Good news today! The f&g’s for UnBrella arrived today. (f&g’s=folded and gathered=a printed book without hard covers and unbound). It is always strange to look at something that I have been waiting for for a long time because it usually is a little different than I expected. I am happy with the final results. Now the f&g’s get sent out for book reviews and the sales force starts selling the books. I hope that UnBrella does well but now my job is to get the next book ready to go.

This weeks UnBook is not a novel about the challenges of fighting forest fires in the western United States with an unforgiving wind.

I have been teaching art at BYU-Idaho full time for the last 12 years. This semester I am on sabbatical and spend a great deal of time alone in a corner room in my basement. My wife calls it the catacomb. I have discovered that it really is more difficult to sit alone in a studio all day and illustrate than I thought. It really isn’t very glamorous. This is something that illustrators we have visited with students have said, I believed, but never understood. Alone in an unfinished basement room. The walls: 2 cement & 2 partialy finished. Bare pipes running along the ceiling. The one blessing is that we had larger windows cut into our basement several summers ago and so I do have light. It can be a challenge some days. Alone means alone . . . except for the spiders.

This evening I am going to the airport to pick up Eric Rohmann (My Friend Rabbit)(Clara and Asha)(Pumpkinhead). He is going to spend the next two days at BYU-Idaho where I teach. I am really looking forward to talking with him and seeing him interact with the students. He will be visiting classes, giving a seminar, doing a printmaking demo and spending time with the students. I will let you know how things go. I hope everything goes well.

I have written a wordless picture book:)

It actually sounds kind of funny to say that. How does a person write without words? At a recent children’s publishing conference I heard the question asked. “I am not an illustrator but I have an idea for a wordless picture book. How do I submit a manuscript for a wordless picture book?” I only put that in there because it makes me smile.

My first book UnBrella is a wordless picture book. You can bet that I have asked myself how this book is going to be used, and I have spent time worrying about it. But, the other day I had an interesting experience. My son was reading a book to me. I noticed that words were not his first priority. He would turn the page and spend several seconds looking at the pictures and laugh at the story that the illustrations were telling. Then he would take a deep breath, blink his eyes and then look for the words. It was nice to see him enjoying the ride instead of being in a hurry to get to the end. He is just learning to read and the pictures gave the story context for him.

So another day has arrived and I sit here wondering what my next book will be. I have been reading The Invisible Child, a book of talks and essays by Katherine Paterson. There are 2 talks about the challenges she faced trying to get her novels started. She published some of her initial ideas about books that she wanted to write. A lot of what she wrote were lists of questions about her characters and the situations that they were in. So I have decided that at the beginning of each day I will fill 3-11 x 17 pages with drawings, words or doodles, as a way to document the mess in my head. I know that there are more books but I have no idea at this point what they are. It doesn’t feel like I am making very much progress at this point but without this stage there is no story. So another day has arrived (deja vu) and I sit here wondering…

Flaminghost: Another UnBook that is not by Scott E Franson

Well, I didn’t make much progress yesterday with new stories. I spent most of the day working on a “preview” for UnBrella. I am happy with where it is going, but I still have a ways to go. I added an obscure link to the preview and posted it yesterday to see if it would work. And it seems to work fine. The “preview” isn’t finished but for my loyal readers (I think that is just me), here is a preview of the “preview”.

Another day as come and I am back in the studio. I sit here perplexed and wondering what is the best next step to make. I recently received another rejection on my new book concept and the reasons were the same. The big comment is that the story seems “too light”. So now I am back to the drawing board and it is challenging. I need to find the energy to get another project going. If I choose not to face the challenge today, It will be harder to face tomorrow. So with some hope that today I find a path worth exploring and some fear that I will find another dead end, I start another day.

I know that nobody cares but me, but for nobody’s information 140 days stand between me and the birth of my first book, UnBrella. It is on the Spring 2007 book list from Roaring Brook Press. March 6, 2007 will be its birthday. It has taken nearly 2 full years to get this book published.