A web site, and an illustrator

One of the other insights I gained during my trip to NYC a few weeks ago to attend the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference is that I should make a web site in order to sell my Frontier Team book series to the publishers or agents. That is, this will not be the web site that is ultimately published for the series, which will be used by kids; this is for the publishing industry.

One of the things that I think will make me attractive to agents and publishers is the fact that I already have a compelling web presence and audience, and that I can augment this as I become published. I practically think in HTML anyway. A web presence is, to put it mildly, not an obstacle to me. So I immediately started making the site when I got home.

I realized immediately that even if I'll be selling only the text to a publisher, not any artwork (it isn't a picture book, anyway), my web site would require graphics. You simply can't stick a bunch of words on a web page and expect them to be read; I've learned that with KidsOutAndAbout.com.

So I needed some pictures.

A couple of weeks ago, at the monthly meeting of the Rochester Area Children's Writers & Illustrators, I made an announcement that I was looking for an illustrator. And, as you can tell from the drawing of Max at the top of this post, I've found one! For a few hundred dollars, Mary Warth, who is an art teacher at Brockport High School, will be supplying me with 10 charcoal illustrations of my kids, and one of their cabin.

Isn't Max awesome? When Mary sent him to me as a sample, I was beside myself with delight. Max, who is 13, was adopted from Guatemala, and this picture is just like my mental image of him.

Madison, despite knowing in some peripheral way that Max was adopted from Guatemala, put him with blond hair in her mind just like her good real-life friend Max, so she had to get used to it.