Struggle – Gerry Mooney Illustrating Dickens

My Journey to Speak on BLEAK HOUSE at Dickens Day 2025

Every year the University of London hosts “Dickens Day”, a prestigious event that features speakers on a chosen topic of interest to fans and students of Charles Dickens. It was exciting to see that this year, the topic is “Dickens and Art”, and in a flash it seemed all my efforts were suddenly coming into focus and timed perfectly for the stage my project is currently at.

Of course I could say I’m speaking at the Institute of English Studies at the University of London, but come on, “The Dickens Society” just sounds cooler!

Distribution beyond Amazon

Things always appear easier before you actually do them. It appeared that using the “Expanded Distribution” option for a book published on Amazon would make BLEAK HOUSE more widely available, and it did, sort of.

I’ve been operating under the belief that I could do book signings in Barnes & Noble stores. There are two in Tulsa, and of course there are other, smaller bookstores in most of the bigger small towns in the region. As it turns out, I could indeed have book signings in these B&N stores, as long as I was in the correct distribution channels that would allow these stores to order my book. If they can’t get the book on their shelves, there’s no reason for them to host the event. No matter how nicely you ask, there’s no way around this logic.

Which leads to the obvious question: WHAT are “correct distribution channels”?

How “A Christmas Carol” Ends

Man, I really didn’t want to write this post. I had big plans, as I wrote about in my post of Sept. 10. Create a set of charming scenes from Charles Dickens’s holiday classic as three-color linoleum prints, and do it in time to sell them for this Christmas season in my Etsy shop, which I set up primarily to try selling some of my BLEAK HOUSE prints. Ambitious but doable, I thought.

It actually started out very well. I developed my sketches into imagery that I was very happy with. I enjoyed designing the lettering with a loose but classical sort of letterform, and of course thinking about and drawing the characters was a lot of fun. I was making good progress! The key factor was time, since I was starting maybe a little late for the holidays, due to the complexity and somewhat experimental nature of the project.