I've Been Cooking a Book

OK, OK. I missed Sunday and Tuesday. What is it, Wednesday?

I've been busy.

See, in addition to blogging, I have a real job. And that job occasionally  has deadlines that I try to meet. All but one or two, I hit right on the head. But this was a big deadline. April 1, 2011. Have your next book done.

In self-flagellatory full-disclosure mode, I must add that the original deadline was April 1, 2009. Through Bad Time Management, Life Intervening, and a spectacular case of Mission Creep, I missed that'n clean.

This one, I made.

 25 chapters, 80,000 words, 320 pieces of art.  It works out to an illustration about every 650 words. 

Insane, I know, but I like to look at pictures, and I figure my audience does too. When I pick up a book, I flip through it back to front and if I like the pictures I'm much more likely to buy it. Ditto if there are lots and lots of pictures. I like pictures. About that Mission Creep...

This is what 320 pieces of art looks like in my studio. Each painting or drawing you can see has about ten more under it. Stacked art.

 It flopped over onto every flat surface. Sketches had to be torn out of the stacked sketchbooks; paintings had to be ripped out of the spiral-bound field notebooks. RRRRRIPPPP, arrgh.  I had to get used to that terrible sound when I did Letters from Eden, so it wasn't such a big deal to tear everything apart this time. As I ripped the pages, I repeated a mantra: Their highest purpose is The Book. Their highest purpose is The Book.

It helped.

Vultures and ospreys and mourning doves, hummingbirds and big woodpeckers, titmice and chickadees and bluebirds...26 species in 25 chapters, each one devoted to the strange and wonderful interactions I've had with these birds. Is it any wonder my entire studio is now taken up by flat files? There's a teeny little corner by the big windows where I create the things, but 90% of my floor space is storage. I'm like an Art Squirrel.

 Yes, that's Charlie in the lower right corner. The book ends with him, my avian familiar/succubus.

 Chimney swifts, Carolina wrens, starlings, swallows, phoebes, cranes, tanagers, sparrows, grouse, redtails. So many images, so many birds I have come to know. If I've studied them, managed them, thought a whole lot about them, fixed them or been their momma, they're in the book.

All the paintings had to be organized, catalogued, evaluated for insurance purposes, then packed into envelopes by chapter...

wrapped in plastic, taped securely...

packed into wooden crates, the top one made for me many years ago by someone very dear, and saved through the decades until it found its purpose once again.

 As I write, these crates are in a Big Brown Truck somewhere  between Columbus and Hartford, bound for the offices of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in Boston. I hope my beloved editor Lisa White has a Phillips head screwdriver in her office, 'cuz she's gonna need one. Meanwhile, I've been neurotically checking their progress online, using tracking numbers and UPS's web site. They never call, they never write...you'd think they could text me once in awhile.

Yes, I've been cookin' up a little something for you. It's got to bake now for about a year, but come next spring, the Marsh Crone**  will start to brew again, and you'll sniff the air and know that the book is here.

By then, we will have settled on a name for it. It takes a village, you know. I have to have something left to procrastinate over, right?

Actual Zick outfit, captured by Bill of the Birds: RainCrows hoodie and purely redonk KMart apron, bought for Phoebe the Kitchen Elf. Afraid I've let fashion slip a bit further than usual while I've been working, too. Cackle!  Oh, and look. I have a hunch-backed assistant, and there's The Bacon in the lower right corner, hoping I'll drop a piece of chicken.

Cross your fingers for their safe delivery, sometime Thursday afternoon. 

And thanks for your good wishes.

UPDATE: 12:41 PM Wednesday: Departure scan, New Staunton, PA. 12:42 PM: In transit to Boston. Squee!

**from my favorite book ever, The Marsh Crone's Brew by Ib Spang Olsen