Two months. Three rejections.

It's funny.

After I finished editing my children's book for mass consumption, I thought the hard part was over and the easy part was coming up:

"Send it to a literary agent who would take one look at it, call me up and tell me that I am the Steinbeck of Children's Book Literature."

And continously praise me for my innovation and geniusness (is that even a word?).

Well, as all writers know...it's a tough road to hoe. I assumed I would just send this story out and people would be clamoring for the chance to turn this story from my head into a bonafide children's book - with movie rights to come in a couple weeks.

Not the case.

I've since sent my 'exclusive' story out to two agents and one publishing company.

To surmise all of their feedback:

- You've got a great story here
- But its not for us
- There are a lot of great ideas out there.
- We have to pick and choose the great ones.
- But we may be wrong.
- We encourage you to try other publishers and agents.
- Blah, blah, blah.

I agree. Living the life of a copywriter and cartoonist, you learn to live with rejection.

It feeds the fire.

That why, I'm going to keep sending it out for representation. I believe in this story. I think it needs to be told. I think it's fun.

But, if nothing happens within a month or so, I just may have to rethink my strategy and do this one on my own.

Maybe a version1 with my drawings.

Then, down the line, a version 2 with a professional illustrator's drawings.

In any event, onward and upward.

Field of Beans

I've talked about my many different jobs on this planet.

However, I forgot to bring up my short stint as a Children's Book Illustrator.

And, yep, I totally forgot about it until now. Can you believe that?

Waaaaayyy back in 1998, I illustrated a children's story called Field of Beans for a small start-up children's book publishing company in Columbus called Berry Books.

Take a gander at it right here.

The cool thing about this particular project was that I thought up the actual look and feel of the characters. In fact, the publisher (Curtis Paulson) liked my characters so much, he kept them around in other books.

Another cool thing: According to the website, a total of nine books have been printed and distributed in every state and several countries.

Eat your heart out J.K. Rowling.

Granted, I didn't make a ton of money off of this project (I think it was about $600 for about 70+ hours of work including meetings, revisions, sketches, etc) and the final product isn't that spectacular. But, this particular experience not only helped hone my illustrating/cartooning skills, but it introduced me to the wonderful world of Photoshop - and its endless possibilities.

In any event, when I talked about writing and illustrating my own book, I had totally forgotten that I already have one in the coffer. Cool!

So, in addition to this new copywriting job, and the book illustrator job, I now have had a grand total of 37 jobs - in almost 38 years.

Yay me!

Submitted my Children's Book Story.

Well, today could be the day that changes everything for Eimer's future.

Why?

I just submitted my children's story idea to a publisher.

Now the waiting begins.

I talked about it a little here, and here. But I'm really not going to give too much away until I sign some sort of contract with someone.

Okay, how about this? A year from now, if no one bites on this book, I'll publish it on this blog for all to see - and steal.

Sound good? Not to me.

Hopefully, someone will snag up this story. It's just too good to be tossed into the freebie bin.

We'll see.

Children's Book Written. Now It's Time To Draw.

Well, after seven different versions, I finally finished my children's book. Now, it's on to the sketching part of it. I've given myself a rough deadline of end of February with some wiggle room to March 14 (daylight savings time).

I'm not going to give too much away, but the main idea is about the environment and recycling. But it's funny. No preachy Al Gore stuff. So you can let your mind wander from there.

In the meantime, I've got a couple other good ideas that I also began to write. One has to do with snakes and the other, sledding. Like I said, I'm not giving too much away because, well, then, what's the point?

That's it for now. I'll keep you posted and, possibly, include some of my sketches as I venture forward. The image you see above is a very, very rough draft of a child in my first story, which was drawn during my jury duty stint in the Summit County Courthouse (another insane story).