“It must be good. Everyone’s quiet.”

My mother, Sandy, always hosted all the big holidays. Christmas, Easter, New Years, and Thanksgiving for years. She’d always cook, plan, organize and share in the most humble of ways. When dinner was served, we’d all dig in, totally enjoyed a scrumptious meal and everyone would be silently enjoying the meal and that’s what she would say.

“It must be good. Everyone’s quiet.”

Born in 1943, to Jack and May, she lost her father when she was 12 years old. I can’t imagine that experience for her. She was always quiet about that. I’ve heard that when soldiers experienced war, they never wanted to speak of the trauma and I think the same was for my mother. She always tried to keep upbeat. But she experienced trauma in her life.

She would always tell the story about how after her father died, she’d begged her mother to go horseback riding. Begged and begged until her mother relented. As they rode, my grandmother, her mother, fell off her horse and broke her back. My mother said she thought her mother would never walk again and carried that guilt for years. My grandmother did, indeed, heal and walk again and soon after found a new partner. Granpa Jim.

I never really knew Jim growing up because as a young child I was hidden from the family drama. Jim was not a very nice man. He took my mother’s inheritance and when my mother wanted to go to college, he told her, “Women only go to college to find a man.” He denied her that college experience.

She went to work and got a job at McGraw Hill…a publishing company, where she met a young man from Queens named Christo…or Chris. He was, and is, Greek. They dated and fell in love. They decided to get married. Jim thought Greeks were dirty and forbid my mother from marrying my father. My mother didn’t care. She loved him and would marry him. On her wedding day, Jim threw her wedding dress out on the front lawn and said he never wanted anything to do with her again.

My mother experienced trauma.

After converting and getting married in the Greek Orthodox church, my parents originally settled in Queens in 1964. They were only 21. Their wedding date was June 6, but I learned later that they had a civil ceremony months before to help my father avoid the draft. But they were in love and they wanted a future.

When they were first married, my father told my mother that a “good Greek wife always got up in the morning and put her husband’s socks on for him so his feet wouldn’t touch a cold floor.” And, trying to be a dutiful wife, she did so for about a month until she spoke to the other Greek wives in the neighborhood told her that was absolute garbage. She told my father she wasn’t doing it anymore.

After a miscarriage they eventually had a son in 1967. Me. We lived in Queens for 10 months and then moved to New Jersey. Teaneck, to be specific. Twenty months later, they had a little girl, my sister. We didn’t have a lot. My mother became a stay-at-home mom while my father worked for American Airlines. We laughed over the years that we lived like “Little House on the Prairie” a TV show that ran in the 70s. We didn’t have much money, but because of my father’s job, we got free air travel and would see all these amazing places.

My mother valued family over all else because when I was about 10, her brother died at 38.

My mother experience trauma.

Soon after we lost her mother. So, she would always entertain family. Cousins would come over a few times a year and she loved it. She would cook and everyone would be quiet. It was that good. Nothing made her happier than having family around.

When I was about 11, I had gotten a paper route. I didn’t want it, but the kid who had it just told me it was mine now and people were counting on me. I was unsure of myself, but my father told me that I needed to do the work. The first Sunday, I had to put together all the papers and deliver them. But, it was pouring outside. I went to my mother, scared and crying. I didn’t know what to do. She helped me load the papers in her car and we went out together to deliver them, just the two of us. Bill Wither’s song, “Just the Two of Us” came on the radio and she smiled at me and said, “See? Just the two of us. We can make it work.” And we did. All the papers were delivered in spite of the rain.

My mother, despite not going to college, loved history. If you live in New Jersey, or have been there, you know that there are historical markers just about everywhere. And she loved them all. She would take us to all the big historical places from the American Revolution—the Von Steuben house to Valley Forge. She would make us stop to read every sign until one day we had to say, “Mom, that’s a men’s room sign.” She loved her history and my love of history comes from her. Without her, there are no Ordinary People Change The World books or Xavier Riddle. I dedicated Rosa Parks to her because, much like Parks, she quietly tried to change the world.

My mother loved her church. It meant the world to her. She was raised Catholic, but totally embraced the Orthodox faith. She found community and family in that space. In the Greek church, priests can marry, and it’s much more like a family friend than this distant figure. Father Joe was their pastor, their priest, and their friend. There are so many people who went to church with us that were friends, but were actually family. They would come over every once in a while. My mother would cook and everyone would be quiet.

Every New Year, they would have all their friends…their family… over to ring in the new year, including Father Joe and his wife, Valerie. My father would hold court and try to be the center of attention, but my mother? She would quietly cook and serve and enjoy the love and friendship of those around her.

Since we are just about to celebrate Christmas, I need to mention how she loved the holiday. We used to call her Sandy Claus. She would go out and find gifts for everyone with deliberate purpose. You’d open a gift and she would explain why she bought it. It was thoughtful and purposeful. “I got this red sweater because you mentioned that when you wear red, you feel safe.” She always quietly paid attention.

When I was in college, my mother decided to take classes at Bergen Community College. She worked to get her associates degree, not to find a man, but to say she accomplished something. She got that degree, but that wasn’t enough. She would keep going to school there, not to get another degree, but to learn. They had a senior program and she would take classes all the time and we would sit and talk about them. She loved learning.

My father was the master of ceremonies, my mother was the magician behind the curtain. She shaved the corners off my father’s sharp edges, she celebrated her children and grandchildren to all who would listen. She stood in the shadows and made all of us better.

And then my father got cancer.

My father decided that they would move to Arizona. He was worried that when he passed that my mother would need someone to take care of her. Luckily, the FDA approved a new pill that specifically targeted his form of cancer and it actually killed the cancer in his body. But then the other shoe dropped. We learned my mother had dementia. Alzheimer’s. She was scared, sad, and lonely. Friends would call and she would start the conversation by saying, “I have dementia.” She was embarrassed. But what she didn’t seem to get was that everyone loved her no matter what.

My mother experienced trauma.

I would call my parents up to see how they were doing. My father would complain about this this thing or that. My mother would always say everything was fine. When my father wasn’t on the phone I’d ask her how she really was and she would admit to being scared and sad and angry. Angry that she couldn’t express herself. Scared to lose who she was and sad that she wasn’t with her friends.

Last Wednesday, she passed away. It was a heart attack. She went quickly. I’ve been thinking about the impact one person can make on the world. We look at kings and presidents, artists and performers, but I always think of those who quietly support those famous people and those are our real heroes. My mother was and is my hero, and she impacted the world.

I’ve been sitting here quietly thinking of her and her life and I realized it was good.

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?