So I took this papermaking class which was actually more sheet paper. It wasn’t images, anything that I do now, but I was so taken by the process and I started experimenting and I combined that with manuscripts because I wanted manuscripts that had like great rhyme and focused on nature and great language, because I loved words from those vocabulary word things that I used to do with my mom.
And so I put them together and I went back to New York with a new portfolio and my first appointment was at Henry Holt & Company and I met Laura Godwin and she offered me a two-book contract. So really I did have success. I did that kind of apprenticeship with the other, the mass market characters and then I went back with my own stuff and it just clicked immediately.
And it’s been great ever since. My first book was In the Tall, Tall Grass and it was really well-received so I actually, within the first couple of years, could make a living off my books which is pretty amazing. People were just great about them.
And certain states like Texas were just so behind me, Texas and California. It was wonderful. Scary, though, going around with your portfolio is scary. It’s like, you know, ego on a plate. It’s like, please like me, please like me.