Well it has been a while since my last post. My agent, Janet DeCarlo, in Dover Plains NY (www.storybookartsinc.com) has been keeping me burning the mid-night oil. I've done a cover for a tarot book, and a book for Sundance Publishers on Native American Legends, through a production company in Chicago called Quarasan. You can see a few of the images for the latter with this post.
Now I am back to Pokiri Parrot as I promised the publisher final sketches by the end of the year. The committee-based decisions slowed down approval of the sketches and have pushed this deadline well into the new year. I've decided to work on it between other projects when I have the time and hope to have it done by the end of April.
In the meantime The Mountain that Loved a Bird is about to go to press in India and in Turkey. The Rajhiv Ghandi Foundation will be funding an Urdu version to send to Kashmir. All good news. We are still hunting for a Spanish publisher. Lectorum has committed to distributing it in the US.
Also Sonu & the Metal Elephant has finally been published by Scholastic India as wll as The Ice Berries both stories that I co-wrote with Sylvia Sikundar. The latter appears in an anthology entitled The Puffin Book of Bedtime Stories and they did a wonderful job with the production, The soft cover has an appealing pillow-like feel to it.
More on Pokiri soon. I promise! Today I did a photo shoot with Neerja a young model who will play Rajkumari in this exciting new book. She was adorable and proved to be the perfect character dressed in her choli.