Gallery Showing

The illustrious illustrator of Willow May Goes to the Midnight Carnival will be showing her work at the Madison and Main Gallery in Greeley, CO, now through the end of April. Here are the details:

Madison and Main Gallery
"Illustrator Gallery Show"

Come see Pamela McCarville's original paintings for her
children's book, Willow May Goes to the Midnight Carnival
written by Icats Nitram, published by All Us All the Time Publishing,
in addition to the art work of other regional illustrators at the
Madison and Main Illustrator Gallery Show on display
from March 3rd through April 25th
with an artist reception March 7th, 5-7 pm.

Madison and Main Gallery, 927 16th St., Greeley CO 80631

Willow May Party Poster

Is my sister awesome or what? Okay she is awesomely genius. Here is a poster she did for the big Willow May Goes to the Midnight Carnival Book Launching Party this Saturday. We are going to put them up on lamp posts outside and then on the main entrance to guide the way to the fantastic festivities. Too cool!

Willow May is Here!

Actually, she arrived last weekend, and I honestly don’t know what happen to this last week. One moment it was October 6th, I blinked my eyes and now it is October 15th. Any hoo, my sister and I had a small little ceremony with Willow May on the 6th. I thought the books turned out beautiful, even though, it hasn’t completely set in yet that we have a book published. It has been crazy these last days as the sis and I are getting ready for the big book launching party this Saturday. To say we are excited is an understatement, but there is so much to do. I feel like for every “to-do” I cross off the list, there are three more added on.

Right now I am working on fortunes for Tarot Cards, or should I say the Tarot of Willow May. We thought it would be a cute party game to have a set of Willow May Tarot cards with fun and silly fortunes. My sister is working on designing the card set with characters from the book and then I am working on the fortunes that go with each card. It is an idea that has taken on a life of its own.

I better get back to those fortunes, but meanwhile, here are a few snaps shot of Willow May Goes to the Midnight Carnival, and I hope to have some fantastic party photos to post next week from the party.

New Blog - Stealing Shadows

The illustrious illustrator of Willow May Goes to the Midnight Carnival, Pamela McCarville, recently set up her own blog, Stealing Shadows. Visit her blog to enjoy whimsical illustrations, awe-inspiring sketches, and be amused by her random nonsense.

Final Sketch Completed - Whoohoo!!

All the preliminary sketches for Willow May Goes to the Midnight Carnival are done...YEA!!!!! The majority of them have been done for a couple of weeks but Pam was spending a little extra time creating the perfect send off for the Willow May ending. She sent it to me Saturday morning. Can she become any more of a genius? Well, I guess she can. Oh, I so want to tell you about it, but I can’t, it will spoil the surprise ending of the book. All I can say is it is fantastic and I never would have went there. What I had envisioned for the last page was the typical same old scene that you have seen 100 times before, but what she did was fresh and new and lively...in her dark and eerie macabre way. It is killing me not to be able to share more, but I can’t...it really is killing me.

Web Domain Blues

Pam and I are going to set up an author and illustrator web page to help promote Willow May Goes the Midnight Carnival.... and future books. First thing we needed was our domain names, and from my knowledge of SEO, I chose icatsnitram.com for mine, but of course pamelamccarville.com would not do for the illustrious illustrator, please, how plain and boring is that. Thus the quest began for the perfect website name. After a couple of angst full days, she asked if she could have the weekend to mill it over. On Tuesday, she begrudgingly, as she felt rushed in her decision-making, gave me the chosen name, shadowpainting.com. Excellent, I could now purchase the domain names and get started on setting up the web pages. Not so fast as shadowpainting.com was already taken (shockingly, icatsnitram.com was available). Back to the drawing board, I looked up several alternative name such as sketchingshadows.com, which she reluctantly said she would go with, but I could tell was not overly thrilled with it, and if it is one thing that I have learned, it is to constantly over thrill your illustrator. Then out of the blue a name came to me (actually thought it would make a good book title), but I offered it up for her site. Coming soon, author’s website icatsnitram.com and illustrator Pamela McCarville’s site, stealingshadows.com.

Promote that Book!

One great thing about my sister, well there are several great things about my sister that it boggles the mind to decide which sheer genius aspect to reflect upon at any given moment; however, at this moment I am going to reflect upon her amazing design and creative talent when it comes to promotional materials. That’s right we are all about the Willow May Goes to the Midnight Carnival bling! We will have bookmarks, buttons, magnets and posters, perhaps even t-shirts and Willow May calendars. Okay, maybe I am getting a bit a head of myself here, but I have been keeping an eye out for promotional opportunities.

I jot the ideas down in emails and send them to myself to put in my Willow May promo file or if it is from an article in the paper or magazine I cut it out and drop it into a file. I also picked up a couple of books on marketing your book, 1001 Ways to Market Your Book by John Kremer and The Frugal Book Promoter, How to Do What Your Publisher Won’t by Caroline Howard-Johnson. They both list valuable promotional tips you may not have thought of and provide a wealth resource information. Caroline Howard-Johnson also has a great newsletter, Sharing with Writers, that comes out weekly with lots of promotion ideas and inspiration too. You can sign–up through her website, http://carolynhoward-johnson.com/. Another helpful book for online marketing is Plug Your Book, Online Book Marketing for Authors by Steve Weber. In addition, I stumbled across a Yahoo Group that also provides an overwhelming wealth of information. The group is mainly for those who are starting up their own small publishing companies, but I have found they give a lot of promotional and marketing advice, book signing tips, as well as providing a ton of resources. The group is http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Self-Publishing/. You might want to sign-up on digest mode as they are a very active list. Let’s see, oh yes, one more for those of you who are not the sister to the illustrious illustrator and designer, Pamela McCarville, the book Book Design and Production: A Guide for Authors and Publishers by Pete Masterson. This should be required reading for all involved in the book publishing process whether directly involved or not with the actual production and designing process.

Time Management

Willow May Goes to the Midnight Carnival is running a tad bit behind schedule and needless to say tension, anxiety, and stress levels have elevated slightly, okay extremely. I don’t think my sister and I look alike, but complete strangers guess we are sisters, and we have even been mistaken as twins a few times. I think it is because we act alike. We have the same mannerisms, same sense of unusual dry humor, and for the most part, the same tastes, opinions, and outlooks. It is a blessing and a curse. A blessing because our ideas feed upon one another leading to this fantastic metamorphosis of creation on a colossal scale greater than we could have ever imagined. A curse because our ideas feed upon one another leading to this fantastic metamorphosis of creation on a colossal scale greater than we could have ever imagined OR allowed time for.

This is the case with the Willow May illustrations. Like on the one-eye clown illustrations. She would send me a sketch and I would go “you know what you could add to this...” then she would go “oh, that is a great idea, and then what I could do with that...” I would continue “oh, that is genius AND you could then carry that over to page 27”. This goes on for several more minutes until we have surpassed that of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. We don’t want to tone down this process, as we want our readers to experience the full effect of The Pam & Icats. It is a heavy burden we have to bear...and learn to better time manage.

Editing and Illying

Working through a few more painful tweaks on the text and Pam continues to sketch and paint her fingers to the bones on the illustrations for Willow May Goes to the Midnight Carnival. We have but one preliminary sketch left (whoo hoo!!!!), and I am tickled purple with what has been done so far. My sister’s artwork has always been amazing to me, but I swear, she has raised it 5 notches with Willow May. The clown illustrations took my breath away, the attention to detail and the acrobatic positions of them with the intricate work on the costumes...my mind is officially blown away.

Vampire Wings

As I have said before, I try not to analyze how my mind works, but as I am making my afternoon latte the vampire illustration pops into my head. My sister had sent me the sketch and color key a week ago, and let me stop right here to say, I need to write several more stories with vampires because my sister rocks when illying the fanged-one. However, I remember her telling me several weeks earlier how she was going to do the wings to tie into a couple of previous illys in the book. I thought her idea was brilliant, yet, she did not do that on the sketch. Until now, I had forgotten about her original idea. The question was, had she forgotten too, or did she just change her mind. I liked what she had did for the wings, but I thought the other idea was cute too. Bigger question, how do I tactfully bring this up, especially after the whole slope incident?

I swear not an hour later she calls me from her sister-in-law’s (she had a little high school reunion venting building up inside that she needed to release). In a lot of our discussions it would not have been hard to work the illy question in...”oh, speaking of the undead.” However, I could tell this was not going to be one of those conversations so I just had to come out and ask. Turns out she had forgotten too. We are usually pretty good about writing down our ideas, but sometimes it is just hard to keep up when the Jetsam and Flotsam starts flowing. I have asked the calico if she would take minutes at our business meetings, but she does not feel that falls under the CFO’s duties (Chief Feline Officer).

Any hoo, back on track with our vampire wings for Willow May.

Illustration Withdrawals

My sister headed to Wisconsin today with her husband for his high school reunion. She packed up all her sketchpads and watercolors to continue to work on Willow May’s illustrations while staying at his sister’s house. She won’t though have the computer access to send me sketches or color keys until she gets back next week. The anticipation for the last few sketches may kill me and if it doesn’t, I am sure the HUGE sister email withdrawal I am going through right now will. Only three more preliminary sketches to go (whoo hoo!!); however, I am at my night job, filming a popular Denver psychedelic blues band, Jakobz Laddr, when during one of their jams, I think to myself, did I tell Pam on sketch 30 the path was downhill, because it should be uphill. Originally the path sloped down but in the latest revision we are traveling up the path. I knew she going to work on that sketch driving up, but no way to stop what I was doing to give her a quick call. Excuse me every body, could we stop the music, sorry to interrupt but I need to make an emergency phone call concerning hill slopes. I promise I won’t be long, talk amongst yourselves.

On top of that she was already in a stellar mood getting to traveling 16 hours in a car to go to her husband’s high school reunion. Of course up until this point, we have not had what I would call a misfire on any of the sketches. Yes, we have had tweaks on them, but never having to redo the majority of the sketch. And not because of creative differences or visions, just because that darn path is now going up versus down. I know this would have also been frustrating had this happened on the 3rd sketch vs. the 30th, but since we are in crunch time, the frustration seems exponential. Hopefully after a week’s time and the 16-hour road trip back home, she will have forgiven me...but I doubt it.

P.S. Lucked out and she did the illustration to where the slope was a mute point...she is so good.

That Darn Text

We were up visiting the parents this weekend at their cabin in the mountains. After dinner Pam showed me the finished illustration for the carousel in Willow May Goes to the Midnight Carnival. Part of the struggle with the book layout was there were two illustrations that I wanted to be sure got their own spread, the carousel and werewolf band. She had shown me the sketch and color key to the carousel earlier, which she added a couple of nuances that are for lack of a better word, awesome! I could go into an Eddie Izzard routine here, but I will refrain for those of you are not familiar with his comic genius. Any hoo, she showed me the carousel spread and I actually got a little giddy in its presence. She asked me about adding a background element that I thought sounded good but I asked her if that would still allow enough real estate for the text. “Oh,” she said, “that’s right, we are going to have to add text to these, aren’t we?”

If us writers only knew how vexing we really are to our illustrators...

Editing and Illying

Received the first Willow May draft of the text back from the editor and have been busy working with the one-eyed clowns, zombies, and moon these last few weeks. I also need to have a discussion with one of the skeletons and see if perhaps the Ringmaster would be kind enough to give me his name. Meanwhile Pam is busy sketching away. One of the clown revisions required a change to the illy, but then Pam came up with the cutest idea that I know everyone is going to get a kick out of. She excels at enhancing the experience by adding these little eye-catching nuances, subtle but yet so impacting. I don’t know if illustrators realize the goddess-like power they possess when making stories come alive. In total awe right now.

The Stump

Sometimes it is almost frightening how my sister and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to the illustrations for our story. She sent me a Willow May sketch of page 4 where we first introduce dolly Jane, who of course is headless. Pam had nothing there, just the top of her dress collar. In my mind I was seeing the doll with a stump, and those stitches like you would see on Frankenstein. I emailed her back on the stump idea, but did not mention the stitches because I was not sure she would go with that. She immediately emailed me back she too had originally thought a stump, but did not think I would like that. She then redrew dolly Jane with not only the stump, but the stitches I was envisioning too!! I can’t tell you how great it is being on the same page as your illustrator when it comes to headless dolls. Excellent!

Ringmasters, Carousels and Werewolves

Finally had to let go and send the first draft of Willow May to the editor. I think I was driving my sister crazy with the pre-editor revisions. I am still wrestling with one of the character’s names, the Ringmaster. Up until now the name has been “need-a-name”, but I am not liking the sound of that and it was not flowing well with the passages. The name I have in this draft, Art McNapal, is sooooo not his name, but may fit well in another tale, so it will go in my name file, but needs to come out of this story.

Meanwhile, Pam did a rough layout of the story to begin the illustration process. I had a different vision of the first page, but she showed me the errors of my way, and I am quite happy now with the introduction of Willow May. There were two illustrations that I wanted to have their own spreads, the carousel and the werewolf band with the dancing witches. That required a bit of finessing, especially with the carousel, but we figured out how to do it. Pam is starting on the sketches for the first few pages. I think I mentioned before about working on having more patience...but I can’t wait to see them!!