Meeting the Illustrator

Hello all!

It's been a bit since I've sat and written, and truthfully, I haven't done a very good job of keeping up on the blog portion of this website. What a whirlwind this past year has been, for all of us! Between completing the books and remote schooling the children, 2020-2021 certainly has been a wild ride, and I'm happy that things are slowing down enough for me to sit and write a bit in the mornings.

Recently I was thinking how two years has passed since I made contact with Marybeth Lensel, the artist who worked on the books with me (you can check her stuff out over on www.marybethlensel.com). It was such an unusual occurrence that it sticks in my mind and gives it all a sense of "meant to be", if such a thing exists.

Before she and I met, I'd tried working with a few different people, some professional artists and some lay-folk, and things never quite worked out. Eventually I decided that I would attempt to do the illustrations myself, by hand, and although it took me 9 months and I did the best job I could ever do, they looked..... for a lack of a better word, just plain terrible.

As I was finishing my hand drawn work and thinking about how I would self publish it, when I had given up all hope about working with another person, I began to randomly see Marybeth out places. Our daughters are in the same grade and the same Girl Scout Troop, so when my little girl spotted hers, she wanted to say hello.

In the first 3 weeks of October 2019, I saw Marybeth at two separate playgrounds, the Botanical Garden, and Walmart, and each time we would say hello, but I had no idea she was an artist or knew anything about her.

The real moment of truth came when she hosted the Girl Scout Halloween Party at her house. The party was mostly outside but when I walked in to use the restroom, I practically gasped. Her house.... looked like..... I can't even describe. I felt as though I entered an attraction room in a Halloween theme park. The decorations were handmade and beyond intricate and the entire house just burst with color and texture and light and..... I've been there a few times since but the first time I literally stopped in my tracks. And I wasn't the only one, each and every other parent who went in said the same thing: "OH MY GOD! GO CHECK IT OUT IN THERE!"

I left the party and my brain was swirling. Something was up with this woman. Who was she? Why was she in my vicinity all of a sudden? Why was she everywhere that I was? Why did her house look like that, how did she make it look like that, who, what where, when why and how and huh?

For days and days an alarm went off inside my head, telling me to contact her, but we didn't really know each other and I felt nervous. At this point, I had decided I was done trying to work with another person, despite my amateurish pictures, but my brain alarm just wouldn't stop. So I decided to text her.

I can't recall exactly what I said, but it was something along the lines of, "what do you do, are you into arts and crafts?" And she replied back the she indeed was into arts and crafts and was a professional artist and sculptor who had traveled the world for many years practicing her art. I asked her if she'd be interested in doing a children's picture book and she said she'd meet me and we could talk.

I went to her house a few days later, soaked in sweat. I brought 3 bags of my work and unfinished books and my completed novels and just a horrendous mound of paper and I dumped them all over her table and started to cry. At some point I got it all out. (I also poured apple cider into my coffee instead of milk and drank it anyway. So..... yeah.)

Miraculously she said she would work with me and that she could start after the holiday season.

And she began in January 2020.

I am still so happy I contacted her. What an excellent decision.

***

Thank you so much for reading, I'll be posting more about my life as a children's author and poet now that life as settled down a bit!

You can check out my books over on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, and sometimes Target, seems to come and go over there.

Take care,

Meaghan :)