Happy Holiday's

I have been busy the last few weeks with special orders for dragons and Illustrations. These orders have really helped with all of the last minute expenses for the holidays. My extended family and friends have also been so helpful in the last months that we may not have made it with out them. Moving is never easy, but everything is going much smoother with a little help from family and friends. Thank you, we are grateful. I have attached a new illustration.

Fantasy Pictures

I am still getting used to a new house, town, and job. I haven't done any writing lately but I have been painting custom fantasy picture for people and making dragons. Here are three I finished last month:

I am taking a teaching position in Florence Oregon. I start Monday. I think I will have many beautiful things to paint and write about. We went up last weekend to find housing,(still looking), and spent Sunday morning on the beach. It was lovely. I can't wait to paint it. Since I am working half days next week, if I get a sunny one I may paint during the afternoons.

Taking Orders on My New Book

For those of you who haven't heard, I am frantically trying to get "Signing Upside Down" published. I am taking prepaid pre-orders to get through the final stages and wanted it out by the fifteenth. Anyone who wants to get a hold of the book please help with production and prepay. We are selling copies for $13. (they will be more once it is actually printed so you are getting a deal). Order one or 12 (Christmas is coming it is a great stocking stuffer-smile). The book was complete two years ago and it is time to get it out there. We are really close to having enough to have it printed, and I am getting really excited. I have two library's and several teachers patiently waiting for it's arrival. If you are interested in helping please e-mail me directly or add a comment here with a way to contact you and I will get you the information. Thank you!-Kassy

writing meetings, classes, and such

I am a sucker for writing classes and meetings. The more activities I can participate in about writing the more invested I am in my writing. How many times do you really want to show up and say you haven't worked on anything? I can't last very long without buckling down and working. I am taking two writing classes right now. One at the Sheridan Library taught by one of my writing buddies Maggie King. Even her title is fun Catching Fireflies Writing Class-capturing the bright and shiny memories of your life on paper. She is giving us a chapter a week of prompts and activities to help us write our life stories. (This class is free and you can just show up-7pm on Thursday nights for the next ten Thursdays.) The other class I am taking is:Writing with Technology done by the Oregon Writing Project. Just who is sponsoring it is enough information. If you have not taken a writing class by the OWP, you are shamefully unaware. This class is especially fun because I know so many of the people attending it is like an OWP reunion. We are having a blast. As for my WIT writing group meetings this is the e-mail I sent to them tonight:"If you missed tonight's meeting you missed homemade biscuits and jam, and a writing marathon. I have seven pages of writing, whew!It was really fun!
The next meeting is October 24th (Sunday at 6:30). The meeting place has moved to Penny's house. She has graciously agreed to host us. Please let me know if you need directions.
Next month is National Novel Writing Month. www.nanowrimo.org has great resources for adult writers and classrooms. Free stuff and downloadable workbooks. There are a few of us working on YA novels (young adult) this is a good resource. There is also the novel in a month challenge. Anyone wanna race? This would be for a first draft not a completed draft. But I do have a copy of the weekend novelist if we want to work with prompts.
Have fun writing this month see you the 24th.-Kassy" I love to go to my writing meetings and talk about what I am going to do. It gets me more fired up about actually doing it. SO I have two goals this month. To finish three more dragon pictures (okay they are being commissioned so I have to finish them anyway but it is a good goal-smile) and to get the out line ready for my YA novel because I want to do the challenge in November with the NANOWRIMO. Any one want to join me?

Writing Contest

The writing contest in Portland that Dan and I attended this weekend, has a readers choice division and we need your votes. As you read the pieces keep in mind the prompts were:
character: delivery person
dialog: what you need is a nice...
action: climbing a tree
prop: sunscreen

all four prompts had to be in our pieces.
You can vote for us at-www.sledgehammercontest.com
Dans piece is called,"Master"
mine is called,"To squash a fairy"Thanks-Kassy

This was a great event, if we hadn't double booked ourselves to be at the shrewsbury fair and at the contest we would have liked it more. They gave us clues to a scavenger hunt through Portland to find our prompts and then we had 36 hours to turn in our completed story. We were driving back and forth between Portland and kings valley, but we had fun.
The Tuesday we read our storys at the Blackbird wine and cheese bar in Portland. Dan was amazing, and friends present said I didn't talk too fast.

Jessy's Picture

My youngest daughter has been away at camp, so I this picture for her. I spent today at the McMinnville Saturday market selling dragons. Tomorrow we are going to try Milwaukee's Sunday Artisans Market. We are dropping Lyndsey off at camp in that direction, so thought while we were there we might as well try their market. Thursday is the start of the State Fair, so I should be making dragons, but I am enjoying illustrating more this week.

Wow Time flies!

It is really funny that I set up this blog to make me accountable for my writing and illustrating, but when I am working the hardest I don't have the time to catch up the blog. It has been a busy month. I worked for Salem's Academic Adventures Camp. It was really fun. I worked with a great group of teachers and I really admire the director. The month went quickly. I was teaching art, so I got to be creative everyday, and most days I drew, painted, or created something. At night, when I wasn't planing lessons I made dragons for the Silverton festival. Unfortunately we were robbed at the festival and lost any profit we would have made. We did make some great trades! After camp ended I drove to my mothers house for vacation. I painted my nieces and nephews faces, glittered the cousins, and visited, I even spent a weekend in Utah visiting with my fathers side of the family. I had a really good vacation. The highlight for my children was my mother taking them to Lagoon the local amusement park. Only my oldest remembers ever being at an amusement park. So it was fun to experience their first roller coasters with them. The highlight for me was visiting with everyone and having time to sit and catch up. Now that I am home I am job hunting, painting, and creating dragons. Most of my children are at OMSI camp this week, so I have a lot of time on my hands. I have applied for 74 jobs so far and I have my first interview on Monday. Cross your fingers. Next Thursday, I start working at my artisans booth at the state fair in Salem. I have never done this before, and I am very nervous. If you go to the fair stop by. I will be peddling my book, dragons, and illustrations. (I am hoping to make the rent). The new picture posted is the first of my new custom order prints. I am doing custom fantasy pictures of peoples children. They pay a little and get to keep the original and I retain the rights to sell the prints. I think this will help me have more variety in my characters. Tonight I am working on a new painting of my youngest daughter, as a surprise for her.

Writing: I signed up last week to do the Sledgehammer Writing Event in Portland. It should be interesting. They give us clues and send us on a scavenger hunt through the city to find our prompts, then we have 36 hours to write something using the prompts. Anyone want to join in?

Printing and Distrubution

I have added a column on the left about printing my books. I am still researching distribution issues with self publishing. I publish through a wonderful woman in Newberg for the copies I sell myself. To sell online I currently use Amazon's create a space, but that leaves me doing every bit of the advertising unless I want them to hold the ISBN. I own my own ISBN for Sleeping in Dragon Wings and don't want to give it up. I have only sold two books through Amazon and both were people I know. Mostly I peddle my own books at local events. I have them in the local library and at bookstores in McMinnville. Distribution is definitely the difficult part of self publishing. Any Ideas?

Tuesday, Wednesday, & Thursday

I have been having some problems with my computer. Dan got it fixed late last night. I have been crafting, though never as much as I would like to. I finished the design picture that I was using as a demonstration in my art class on Tuesday. I finished the gourd instrument on Wednesday. Today, I made four dragons, two fairies, a griffin, a mermaid, and a stamp. For some reason I can't get my picture phone to e-mail the pictures of a fairy and the design picture to me tonight, so I will have to post pictures in the morning. I have been doing several projects for the Saturday market and fairs that are coming up. I have not been doing very much writing. Tomorrow the plan is to finish ten more clay dragons, five more faeries, and finish the fourth of July picture. We will see how that goes.

Monday

Today, I started a new gourd instrument and pattern picture while demonstrating for my class. The students had a great time using files to saw the grooves into their instruments and dyeing the rasps. Later I had Jessy model for my dragon picture and took pictures of several different poses. I am finishing up some loose ends for school tonight, so I don't get to be very creative. Let me know what you are working on.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father Day! I am going to spend the next few hours being creative with my husbands fathers day dinner.

Friday, I met with my illustrating group for a final goodbye, since one of our members is moving away and the group is disbanding. Diane, my friend who is moving is the person I stole the quote at the top of my page from. It was on her e-mail. She also gave me the inks and air brush paints that were used for the base color on the gourd in this picture.

Today, I spent the morning creating this gourd instrument for an example, for my class that I am teaching tomorrow. The dyes Diane gave me worked perfectly! My students are going to be thrilled that they go on so easily and are so bright.

A family friend read my blog yesterday and sent this advice:
The best course I ever took in writing pointed out that the best magazine on the market, Time, had sentences with a maximum of about eight words. They suggested one write in short easily understandable sentences. The second point they made was to write as you would speak. Don't go for fancy sentence construction. Again, keep it simple. The last important point was to realize that any project you undertook to write about was going to take you as long to write and rewrite as it did to do the project. I found that if I wrote something and put it in a drawer for six days, it read like poor nonsense when I took it out and reread it. Rewrites are necessary!
Hope this may help.

Thank you for the advice, Bill, and for taking the time to read my blog and send me feedback!

Tonight I am hoping to work some more on my fourth of the July illustration and maybe finish a poem on foster care I started last week. I am also trying to figure out how to add my writing to the blog in such a way that you can click on titles and see all of it, but if you don't click on the titles, the writing isn't taking up all the space. I know I once knew how to do this.

Thanks for taking the time to check in today. What projects are you working on?-Kassy

Why should I blog?

Because I have self-published one book, I am often asked questions about writing and illustrating. I claim to be a writer and illustrator because I think I have to own it to have it happen. But self-publishing is more a matter of money than talent. I think my book should be published, I am too poor to have published it myself unless I believed that, but I would like to have a book published by someone who believed in my talent enough to pay for publishing.
There are thousands of other people that feel the same way I do. We want to write and/or illustrate for a living, but we don’t know how to make it happen. I intend to make it happen. I read books and I go to meetings, and though there isn’t a regular twelve step program there have been hundreds of suggestions of things I should do to make this dream come true. I keep careful notes and I work really hard to make myself into the writer and illustrator I know I can be.
I don’t think becoming a published writer is something anyone should do alone, what would be the fun in that? So this is where all of you come in. Because I am putting my goals very publically out there, I now have forced accountability. If I am not working on something creatively you will know. When I try new things and they work, or don’t work for me, you will know that too. Hopefully if I say I am going to try something, someone else will try it as well so that we can get feedback from a group of us on how effective the effort was. If you try something or hear of something that might interest others let us know too. This blog will keep a running record of ways I wasted time and what really helped.
This blog will:
· Give me accountability
· List events, contests, conferences
· Show current projects and illustrations
· Gather feedback and suggestions about writing and illustrating
· Show that I am moving slowly towards tangible goals
· Show the life of a wannabe writer and artist
· Give prompts, challenges
The goals I have:
· To publish books
· To make a reasonable income in writing, illustrating, and crafting
· To win the Caldecott ( I may be ninety when I get it, but I have wanted it since I was a

little girl).
· To make the “Children’s book Project” a reality

Thank you for reading this. Visit often - we all need support in our dreams!-Kassy

What I am doing today:

1) A friend of mine sent me an e-mail address for children's book writers: http://www.institutechildrenslit.com/ .

I explored their site a little, wrote down the dates for the two contests they had listed, and ordered their two free newsletters.

2) I started this blog.

3) I am working on a dragon illustration for the 4th of July weekend fair.

4) I am cleaning gourds for the Art Conspiracy class I will be teaching on Monday.( I will also be decorating one for an example).