Last night I was extremely honoured to be part of a book launch for Rosanne Hawke‘s two books ‘Wolfchild’ and ‘Across the Creek’ being republished by Stone Table Books.
It was a wonderful opportunity to be a part of a panel with Rosanne and two other illustrators, D.M Cornish (whom I’m sure many know as the author an illustrator of the Monster Blood Tattoo books — he illustrated the front cover for Wolfchild), and also Emily Bensted who did the beautiful interior illustrations for Wolfchild. Seriously, you need to see them, they’re stunning!! She is so talented.
The panel was really fun. I got my words tied up a bit, but I think, as I have more opportunities to speak, I’ll get better at not tripping over my tongue so often.
I was so honoured to do a cover for Rosanne. It felt as though I can come full circle in a way. It feels like a lifetime ago now that I was attending Tabor University as a student in Creative Writing, back then, I was just beginning to feel the effects of my fibromyalgia but we still didn’t know what was going on with my health and I was just gradually getting worse. I kept pushing on with Uni though, as best as I could.
Rosanne was one of my lecturers and we both recall the conversation in which she showed me the cover of Wolfchild and how she hoped to someday redo the book – I said something about how, someday, it would be wonderful to redo it for her.
Life went on. My health got worse and I left Uni without finishing my Creative Writing degree. It was an immensely depressing time, but I surged onward, publishing my own work and keeping on doing what was before me despite my health. Drawing, while such a HUGE passion of mine became very taxing on my body, I simply wasn’t able to keep it up to the extent that I needed to to keep up the skill level. So — it went by the wayside.
Until now. Until Stone Table Books contacted me.
I kid you not, three months before Stone Table Books contacted me I had decided to start drawing again, with great vigour, I went and got myself a little Wacom Tablet (because my big cintiq had died) to work on. My work wasn’t what I wanted it to be, I was pretty sad that I had lost a lot of skills over the years, but I was determined to get skilled again.
Then, Stone Table Books contacted me and I was just…overwhelmed.
Rosanne remembered me. She wanted me to do a cover for her!
Years of wondering why – why do you take particular roads and paths that seemingly lead nowhere. Sometimes you end up at a dead end and have to turn back. Sometimes you’re left wandering around, endlessly trapped pondering what you’re supposed to be doing.
And it is lonely when a puzzle piece falls into place than you can look back in hindsight and see where all the puzzle pieces have fallen before to lead to the finished picture before you.
Last night was so much more than a Book Launch to me. It showed me that while I feel the past ten years have been meaningless wandering — it hasn’t been — the puzzle pieces are falling into place.
So, thank you Rosanne and Stone Table Books.
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