EGGS in the oak leaf-carpeted water! Round, jelly-like globs with dark centers were attached to submerged oak leaves here and there. What a find!

After scooping and sketching the eggs I placed them carefully back in the water and collected a take-home water sample in my official "McDonald's parfait and specimen observation container" for my microscope.

Once home with my sample, I was amazed to see creatures doing their own springtime dance under a 40x power microscope objective on the glass slide.

Squirming, jerking, zipping, rolling, squeezing and propelling endlessly.

All in all it, was a fascinating and complete look of vernal pond life and end of adventure. Life above, below and on the surface.

I hope you take time to GET UP and GET OUT for an egg and treasure hunt this month and see your own Spring Show while it's still playing at a pond nearest you!

Hospital ART!

"When I was sick and lay abed, and had two hospital pillows at my head,

All about me pen and paper lay

And my new NOOKcolor on which to play!"



Down to my "beaver boxers"!

HOSPITAL! Disrobe and put on this crazy cool gown. Now lie still as nurses plaster more sticky pieces on you than checkers on a game board!

The weekend went from going to Barnes & Noble for Advanced Nookcolor classes to a trip to the Urgent Care clinic in a heartbeat (pun intended). After battling 8 weeks of a bronchitis thing I got light-headed whilst driving myself to the Nook class. And to make a painfully long story short, I went in with heart palpitations, low pulse, chest pressure...and VOILA! I ended up with an Ambulance ride to St. Joe's in Howell when it was suspected that I might have a blood clot in my lungs or legs.

Marie and Lisa were in Saline doing a show there and hurried their tushes down to the hospital with my sketchbook (bless you girls!!) and my NEW Nookcolor (bless you again girls) and underwear. I can honestly say, I could not have made it through without my Nook, and perhaps my underwear. But the Nook certainly made the stay fun.

While nurses were poking me with needles every two hours and keeping my arm straight with my IV in, I had my Nook. Now let me say here, that I had until two weeks ago, SWORE that I WOULD NEVER own one of those new-fangled contraptions. Wrong! It turned out to be a fab marketing tool. "Here let me show you my website, Nurse Margaret!"
From, soothing Pandora tunes, to downloading new ebooks from the big kid book on the caves of Jean Auel to mid-grade kid fiction of Katie Kazoo, to checking my email and updating friends and family on my condition on Facebook. I was spellbound. And I had the time to explore my Nook and all of its crannies and apps more. I am hooked on my Nook!

Then reality set in. Dum-Dum-DUM!!!

What am I in here for anyway? Health scare! ARGH!

It hit me. I better take care of myself better! I had just gotten an all clear on my chest x-ray and was awaiting a heart echogram. I better lose weight. So who did I turn to? My Nook. I downloaded the 17 Day Diet. I had been reading the sample pages and everything seemed to jive with me. And while waiting for heart tech Frank to show up with his machine, I read Dr. Phil's book on my nook.

Rest, relaxation, eat right, and some butt-scratching exercise!

OK, maybe not butt-scratching exercise. But you get my drift. Get OUT and move is the key here. I have been having leg problems (which the prednisone has been helping now, too) and this was a good scare to get me going and resting occasionally. We here at Bear Track Studios, like most folks, sit at a desk or work too durned much! Not good, especially for artists and advocates of nature. Oh, for shame! Tsk, tsk.

A Happy Ending! Daylight at the end of the tunnel!

So after my ride home from the health hoosegow, it hit me:  what matters is family & friends and most of all--YOUR SELF and Your HEALTH! And having a sketchbook and Nook close at hand doesn't hurt either!


Take care of YOU!