Dynamic duo

Here we are at the start of a new adventure!  Yes we've decided to go for it... we are going for a long time dream of mine - writing and illustrating children's books.

I found the perfect partner!  A very interesting mix of a man... Desmond Byrne.  Yes the Desmond Byrne an opera singer...wish you were a fly on the wall when we are at home... Completely insane in here.  Yes he is my life partner and he is also a science and math teacher here in Canada.
What we've decided to do is a his and hers blog.  So we will be both posting on our adventure.
So Desmond is in my opinion an intellectual English professor type who does voices in different accents (did I mention he did voice over in Mona the vampire) as for me, I am more the Italian creative spontaneous woman.

 I am an early bird filled with ideas early in the morning from a sometimes good night's sleep.  As soon as my eyes are open I bombard him with new book ideas almost bursting into song even before his eyes are open.  Actually I do burst into all sorts of songs in the morning... anything that pops up in my brain. Hardly any opera though.... before Desmond I didn't know much about classical music.  He knew little about pop songs... So we have an incredible musical mix in this house.

So we will both be posting our take on the progress of this new adventure from concept, illustrations, editing, marketing, finding a publisher or publishing ourselves till we find a publisher... posting, facebooking, going to tradeshows, everything that we go through.  Of course we still have our jobs to do in the mix of all this creative stuff.  Should be fun!

I can proudly say, we have finished writing our very first book together called "Yum Yuck"
a book for young children - between 4 and 6 years of age.  It is such a fun book!  Love it....

Actually we've are writing a series of books with as Mattie the main character of the book.  Along with Max her dog and her favorite bear, Bear.  She goes on all types of adventures discovering the beautiful world we live in.  Of course, as you probably suspected... it has a touch of science in it!  As for Mattie, she is a very strong willed little girl with a wild imagination.

A brief description of Yum Yuck :

Join Mattie in her first adventure!  Yum! Yuck!  Where she discovers the incredible variety of things her animal friends eat to finally return home wanting to eat what she was afraid of eating in the first place.  There is no place like home especially when it comes to food!

So I'm posting one of the first final black and white sketches of Mattie... I still need to work on Max... 

Tell me what you think... is she loveable enough... do you think she has what it takes to be popular with the kids.

Signing off: Anne-Marie

Posted in: illustration