Some of you may know, after being inspired by people like Kirby Larson and Laini Taylor, that I recently joined Weight Watchers. I got a trainer at the gym for a few weeks, too, so being healthy is a top priority right now.

For the last three years I've eaten granola, plain yogurt, and berries for breakfast ALMOST every day. That means almost one THOUSAND breakfastses of granola -- my favorite brand being Golden Temple Coconut and Almond. I get it in the bulk section, so there's no ingredients label on it. I just assumed it was made of tree bark and all things organic. On Weight Watchers granola is kind of off the menu. Instead you have oatmeal or shredded wheat. That's fine, but I miss my granola.

Well, until last night.

I dreamed that I stumbled upon a little known fact -- that granola was made of ... PUPPIES! And big tubby dogs. In the dream I saw a woman dragging a dog up a metal slide, some horrible Monty Pythonesque abattoir.

I said, "This can't be!"

And the woman replied, "Granola labels say 'Gluten Free,' not 'Vegetarian!'"

I'm not sure why I'm blogging about this, other than I hope the Golden Temple company will contact me with pictures of their granola factory with proof it is pug and retriever free. Or maybe Kirby or Laini will talk me down. I was thinner in the dream...

In other news, my favorite book-designer-not-currently-employed-as-a-book-designer looked at my Bun dummy and tore it to pieces in the best way. I just printed off the new pages to take down to the shed to redo the dummy. NOW I'm ready for the next phase of work!

Actually, the shed is about 15 pages long.

The last few days I've been scanning in some 2 inch wide thumbnails I worked on in Brenda's class and have been blowing them up to tabloid size -- the actual size I want my bun book to be.

Marc Brown apparently has a shelf in HIS studio that is long enough to set an entire dummy book along spread by spread.

United Shed of Temairika is shorter than that.

The first 14 pages of sketches for the full size dummy I'm working on are tacked onto my cork edged wall to wall bookshelf. I put the rest of the book spreads right below, on a vinyl shade that rolls down based on some advice that Denise Fleming gave. I don't know if this is what she meant -- this shade has already pulled a chunk of the shed's wall out and could start its own earthquake when you try to pull it, but I think I'm digging it. The idea is you can furl up the shade so people don't need to be nosing around your dummy if you aren't ready to share it or if you are tired of looking at it. I think the shade might make my sketches spontaneously combust if I roll them up in it, but there are worse problems.

What's the point of seeing it all together like this at full-size and how is this any better than looking at thumbnails?

Well, already I can see how weird it looks to have some of my spot illustrations framed by a square and some framed by a circle. They should all be in squares.

In some spreads I thought of just have a white BG. I thought that a LOT. That's just lazy. There are a few instances where it will be effective to just have a white bg, but not as much as I'd planned.

After the super editor critique at the LA conference and from a comment Jolie (she started a blog, thank God!!) made on the plane ride home I added and deleted a few things. I finally found a home for them in the process of supersizing all the thumbnails. So that's great!

And I'd been worried about having enough variety of camera angles and near and far shots. In thumbnails it all looks tiny, at full-size the close-ups are GINORMOUS! Yay!

I guess from here I will refine these crazy blow ups to actually be intelligible to other people and then pick one piece (at least, right?) to do as full color art.

Oh boy!

Who else was driving back from IKEA or California Closets on Saturday and stuck in a miles long detour because the freeway happened to be closed? And who else didn't mind because they got to hear the great This American Life episode on break-ups?

I especially loved the Starlee Kine portion where she talks to Phil Collins. Go listen, you must. Song writing, not just for break-up songs, sounds a lot like picture book writing and Phil Collins sounds like a very nice man you'd all want to have over for dinner.

Phil (is he a Sir? He should be) was asked how to make a really powerful love song that would have universal appeal in simple sentences instead of the complicated wordy things Starlee was writing and Phil said, "So many people try to fluff things up or disguise them. Or make them a little too clever, but sometimes it's the simplest thing that reaches people... [And] it matters how you sing it... it shouldn't be overblown and polished as opposed to a simple idea, simply sung... that is sung with conviction."

Isn't that great? And maybe, to relate to the picture book world, we have the words and pictures instead of words and music. I am going to work on sending Phil and Starlee some cupcakes and not making fussy picture book art. .

Nick Cave* has a lecture on the love song which I have yet to listen to. That might be helpful, too.

How would a mouse break-up song go?

Continue reading "Why I love Phil Collins" »

Today snuck up on me and I'm sorry I didn't shout this out sooner, BUT:

Kirby Larson is presenting her new book, Two Bobbies: A True Tale of Hurricane Katrina, Friendship and Survival today at the Mill Creek University Book Store at 11:00 am. Kirby will be in Tacoma later this afternoon if you are in the south end.

I'll be there and so will Logan! Two Bobbies is a wonderful story about two very real and very adorable animals that will make you cry - just warning. Not a sad cry, but a happy one for the happy ending to a harrowing journey of two sweet, lost souls.

Kirby's presentations are exactly what an author's event should be, so go knowing you'll be inspired and moved just from her talk and that's without even reading the wonderful book yet! Kirby co-wrote Two Bobbies with her friend in California, Mary Nethery. And it was announced at the LA Conference by awesome editor Nancy Conescu that Mary and Kirby are working on a second book about a similarly amazing friendship between a stray dog and a Marine stationed in Iraq. Too cool!

Today's event in Mill Creek is pet friendly! I heard Mary had an event in California where adoptable kittens were present. No kittens at Kirby's event or I'd be taking all of them home, but the authors are generously donating ten percent of their proceeds to Best Friends Animal Society, the animal shelter that initially took the two Bobbies in as well as many many lost or abandoned animals post-Katrina. Aren't they too wonderful? You must try to get yourself to a Mary or Kirby event near you, soon. Their event calendar is on The Two Bobbies website.

They look adorable now, but just wait until you read the book and discover how amazing these two are (from the Two Bobbies site):

Last night I went to a small, impromptu high school reunion of sorts. I thought it would be surreal and painful, but it was a lot of fun and only semi-surreal. For 2008 I've been reading lots of YA books in addition to my picture book fare -- and those books, coupled with last night, bring back lots of teen memories. Man, we were totally well behaved compared to the teens of Carolyn Mackler and Rachel Cohn -- even Libba Bray (never even near the same ballpark as Ellen Hopkins.) I should have been naughtier.

Above is a two minute sketch of where I ate lunch in high school every day. Not the cafeteria, but a vestibule? On the floor in between two doors. I'm sure we made the school look like a hobo camp, but it was great to have a fairly private spot to eat and joke and laugh so hard that cornbread came out my nose.

One friend who ate in the vestibule was really good at misinterpreting song lyrics. I'm thinking "Salmon Chanted Evening" is from the Muppets, but only my high school friend could have gotten "Tuna Hot Dog!" from "Do The Hustle." That used to make me snort for a good ten minutes.

High school giggles are the BEST. There was lots of snorting on my part last night.

Thinking about the setting and background for Sara's graphic novel. I wonder if I can inject any of my teen landscape into it or should it be something totally different? I hope high school giggle fits still happen, though. That would be a sad thing for future generations to lose.

I stole this photo off of Kim's blog since I didn't take any pictures. These are the lovely ladies of Western Washington at the SCBWI International Conference's Paint The Town Red Gala.

Can you find me in the picture?

Hint: the theme of the party was red so I made my own top reminiscent of the Soviet flag and went as a Marxist Marx brother. Classy, I know. I did learn how to say "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read" in Russian, but no one cared or could hear me over the music.

This year the DJ played four songs written after 2003 which is up one from last year. In 30 years they'll be playing all my favorite modern songs. Note to self for the next SCBWI theme party: nose neighbors make drinking margaritas difficult. As do fake noses.

Just now I sent off the reports I took for the SCBWI International Bulletin on six of the sessions I attended at the conference. I can't believe how awesome they all were. I wish I could have heard every session, it was so hard to choose. But all of the sessions I did attend were chock full of useful information.

Checking out blogs about the conference today and EVERYBODY seems totally jazzed to be back at work and totally inspired. Awesome!

In other news. Aaron got some legal paperwork back which lists me as Jaime Temairik - FUTURE WIFE. Every time he says that I pretend to be a robot wife from the future -- it is all we can think of. Sad or wonderful? I think Jim and Laini would say wonderfully sad.

So I couldn't do it! I failed at my 21 day blog challenge. Bring on the rotten fruit pelting. But I tried, really I did. And right now I don't feel so bad. Because:

The LA Conference was wonderful. I have less than zero pictures of it -- one picture of a spider trapped in an overturned wine glass and one shot of Mark McVeigh's Fancy Mancy designer sandals. Why didn't I take more photos or hen peck some blog entries via iPhone? Because I was having too much fun talking to hilarious and/or inspirational people and drinking side cars, that's why.

My brain was ringing the whole of the conference. There was so much to take note on and remember for future use and so many sparks of ideas flying around that I had permabrainbuzz (in German that would be der dauerhaftes-Gehirnsummen-kanick-kanackt.)

Not until my plane ride home with Jolie (future author of the Cuppa Jolie blog) when I was 30,000 feet above the conference did I get a moment's peace. And then:

BAM!

Lots of ideas came flooding out. A story I put aside a year ago as dead suddenly presented itself with images and ideas for a new beginning and ending. A snippet of midnight conversation from a lovely editor friend came back to me as a better theme for a picture book I'd started in October. Questions I'd had on my favorite Bun Family started to get answers. Bless you, Alaska Airlines and your lack of comfort, food and entertainment!

And now how to get it all out and what to work on first? I don't know. I do know that Yuyi Morales gave one of the most generous and helpful illustrator talks I've ever heard at a big conference. Get her on the circuit! She had great tips and on working with acrylics and listed a bunch of cool supplies and tools to try. I will start there -- going to steal some pennies from fountains and head to Daniel Smith now.

But before I jump in a fountain this morning I'm easing back into life at home with a quick sketch up above. It is from something a friend wrote. This isn't conference related -- I didn't see any Power Mothers in LA at all. I saw really nice moms with their really nice kids or business ladies sans kids. And I saw no tv or movie celebrities, except Rachel Cohn says she has a tiny cameo in the upcoming film version of the uber-fantastic YA novel Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.

How is everybody doing? Where is Jolie's blog? Should I start a petition on my blog to get her to start a blog some time this millenium?

Did you know that Kim, Laurie, Holly and Martha have blogs? Check out Holly's super fabulous and well-deserved good news!