An illustration I drew with my FINGER!!!

I bought a new app because I love new apps and I'm a software geek. I can't help it. The app is called ASKetch, and it's made for an iPad.

And it rocks.

I found out about the app because of Laura Zarrin (who I follow on Twitter) who retweeted a tweet from Christina Forshay (who I now follow on Twitter because of this great blog post) who wrote about what she did with the app. I was hooked.

A couple nights ago I sat down with my iPad and, within maybe 15 or 20 minutes, drew this completely with my finger:

 (!)

I'm totally in love with this app! There's no learning curve to use it (it helps if you already know how to draw, I suppose, but I'm sure that's not an absolute prerequisite), and the lines and textures it makes automatically make the simple lines I made look incredible.

As it turns out, I wasn't drawing this little guy for nothing. I'm working on an illustrated manuscript that I needed the drawing for. After a little work in Photoshop, here's how the final (pending editorial approval) version turned out:

 
Thank you, Andrew Kern for this fantastic addition to my media arsenal!

Five impossible things before breakfast

The last thing I saw before I went to bed Saturday night was the very end of Alice in Wonderland. I found it on ABC Family just as the White Queen and Hatter were standing outside the queen's castle waiting and hoping Alice would show up to battle the Jabberwocky.

That last paragraph doesn't really matter much except that, when Alice first gets a look at the Jabberwocky, she tells Hatter that sometimes she "believes as many as six impossible things before breakfast." So I'm sitting here before breakfast thinking of the things that, until yesterday, I would have thought were impossible, and I'd like to share five of them (I'm lazy, it's early, and I'm pushing it to find five).

1. I am (apparently) a writer

Growing up a reluctant reader makes this one all the more impossible. I guess now I've become what might be considered a "reluctant writer."

2. I would write a book

I did write the Twisted book so I would have something to illustrate, but in the end there were words involved and I did write them. That, and they were bound in a book.

3. I would be reviewed in Publishers Weekly

I'd like to think that only happens to real writers.

4. Writers would accept me as one of their own

I spent the weekend at a writer's retreat trying to convince everyone there that I was actually just an illustrator, not a writer, and that I didn't really like to write. They convinced me otherwise.

5. Editors wouldn't laugh and point when I read them my manuscript

At that writer's retreat over the weekend? Yeah. I got to read to two different editors from Scholastic; Grace Kendall and Mallory Kass. I personally witnessed them laughing over the weekend, and they both seemed to have complete control over their index fingers, and neither of those things were directed at me as far as I could tell.

And I believed all of these impossible things before breakfast.

But you know the thing I'm thinking about as I'm writing this? Not only am I going to have to accept all of the above, but I'm also going to have to update my website.

Oh, and 6. Slay the Jabberwocky.