I was recently interviewed , well really just had a conversation with my friend Josh, on Talksplode, a segment of the iFanboy podcast. We discussed my lettering career and then my turn into children’s books.

I mentioned that I got into lettering kind of accidentally. But once in, I soon got married, bought a house and had kids. My focus was on making money which is the furthest thing from where I wanted to be. I grew up wanting to be a cartoonist. When I was offered a job lettering, I convinced myself it was a way station until I could get my art career going. Plus, I was in good company. Charles Schulz had lettered comics before he started Peanuts. I was doing it to learn a new craft that would help my comics. I did learn the craft, but soon I had no time to devote to my comics career. One would say, “What career?”

I was lamenting that to my friend Erik Larsen, who offered to kickstart my comics-making career by giving me 2 pages a month in his comic to do my own thing. It made no money, but it got me drawing again on a steady basis. Soon after, I got a job drawing single panel cartoons for the Complete Idiots Guide books while also lettering. That was a crash course in cartooning. I was writing and drawing cartoons about Ancient Egypt one week and computer programming the next. It was steady work and my skills improved exponentially.

Then, as my comic in Erik’s book, called Desperate Times, continued, I submitted it to comic strip syndicates and Amy Lago at United said she really liked the strip and we worked towards making it their next strip offering. It wound up not happening, which was heart-breaking.

At the time, the writing was on the wall. Newspapers were dying, comic strips weren’t making much money and a whole new crop of cartoonists were making what was called webcomics. Instead of newspapers, they’d offer their strips on their website. So, I decided I just wanted to do a strip for me. I didn’t expect to make money, and boy, I didn’t. It lasted over 2 years and had moderate success…meaning a few hundred people read it. But, I got better by doing a daily strip.

I did a book for Marvel called Franklin Richards, a book called Cow Boy, and then Brad Meltzer asked if I’d do a line of children’s books with him. And as I’ve just finished drawing our 40^th book of the main series, I realize that all that work has gotten me better. I know it’s kinda obvious, but when you’re in the middle of it, you don’t realize it. By no means am I saying I’m great by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve improved. I love what I’m doing and I think it comes through in the work.

That said, I missed just drawing for myself. As a kid, I never felt happier than when I was in my room just drawing for the love of it. I loved trying to learn how to ink with a brush, work on improving my character design and style. I would use real pens, pencils, and brushes. Real paper. And make mistakes that couldn’t be fixed with command-z.

So, in between books and other projects, I’ve secretly been writing and drawing a strip for myself. I have about 8 weeks done and I don’t know if I’m going to post them. I may. They might not be any good, but I’m doing the strip for a number of reasons. First, I love the meditative quality of the writing and drawing. My anxiety drops, I don’t doom scroll, and I feel better in general. Second, I love the “happy accidents” as Bob Ross calls them. I like not trying to be perfect. Maybe the jokes aren’t great, maybe I didn’t draw something exactly as I wanted, but that’s okay. I feel like I’m learning to improve again.

Third, I mostly work digitally these days—it goes faster, it’s easy to make corrections, and doesn’t require scanning. So, to just slow down and draw and write has really been a joy.

Finally, I don’t have to change anything I don’t want to. I live in a world where my co-creators will ask for changes, editors and publishers will have me make changes, designers will have me make changes. Now, that’s part of the process of the business and I don’t really mind, but I get to do this one thing for me. No one can ask for changes and if it’s not good, so what? I’m doing it for me.

So, get off the grid and do something just for yourself.

As everything, it seems, with me, revolves around the comic strip. I grew up loving Peanuts, graduated to Bloom County, The Far Side, and Calvin and Hobbes. After that, it seems there was a drop off of strips that I found interesting. I’m sure there were some good ones, but nothing that obsessed me like those. But I view my world through the lens of comic strips.

These days there is a strip called Wallace the Brave that I love. It’s got a unique voice that’s silly, kind, and bizarre at times. You should really check it out.

But, in between, I discovered another unique and brilliant strip called “Cul de Sac” by Richard Thompson. Again, it had it’s own voice and look. It has this sketchy, dashed-off quality to it and I love it. I didn’t know much about Richard, but over the years Iearned he had so many styles of art. He drew hilarious spot illustrations, a delightfully bizarre feature in the Washington Post called “Richard’s Poor Almanac” as well as being a breathtaking caricaturist. In short, the man was a genius.

Back in the day, as happened, we followed each other on Twitter (when it wasn’t a cesspool) and would go back and forth once in a while. He even recommended I go to the National Gallery when I was visiting Washington D.C. But, we never met in person or had an actual conversation. A real regret, because, as we discovered, he had Parkinson’s Disease and first his career ended, then we lost the man. Way too young. But I made it a point to find and pick up as many books by him as I could find.

If you want to learn about the man, The Art of Richard Thompson is a fabulous book showcasing his art and accompanied by interviews. And, for those who might like an idea about his life and work in video form, you can watch THIS video.

Finally, it took a while, but I was able to find and purchase an original. It currently hangs right above my computer so I can look at it every day. It focuses on my favorite character, Petey, a neurotic and anxious boy. Also, it references Lord of the Rings.

You can find the Cul de Sac strips and Richard’s Poor Almanac on Go Comics and also, if you’re inclined, donate to Team Cul de Sac, which raises money to go to the Michael J. Fox Foundation (another hero of mine) and help find a cure for that horrible disease.

I hope more people learn of Richard’s work and keep it alive!

Before I got into the children’s book publishing world, I thought, much like people who approach me these days, that writing a picture book would be pretty easy. Fewer words, right? I should have known better. In my previous career, as a comic book letterer, people would constantly inquire how to get to be a letterer since they have neat handwriting.

Neither career is as easy as people thing. In fact, there are times that creating a picture book is harder, more time-consuming, and frustrating as any other creative pursuit.

I have a book coming out in July called The Imaginoodles. It’s about a nervous hedgehog, an outgoing chipmunk and a lizard that thinks she’s a dragon. But it all started with a pig. A wizarding pig and it started in 2018.

Randomly one day, back in the day, I did a quick watercolor of a wizard pig. I posted it online and my agent saw it and sent me a note saying I should do a book about the pig. Also, my wife saw it and said she wanted to see more of “Edward.” (The name she gave the pig)

So, I went ahead and wrote and penciled an entire manuscript about Edward. I sent it off to my agent, Jodi, and she…did not like it. The great thing about my agent is she’s honest. If something sucks, she’ll tell you, but if she likes something, you know you’ve got something. I can’t stress how good it is to have someone like that in your corner. And she thought Edward sucked.

So, I turned my attention to other book ideas. A few got published. But my wife kept asking me for a book about Edward. I thought about it…for a while. I tried to come up with a story for this pig. I finally landed on an idea. Wrote and drew a manuscript and sent it to my agent. She liked it and sent it to our publisher, Lauri, who also liked it.

So, I went to work. Every book is different. The process is different, the amount of rewrites is different, the creation of the art is different. In this case, my publisher worked with me a bit to tighten the story and made me realize that the main character wasn’t Edward, but Henry the hedgehog. My designer, Jason, worked with me on layout and design stuff (including helping me redesign the cover), and I also went back in and tweaked and re-tweaked the story and art.

Everything seemed to be working except Edward’s look. Jodi and Lauri both felt like Edward just wasn’t cute enough. So, I worked like crazy to redesign him. But, no matter what I did, he didn’t seem to work.

Begrudgingly, I tried out new characters—new animals. I thought which animals seemed most hyperactive and I thought of the chipmunks that I always see running around my property. I named him Chester now. He was perfect. Also, chipmunks are smaller than pigs, so now all the characters were more similar in height. That one little/big change brought the book together.

So, six years in the making, based on a pig that is now a chipmunk, the book is finally coming out. And, recently, the Junior Library Guild has endorsed the book, so it was worth all the years and rewrites and all the other stuff in the process. But, I will say, making children’s books is not as easy as I thought.

I was able to get back into doing a few comic strips–my first love. This time, I’ve done a couple weeks worth of strips for Dork Tower, a gaming comic strip. Be sure to get over there and check it out: http://www.dorktower.com/2023/12/11/elveopoulis1/

One of the big questions authors get is, “Where do you get your ideas?” We tend to give a joke answer like, “Saskatchewan.” But, really, ideas are a dime a dozen. I have ideas all the time for stories, but it’s what you do with them that matters.

My first picture book, The Yawns Are Coming!, happened after I was sitting, getting my hair cut the morning after working late and I was yawning like crazy. I just, matter-of-factly, said, “The Yawns are Coming.” And immediately pictured these little creatures grabbing my mouth and forcing me to yawn. A little horrific, if you think about it. I turned that idea into a children’s picture book, but it could have been a horror story.

I bring up Yawns because it relates directly to my upcoming picture book, A Little Emotional.

Back in 2020, we had just got into lockdown from the Covid pandemic. It was isolating, it was scary, and it was new. We were only a week or two into it, and I was thinking that there seems to be this low-level constant emotional haze over everyone. We were all a little scared, a little sad, a little confused, and…a little angry. I remember just always feeling a little angry all the time. It was this background noise like static on an old TV set.

Then it came time for Yawns to come out. The publishing industry wasn’t sure what to do. Bookshops were shut down, people weren’t going out, and buying children’s books was low on everyone’s priorities. Some book releases got pushed back a few months in hopes that things would clear up and get back to normal. Talking with my publisher, we decided that we’d still release the book on time and I’d do virtual visits. People were just figuring out how to do Zoom calls and these public events.

So, my book about 2 friends having a sleepover coming out at a time when no one was having sleepovers or able to go to a bookstore to buy one, died on the vine. Months later when things opened up, the book actually did take off and do pretty well, but at that time, it made me really angry. My little anger grew into a full-blown anger and it was ugly…and that’s where this book idea started.

I pictured this little kid being a little angry and that anger manifesting with this little ugly creature standing beside him. But, as his anger grew, so did the monster until it was huge, taking up the entire room, and nothing else. Just like I was feeling. I was consumed by my anger. I quickly wrote up and drew a manuscript called A Little Angry and sent it to my agent, Jodi.

She nicely told me she understood I was upset, but the manuscript was mean. “Try again.”, was what she told me. So, I put it away. In the meantime, I did the follow-up to Yawns with The Giggles are Coming! Then one day in 2022, my wife and I were talking and she said she liked Angry and said I should revisit it. I went back and reread it. Now that I was no longer angry, I could see with fresh eyes how dark the book was, but I actually kinda liked the concept.

So, I went back to it. I rewrote a bit, redrew pages and felt good enough about it to resend it to my agent. She really liked it. She had no notes and passed it along to my publisher, Lauri. Lauri immediately made an offer and we were off and running. Lauri came back with some notes. The big one was that she thought I was wasting an opportunity just concentrating on anger. I thought about it and realized she was right. I needed to show all different kinds of emotions. So I decided to make them all and incorporate them into the story.

I showed the lead character, Tommy, happy, sad, jealous, etc. Each emotion had a little monster that appeared next to him. The story was less mean and, I felt, would give children a way to express their emotions. I thought of those charts in a hospital that count from 1-10 and have little emoticons to help the patient describe their pain, and how hard it is for little ones to describe what they’re feeling. So, we now have a little chart with the monsters and their emotions.

The book was just about done when Lauri asked me to reconsider the name, A Little Angry. She felt it no longer expressed what the book was. I forget the name she suggested, but I said I would only change the name to “A Little Emotional” and, thankfully, she loved that idea.

The book comes out on May 9^th and I hope parents use it to discuss emotions with their children in an open and positive way. I hope out of all those negative emotions we were all feeling during the pandemic that I buried in the dirt will grow into beautiful flowers.

So, tell me…what makes you angry?

What makes you sad?

What makes you happy?