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11. The lesson
On my return to the damp grey climate of England I once again got wrapped up in my work and my deadlines that had become increasingly stressful, and It was about this time I was approached by the Alton Towers theme park. They wanted to produce a book called Adventures of Henry Hound. I needed a break and what better than a days pass checking out the rides and cotton candy at Alton Towers. It was great fun! And the reason I mention AT is because shortly after the production of their book, the owner of Alton Towers decided to buy Battersey Power Station, the old power station and a historic landmark in London, now future home of a seven story theme park. I was duly summoned to a site meeting, where we all hummed and ha’d and Ooooo’d at the place and my job was to create the identity of the Henry Hound corporate artworks for the project. After I returned to my normal working schedule I was once more consumed by my deadlines, although I was so excited with the possibilities and size of this project. It was weeks later and I didn’t hear anything, in fact I tried calling many times but no reply, everybody seemed to have disappeared into the woodwork. It was then I decided to take a ride and present myself as an interested party in front of the management team. I was told there was nobody available but was invited into take a look around the grounds as though I’d lost something valuable. It was while I was while walking around that I noticed all the costumed characters, copyright Mike Gordon, that had materialized, stickers, general shop window displays, books, badges and all things copied from the book. No wonder management had disappeared. On my return home I related this to the publisher, who looked just blank as did their management, and obviously they wouldn’t want to take this any further let alone get involved in any kind of lawsuit. Eventually it became just blew over, and I later heard that the owner of Alton Towers had had money issues and was now broke, this was probably due to the Gordon curses I had put on...
read more12. Life in California
Came 1993 and there i was sitting in my office and staring out at the grey skys above England when we decided to move to the U.S. of A and the sunny, warm climate of California, and that is what we did. getting all my publishers to think that I was still in the UK was another matter. But I kept up the daily calls to my publishers and kept them at ease, after all nothing had really changed, I was just a few thousand miles away! And didn’t distance make the heart grow fonder? Work started to pour in and I was constantly turning down jobs. It was on one of my winging whining talks with my son Carl that he suggested I switch to computer colored art, and that would gain me another pair of hands, his! He researched many programs and we finally found one that imitated color and paper texture for the publisher to be happy, actually I didn’t tell them of the switch and they still think I scan in my art. My son joined me in Santa Barbara and worked with me for a couple of years until he decided to return to the UK and work and commute from there. We used an iMac, yes, one of those tiny little screens that make you squint. It crashed daily with the size of files we loaded, but we persevered, and now today working on the new Wacom Cintique I wonder how we ever made it. Make it we did and in 1995 I started to create animated thirteen episode series for the BBC. It was called Sprogs but when the US got interested, the name changed to BB3B and ran its course in the UK, I’ve yet to see any rights payments but such is the movie...
read more13. The rise of the E-book
It was in these first few California months that I split up from my wife and spent a year of communal living. I tried to blend in with my new friends and places, I dated and kept my mind on other things, like scuba diving, psychology lessons, more dating and buying houses more dating and getting into another marriage that lasted a mere two years. and more dating. It was during this time that I met my long time girlfriend Jean. We are still together after nearly eighteen years and it was with her that Carl joined me here to guide me through my computer phase, Little knowing the challenge ahead on becoming computer literate! Santa Barbara has been my home now for these many years, over which I’ve learned to blend in to the California lifestyle. Work has continued to flood in, and I have completed hundreds of books, but unfortunately with the ebook market making it’s presence known and the decline of many bookstores and publishers I saw a lull in the flow of work, and for the first time I wondered whether it would ever pick up again. I lost my son to a large company, and he is now developing programs for the magazine industry in South Africa, he has two kids and he is doing well. I call him a lot about the computer! Next: the rise of the e-book . . ....
read more14. Breadcrumb Books is Born
The rise of . . . http://breadcrumbbooks.com Work began to lose impetus and although I still had deadlines to deal with, my schedule tended to be punctuated by trips to the beach, drinking lots of coffee and the study of social networking, which is still a mystery to me! If I offend anyone it is really unintentional and I assure you I am committed to learning more about the #s and the @s. At this point I was dedicated to going solo and, with a little help and a push from my girlfriend Jean, and lot of help from my son Carl, I formed Breadcrumb Books. Jean and I collaborated on a couple of ebooks, One Inch at a Time and Perfectly Perfect Worm. We published them on iBooks, again with my son’s technical help. As luck would have it, they went straight onto the best seller list for children and teens, where they remained for many months. In fact, One Inch at a Time not only reached the No. 2 spot in the charts, but it also received the QED award for design and excellence! But the story behind the story is a story in itself, and a much more interesting one . . . To be continued! ...
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