I tried and tried and tried. I got in the cycle of “can I get a picture book published?” It became a hobby. My senior year of high school I had an art project that was to write a picture book, and then they would take them to the district bindery, photocopy them, and we would get 15 copies of our own little book that was bound at the bindery. And I went crazy, and I did a 72 page book. Choose your own adventure where a character in a gas mask gets killed violently, in many different ways.
And I thought it was very funny and gross, and my friends thought it was hysterical. And it was this big 72 page choose your own adventure. And, one of my friends just kind of half-suggested, hey, you should make this a real book. And that stuck in my head, “A real book? Maybe I could get this published.” So of course I went to my public library and checked out some, “How to Get Published” books.
And I was – this was actually pretty smart for a kid. I’m surprised I thought this through, I went to my local bookstore, and I looked at the publishers who published the strangest books, because I knew it was weird, and out of – you know, violent and strange, who published the strangest books? But I kept myself two children’s books, because I thought that’s what I want to do, I want to do picture books.
And in that point in time, I believe Laura Geringer at Harper Collins was doing the weirdest picture books. They were very strange, lots of off-beat, weird stories. So, I said, “Okay, I like this.” And I looked in the back for the address, and I got the information, and I sent that 72 page story off to Harper Collins. And I waited, and waited, and waited, and then my senior year took over, and I forgot all about it, and it wasn’t until a year later – I was away at art school, and I came into the house one day, and they said, “Listen to this.”
My roommates pushed the answering machine, and they said, “Hello, this is for Nathan Hale. This is Harper Collins — Don’t get excited! Your book is completely un-publishable, but we saw in your cover letter that you’re a high school student, and we think you should keep at it. So thank you so much for sending in your book and we’ll send it back to you. Keep trying!”
And I was so excited I rewound the answering machine to play it for my parents and it erased the message. I’ve never been able to hear it again, but that got me so excited. The fever caught-on and I started attending SCBWI functions and the little conferences on how to get published, and it just became my side hobby, at nights, and evenings I tried to get published, and I tried – I was sending in manuscripts and picture book ideas all through working in natural history, trying different things.
I was starting to get published in smaller press type of things, I had a wonderful relationship with Cricket Magazine and was doing illustrations for Cricket just about every issue, and I was really starting to feel like I was getting my foot in the door, but I could not get a manuscript sold.
