Cottage doodles with a Pentel Pocket Brush Pen

Back from what basically amounted to three back-to-back weeks of travel. Had a lot of fun and (in the case of SCBWI-LA) learned a ton, but am very very glad to be back in my basement office cave in hermitmode.

Above: samples of the many non-digital doodles I did at the cottage with my Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, which is my favorite real-life sketching tool. SO fun to use. I posted some other cottage doodles as well as cottage pics in Instagram.

On vacation until Wed. August 7th, 2013

Hi all! I'm going to be on vacation until Wednesday, August 7th, sort of. The "sort of" is because I'll be attending the SCBWI Summer Conference during my trip and will also be doing some work while I'm traveling. :-)

I'm going to try to stay mostly offline during this time, however. Hope you're all having a great summer!

My interview on Simply Message About

On Simply Messing About today, I talk about selling my website and moving to Philadelphia away from my husband, how I schedule my work to keep up with my blog and projects, why I encourage aspiring children's book writers and illustrators to attend SCBWI conferences, networking for introverts, getting out of creative ruts, how to maintain a positive attitude.

Read the interview here.

Daily Sketch: An Elephant For Kelsey Goldberg

A while back, I invited my Facebook friends to suggest animals for me to draw as part of a self-challenge since I usually draw humans. You can see the suggestions I've received so far and links to the animals I've drawn so far.

This elephant is for Kelsey Goldberg, whom I met when she directed NaNoMusical. In fact, I was an extra in Episode #1 of NaNoMusical, where you can see me dancing with my iPad:

Daily Sketch: It's Too Hot

I am SO not a hot weather person.

Can't wait until the weather cools down. :-)