Gerry Mooney Illustrating Dickens

Okay, It’s ON!

Well folks, I first want to thank you for stopping by to read my posts here. It’s been a labor of love even when it’s a struggle because this book and this project are something I believe in. I don’t think I would have stuck to all this if it weren’t!

So I would like to announce the following:
BLEAK HOUSE, by Charles Dickens and illustrated with 40 new linoleum prints by Gerry Mooney, is now available on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DTG8DLCJ . Paperback, 650 pages, $30. I’m not planning an e-book edition.

PROOF!

I know I’ve been talking about getting a publisher, applying for a grant, finding an agent…well none of this is going to happen. For one thing, after approaching numerous agents and publishers, it finally sunk in that “illustrated novel” is no longer a thing, and hasn’t been for decades.

No one I approached, even those that liked the work, had any idea of how this particular project fits into any current publishing niche. I have no doubt the project has potential, I’ve known it for years, but convincing anyone who has the means to publish it to see it like I do is enough for even Sisyphus to give up and go back to his rock just to take a breather.

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.

How to Scam a Commercial Artist

I’m taking a break from my Dickens projects to talk about a recent attempt to scam me as a commercial artist. While it seemed like a real job at first, there were warning signs along the way that just bemused me until the scam was revealed.

This job was a referral from a former artist acquaintance who I knew too many years ago to count, and we are now Facebook friends. He’s legit, I have no reason to think he was any more than an innocent dupe. But it spiraled pretty quickly!

A Christmas Carol

I recently started an Etsy shop (since closed!) to offer prints of a couple of my BLEAK HOUSE illustrations. I’ve done a soft launch but the fact is my offerings so far are pretty slim. I know a couple of images I’ve done for this project have a broader appeal, but growing a shop like this based on what I’ve done for this one book has some problems. So as I said, a soft launch just to get some feedback, but it is certainly off to a slow start. It would be nice to have something special to offer for Christmas.

I love “A Christmas Carol” as much as anyone, but mostly the movies (Mr. Magoo is my favorite!). I hadn’t read the text for a long time, but recently I read it again as a way to refresh my Dickens knowledge. I pretty quickly felt moved to do some sketching, in a way that movies do not inspire me. Interesting!

General U.S. Grants

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.

The Hard Work of Selling

The five years I spent creating the artwork for Dickens’ BLEAK HOUSE was not only a labor of love, but it was a process where, as I went along, I pretty much knew what I was doing, and if I didn’t, I knew the ways to figure it out.

Selling this project is another horse of a different color! I knew at the outset that an illustrated classic novel had no natural niche in the current publishing market, but I considered that fact against the marketability of Charles Dickens, and happy to say, Charles and I won.

So Step One was a smashing success. Step Two, a little trickier. I have some friends (or friends of friends) who are published writers, and I did ask one for “advice”, but the fact is, you’ll get the same advice in one form or another from everyone: Pick up a copy of The Writer’s Market and do the research. There are no shortcuts and no preformatted path to success, but this book has a wealth of information. You just have to be determined to dig for it.

TORNADO!

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.

Buying stamps

Since my original intent was to write about creating artwork, it suddenly seems odd to me now that the art creation is done that I still need to write about the whole process that led me here and that I am still pursuing, even though the way is not clear.

But it’s the task I set for myself, to document the whole process, warts and all. So I will tell you about buying stamps.

…And that was the easy part!

As you may know if you have visited my blog before, I’ve now completed a five-year project: illustrating Charles Dickens’ epic novel, BLEAK HOUSE. It was a task of love and devotion, heartbreak, missed connections, long nights, big dreams…and I think that may have been the easy part.

Finding a publisher (which mainly means finding an agent) is no easy task under the best circumstances. Agents have specialized areas of interest and it’s easy but arduous to look them up in the extremely helpful Writers Market. As far as I understand, agents break down into two main areas: literary agents, who assist in matching authors and publishers, and illustrator’s agents, who, due to the present genres in publishing, specialize mainly in children’s books, children’s book illustrators, graphic novels, matching up writers and artists, and putting them together with publishers.