YAY -I Completed PiBoIdMo 2011!

I do solemnly swear that I have faithfully executed 

the PiBoIdMo 30-ideas-in-30-days challenge,

and will, to the best of my ability,

parlay my ideas into picture book manuscripts.

WHEW! - so glad I completed the challenge, although with a dry patch in the middle I almost gave up. All in all even with a bit of creative block it was a lot of fun: reading the daily inspiring posts on Tara's blog, hoping to win a prize here or there. Most of all just having fun and knowing that I'm not the only one muttering PB ideas to myself for the month of November.

Now the work ahead and into 2012 is to flesh out at least 1 of these scribbled ideas into a real PB story - a PB dummy even!

For more info about PIBOIDMO please read or Follow Tara's blog at http://taralazar.wordpress.com/  

M-M-M-M It's a PBDummy!

M-M-M-M CUPCAKES

Scan of my Picture Book Dummy

All art and text © Diana Ting Delosh

Web/Portfolio - dianadelosh.com

Tah Dah - I'm so happy to say it's a DUMMY! I've been working  on this dummy , betwixt and between jobs and life and there were many times that I thought it would never be a cohesive piece.  This 32 page dummy is comprised of 2 finished colored spreads and the balance is loose sketches. I even created some yummy cupcake type for the title. Finally, here it is all put together and in time for my big portfolio review last weekend.

So how was M-M-M-M CUPCAKES PB Dummy Debut? I saw 3 reviewers; 2 editors from small to midsize publishing houses and 1 Art director from a large Big Name Publishing house. 

The Big Name Publishing House Art Director liked how my dummy demonstrated that I had a real sense of how a picture book should flow.  However her imprint was not interested in Concept Stories. 

Editor # 1 was also not looking for picture book illustrators although CB liked my portfolio and told me I could send her ideas and sample art. Sigh. 

However I really seemed to hit it off with editor #2. PG seemed to really like my portfolio and my dummies especially M-M-M-M CUPCAKES. She also really liked concept books as this mid-sized house tends to sell to libraries and schools, hence their lists are school curriculum driven. PG even quickly read through the brief text and gave me a few suggestions and permission to formally submit this proposal after I've made her suggested revisions as well as send other new proposals to her. YAY -very exciting! Keeping fingers crossed!

Note I did not mention the Publishing houses nor the reviewers by names. I have a superstition that if I talk too much about something prematurely I may jinx myself. More importantly though is that this is my experience and yours with the same company and reviewers would be your unique experience based on your work.  This review has convinced me to try a new strategy of picking smaller or midsize publishing houses as they seemed to be more open to acquiring new projects/illustrators. 

FYI: I only show my hard covered dummies in person at reviews, conferences etc. To submit this project as a Picture book proposal, I create a multipage PDF  from the 16 spreads (15 internal spreads plus the cover) that I can easily pop in the mail or even just attach to an e-mail, with cover letters of course. 

PiBoIdMo 2011!

Here we go again! I just signed up for PiBoIdMo 2011,  Picture Book Ideas Month at http://taralazar.wordpress.com/. The challenge is to come up with 30 picture book ideas in the month of November (30 days). Just ideas - no outlines etc. -keep it simple and have FUN.

Last year I put my ideas onto index cards. Not sure if I'm using the same low-tech method for 2011. I may just scribble them into my journal and enter them on a running list. My 2010's participation in this challenge resulted in the current dummy that I'm almost finished with. Click HERE if you're curious about that project.

SH-h-h-h -Feeling most mysterious!

It's all Hush hush and mysterious
 -just like my
feline super sleuth character,
Audrey Hepcat.
© DianaTing Delosh

Wow it's been awhile since my last post, but I have 2 good excuses:

1 -  I've been busy with illustration gigs. YAY! Unfortunately they have been mad rush jobs. BOO! Admittedly this is partially due to my own scheduling as everything: personal and professional seems to happen at once and I don't want to miss anything.

2 - Two of the jobs I'm currently working on are confidential. Which means no blogging about them. Drats! One of them is a bread and butter type jobs, so no problems keeping mum about it. However the other project is one that I want to show off some of the illos from so it's hard to be hush hush about it. The only thing I can say is that it's an E-book project and the illustrations are almost all done. Needless to say - I can't wait until it's finished and I can finally burst out with the news.

The only other thing I can say is that the E-book company found me via my web presence. So all this frenzied web activity does do something other than bring you more followers on Twitter and Linked-in. Keep on blogging my creative friends.