Because I know how much y'all care I will update you on my spectacularly exciting life. My entries might be a bit fewer and farther between. I am a busy, busy bee as of late. The deadline for the first of 6 installments from one of my contracts is June 25. Work - which has been crazy because my boss is in China for a few weeks - is packed with scheduling, meetings, projects that are all due NOW. NOW people! Not later, NOW my clients keep making it clear. On that note, how come when you come to me with a RUSH, RUSH! HURRY! job and it HAS got to be mailed out NOW and I get you the job in one day, why do you then make me wait for three days on any kind of approval? Thanks for the rant, moving on.

So big project moving forward. Working every night until late to get it done. Loving it, but um, tired, maybe? But when your dream comes knocking at your door the appropriate response is not, "Um, now? Yeah... now's not such a good time, maybe after a nap, come back in just a few?" So I work. Then Monday and Tuesday I needed to get everything to my agent. "My agent" Ok, allow me some self indulgence here. My LITERARY agent. Like that? Sounds nice, doesn't it? She wants to rep my books (Plural! "Please send me everything you have ready to be seen, PRONTO!") Woot! So yes, a tad excited about that. There is some big ol' publishing conference next weekend she is going to and wanted to make sure she had all my stuff. So I sent everything digitally and everything by mail. And next week I am sure she will call and say that Penguin Publishing wants a 3 book series and will give me a $100,000 advance. What? Dream BIG I say! Crazy is as crazy does.

So I would love, love, LOVE to be sharing the illustrations I am finishing every night, SO cute - but I can't. Gotta wait. Michaels and Hobby Lobby are looking at them in the beginning of July to see if they want to carry them. I know!!!! So now you see why sleep is a luxury at this point and I am glad to ignore it for now.

And just to let you all know, I share this all to hopefully not sound full of myself, or like I am bragging. The point of writing this blog for so many years now has been to document my career. I want to share my ups, my downs, my frustrations and my elations. I have learned so much in the past five years trying to get to where I am today. And it has been an amazing trip one that I could not have planned in a million years. And having an agent and projects where I actually am getting paid to draw dogs is just, well, still hard to believe. And if sharing my journey helps even one other person realize that they should not give up their dreams, that with hard work and not giving up, you can have what you are striving for, then that makes all the years of writing this blog worth it.