Below are eight chapter illustrations my friend Sue did for an unpublished children’s novel I wrote back in the 1990s. Enjoy her beautiful work! Later on, I may or may not find some way to post the 66-page story here as well. All illustrations by Sue Marston…
Blame It on Love 
These are so beautiful, I love the “Trudy first tree hug”, I hope they get publish. Really awesome work.
Thank you, Deepak, and me too. I agree that Sue’s artwork is beautiful. From 1992 to 1997 I wrote fiction and seriously worked to get several stories published, but all I got were boilerplate rejections from the publishers. So if my fiction is ever going to be “published,” it will likely be right here.
Thank you, and I am thinking now, “how ironic,” because 3 years ago I went to City Hall to save two HUGE ficus trees on the parkway in front of my home, and hired an arborist to verify the trees are well-rooted and healthy.
I’ve always felt privileged to be only one in my neighborhood to have TWO of them (on either side of the driveway). All the neighbors had their one tree removed, and replaced with smaller trees that give no shade. Many neighbors are irritated with me for keeping mine, because they attract birds and look out of place, now that the rest have been taken out.
I have photos of them, but I don’t see a way to share them here.
Sue: I’m glad you saved those great shade trees and for the birds as well; similar to my little novel as you know. You should see the humongous ficus tree at my bros’ house, wow it’s huge and full, and it started out a spindly little thing in a pot that I had for years. If you scan the photos and save them as jpg or jpeg files you can then link the photos, use the “Export” function under “File” in Preview (what your photo will open in after scanning) and export your scanned photo to JPEG format, then you can link them online, at least I hope so. And about your other comment; I think I will start scanning the story pages a bit at a time and post them here; see how it goes. I don’t have it stored on a usable CD and I certainly don’t want to retype it all…ugh.
I think it would be a great idea to release the chapters one at a time, like a soap opera, or those serials they used to show at the movies from week to week. I remember being intrigued about what was going to happen next. Like a cliff hanger..
Sue: Don’t know if any 9–13 year-olds would look in here, but I may give it a try. I avoid recalling those days 20+ years ago when I worked so hard and was so hopeful & determined to have actual publishing-house marketed books out there, all for a good cause. I think the cause was part of the rejection problem…the “animal rights” message wasn’t approved of by the media’s gatekeepers, same as today. At least we can have our own websites and such now, like your http://stopk9torture.com, and no one can stop us from that at least, not yet anyways.
Well, aside from the fact that some of your readers may have 9-13 year old kids, I found the story interesting and intriguing, and I certainly was nowhere near 9-13 when I read it. Maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough, because things like “50 Shades of Grey” don’t interest me at all.
Me neither, no interest in any of that disturbing, sickening stuff. Thanks for your nice compliment about “TTY” though. I need to find a best way to share it (and other stories) online…the blog format here might not be quite right, but I’ll see.
Laura, if you’re going to put out the pictures, it’s time to share the story!!