9. Breaking Wind

Writing funny shit week after week drove me completely nuts! So we decided to get into books.

So armed with a portfolio of cards I landed my first board book work with a small company who went broke shortly after but sold the books on to a multi national publisher. Not a good start! But not my best work! I learned much later that under the new publisher those books had sold a quarter of a million copies! Bummer!

Now I was armed with a portfolio
of cards and I landed my secondbook
contract ‘Breaking wind!’ Obviously
the wind was behind me!

The second book came just
after ‘Breaking Wind’ it was
‘Sit on the Roof and Holler’
by Bell and Hyman.

It was a poetry book that needed some cute illustrations, and although my work was still very ‘cartoony’  it gave me the boost I needed. Now I was able to approach other publishers and stand at the bottom of the proverbial ladder to success. I settled in to promoting myself and spent a few years building my portfolio of books filling in any gaps with greeting cards.

Just as I was about to give up on cards, the three hundredth card sitting on my desk,I was picked up by Hallmark the giant of giants!

My art was getting much better at this point and Maria had written to tHallmark and they had asked us both to meet them for dinner in London. I explained that I was the proud father of my fourth child and my wife and I would have a hard time finding a baby sitter. Why not bring him along they said (being American) the Brits know you have to be off your head to say something so stupid! I won’t say any more about that dinner but I would have to thank that Italian waiter who took our few month old baby into the kitchen while we talked, looking at my son now I wonder what they did with him and why he loves to cook.

More to come! . . .