Something About a Door Closing and a Window Opening

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

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.

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.

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:

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

—Adam