Today, March 19, is the anniversary of the publication of Charles Dickens’s epic BLEAK HOUSE, the brilliant novel that of course is the subject of this entire blog for the last four+ years.
Published in 1853, I’ve learned from Compulsive Historian and legendary Disney animator Tom Sito (this is a Facebook link) that BLEAK HOUSE was the very first novel to mention dinosaurs (on the first page!)
It is strictly a happy coincidence that I chose to have these beautiful T-shirts printed with my linoleum cut portrait of “The Inimitable”, in fact I just picked them up from the screen printer yesterday.
They’re available in S, M, L, and XL. Wear one and people will instantly know how smart you are! They are available directly from me for the great price of $25.95 + $7.50 shipping, for a total of $33.45.
I can accept checks, money orders, Venmo, or, if you prefer PayPal, I can send an invoice so they don’t take a percentage. I have Square on my phone and can probably accept money that way. Email me with your preference at the link below.
There’s a limited supply, but if there’s a demand I can always print more.
Email me at dickens@mooneyart.com for questions or to place an order, and thanks once again for stopping by!
When I was prepping my last blog post about my London adventures, I was a little leery of posting (or announcing) a 20-minute video because I thought most folks would just click away from it! Although it was included in my previous post, it was at the very bottom and I soft-pedaled it in my email. After some time to think about it, though, I decided that it was worth sharing and watching in all its glory.
There were two folks shooting video of my presentation, and although the one that live-streamed on FB had some technical problems for the first two minutes, I was able to cut the two versions together so well that it’s like I was using a two-camera setup.
My full presentation at Dickens Day 2025 thanks to Jeremy Parrott and Warren Weiss
I had asked Jeremy Parrott to help with the live stream. He had some trouble switching the cameras, understandable since I literally threw my phone at him as I rushed to the stage!
Afterwards Warren Weiss, another attendee, came up and said he had shot my whole presentation, and once he emailed me his take, cutting them together was amazingly smooth.
Designing an e-book with Amazon
Moving forward, I’m working with Amazon to design an e-book of BLEAK HOUSE, which is a tricky process since it’s key that the illustrations appear adjacent to the proper text. The book is 68 chapters, so early on I suggested that they send small sections at a time.
Working in sections, we’ve gone through, first, chapters 1-20, and then chapters 21 through 39. Their designer is simply copy-pasting the text from my original pdf of the text version, so the actual proofreading is minimal, but lots of errors creep in at line breaks and paragraph breaks, especially in long sections of dialogue. I am essentially reading paragraph break to paragraph break, onerous enough but it goes quickly.
I opted for a package of services in addition to the e-book, though I’m still waiting to hear a clear list of what that involves. I do know that they’ll be producing a short promotional video, but where that will appear is still a question; and the e-book will get listed on other platforms, but exactly where is unclear.
I’m not too worried about it, as getting the book laid out properly is the main task we’re working on. The folks as KDP have been great to work with so I have hopes for it all.
Moving forward
I’ve decided that the e-book package is the last “big” money I’ll be spending on this project. Once the weather gets nicer I plan on approaching more bookstores in the area about doing linoleum-printing demonstrations, which as it turns out is pretty popular!
I’ve found that the main issue with talking to bookstores is that they need to know that my book is available for them to order through their standard channels. I think I’ve solved that problem, and I will find out once I start getting out and asking at individual stores.
Well yes, I made my marathon journey to London and I will never, ever do it again this way!
First and foremost I want to say that the event I traveled for, the annual Dickens Day gathering at the University of London, was everything I could have hoped it to be. Largely a group of “locals”, i.e., folks from within the U.K., there were also a couple of Asians, one other American, who currently teaches over there, and one Brit who has lived in Hungary for several years, so technically a local, but not really!
I only got to chat with a few of the other 100-odd attendees, so all my impressions are pretty selective. Everyone was extremely welcoming and interested in my work, and likewise the other speakers had some very interesting and surprising topics and visuals. The theme of the event this year was “Dickens and Art”, and the topic embraced quite a range of subjects.
I know many of you have been following this story, especially those who have come close to being victims themselves until they tickled the google and ended up right here at this blog. One of my new correspondents, Tom Hanlon, went the extra mile and actually made a complaint to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), and also, as of this writing, has made a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission at ReportFraud.ftc.gov .
Below is the FBI report in full, except for redacting some of Tom’s personal info. I won’t put links in here for the two earlier posts because they’re linked in the official report.
I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the work of other linoleum artists. The fact is that since I seek out and view so much art on Facebook, my feed these days is almost exclusively art of various types, from Golden Age comic art to Disney animation, character sketching, political cartoons, Renaissance work, cave paintings, you name it. And I like it fine!
What has really grabbed my attention of course is the work of other linoleum artists, which I find utterly humbling. I’m very happy with the work I do, but in essence my pieces are a single image printed in black ink on white paper, and if you’ve read my posts on my “Christmas Carol” experiments, you know I struggle with anything more complex.
Some of you have already seen my original post on this story, first published on Nov. 18, 2024, but I’m keeping it alive because it’s important as information, and as an educational tool. Since I published it, I’ve received emails from eight other creatives who almost got scammed, except they paused to do some online research and quickly ended up at my post.
For this post I’m simply publishing all eight emails, last names deleted for simplicity (though some said, sure, use my name) so I don’t have to comb through all their responses.
Yes, it seemed like a good idea. It’s been a few years since I’ve advertised on FB, and though the process was a bit multi-layered, I got through it and managed to run an ad. It didn’t help!
But BLEAK HOUSE is a different project, and it was more about getting the word out a little wider than it was about making sales. I decided I could spend $91 on running this ad for a couple of weeks, fine-tuning audiences interests, geographical area, and other parameters.
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.
As I continue my quest for an agent or publisher, I find that suggestions and ideas from various places just bubble up and spur me to further exploration. I’m happy to run down any lead that doesn’t cost me money.
That’s the most interesting thing about this process, discovering connections that lay undiscovered in plain sight. A good friend and fellow cartoonist that I’ve known since college turned out to be an avid Dickens fan and collector. I never knew this about him until I started this project, and now he’s one of my most avid supporters.
I’ve told you about the buddy who volunteered to take my BLEAK HOUSE portfolio and show it around at the MOCCA fest in New York. No matter that none of the publishers there was quite the thing for me, it’s the network that is developing around my work that keeps the whole thing interesting.
Dear readers: I’ve been remiss in posting here and I wanted you to know why. It’s been two months since the tornado but the process is continuing, with FEMA a regular presence and debris cleanup ongoing. Regular posts will resume soon!
On the night of Saturday, May 25, there was a tornado on its way to Claremore. This was a rare event, in fact when the topic came up at all it was, “Tornadoes never come to Claremore!” and the conversation was over.
We retired to Oklahoma in 2016 and bought our very first house in retirement in Claremore, the location, as it happens, of the very first scene in Vicki’s brilliant BROKEN HEART LAND trilogy, as Claremore was the main location of the Dawes Commission in 1907.
We have gotten into the important habit of watching the local TV weather when storms are on the way, sometimes late into the night, as really bad weather usually requires continuous TV coverage.
