Why books will not die: a range of opinion

"Underneath everything, underneath the machinations of the industry and the terrible dance of agent-getting and submissions, underneath the despair and joy and wild mood swings, underneath the misery and extraordinary grace of trying to make art--underneath it all, we just want to sit together and tell stories."

-The Rejectionist

"The advantage of the books is you can give them as a gift. Our society hasn’t yet evolved to the point where we can say, “Hey, check out this URL,” and pass that off as a present, so until we reach that point, books it is."

-Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics)

Hey look!

Pugs aren't the only dogs that like my book!

A long story

More years ago than I want to count, I decided to write a book and get it published. So I got this Daruma, and if I understand the Japanese custom correctly, you color in one eye when you start a project, and the other when you meet your final goal. So here's how he looked for all those years, his eye, originally filled in with a permanent black Sharpie, gradually fading to gray.



To make a very long story short, well, there it is. So here Daruma is getting his other eye.



And here he is, with the finished book, with the slightly different colors of his eyes representing my years of effort, or something like that.



And here's the whole deal with a pug added because everything is better with a pug.

(There are pugs in the book too! Also zoo animals! In case that makes anyone more inclined to purchase a copy. And you can read a chapter here.)

And for dessert, a suffix?

This is how to do it properly

Now I feel like I've never worked at a zoo that took escaped animal drills seriously enough. (We just got to chase, like, a curator in a reflective vest. Lame.)

Important zoo safety advice

long-suffering

I'm thinking that my next book is going to be about how stupid dog owners are. Lilly says that she has PLENTY of material to contribute.