PICTURE DAY

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Something About a Door Closing and a Window Opening

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Hi, I'm Adam Rex—I write and illustrate kid's books. Mostly this is about that.
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Something About a Door Closing and a Window Opening

But real pretty and inspirational, like you might hang from your car mirror

Adam Rex
Aug 17, 2023
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Something About a Door Closing and a Window Opening

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Five years ago, I got fired off a book.

It was something I’d fought to be able to illustrate, because I really wanted to work with the author. But it was a tricky book, very mercurial in more ways than one, so we were all going back and forth for almost two years before I got the green light to start rendering finals. I got about half the book finished when word came that I should pause while the creative team discussed some restructuring. Some time later I was informed my contract was being cancelled.

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It was devastating, sure. It was a lot of things. What I remember most from that time, though, was a sense of relief. The book had become an exceedingly complicated albatross around my neck. Like a fractal albatross, where if you looked close enough you’d see the albatross had a string on smaller albatrosses around its neck, and that those albatrosses had albatrosses, and I thrilled a little at the thought that I was suddenly free to make something of my own.

a zoom-in illustration of fractal albatrosses

Stop looking at albatrosses and look at these raccoons:

I didn’t draw these raccoons. I wish I did. They’re by Lauren Pettapiece, and you should click on her name to see more of what she does. All I can tell you is that her art was my favorite part of twitter in late 2018. Here I’d been, spinning plates, increasingly unable to tell if anything I was making was actually good or merely complex, and along come these sweetly uncomplicated drawings that made me happier than anything I’d done in two years.

I decided I wanted to try writing a story that made me feel the way Lauren’s art makes me feel. So with an energy I hadn’t felt in a while, I stormed through the first draft of a manuscript about a silly little wizard, a manuscript that strangely never had any raccoons in it.

It came out this week.

SPECIAL OFFER!

So here’s an offer, which at least for the time being I’m extending only to subscribers of this newsletter in this month of August:

Send some proof of purchase to mradamrex@gmail.com (a screenshot of your Gumluck order confirmation from the bookstore of your choice, or a photo of you holding the book, or whatever) and I’ll send back a personalized bookplate with a drawing. The drawing will look similar to, but not exactly like, this:

Something extemporaneous, but much more than you’d typically get from me at a signing.

If you want to order from one of my favorite bookstores, click one of these:

Changing Hands

Bookies

Vroman's

Powell's

Antigone

And as always, thank you for reading and recommending this newsletter to a friend.

—Adam

Thanks for reading PICTURE DAY! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

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Something About a Door Closing and a Window Opening

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Something About a Door Closing and a Window Opening

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Kayla Stark
Writes Odd Thoughts
Aug 17Liked by Adam Rex

3 things:

1. I had a similar experience with a contract and the sense of relief that came after was shocking.

2. Those same raccoon drawings cheered me up during Covid lockdown. 🥲

3. Picking up Gumluck this weekend!

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Bill Adler
Writes Fiction by Bill Adler
Aug 17Liked by Adam Rex

I love this sentence: "Like a fractal albatross, where if you looked close enough you’d see the albatross had a string on smaller albatrosses around its neck, and that those albatrosses had albatrosses."

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