Dickens – Gerry Mooney Illustrating Dickens

London Hit-and-Run

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.

Inspector Bucket Superstar

You may have ended up here in response to my latest email announcement, all nice and formatted with images and new info. I’ve been wanting to make this improvement for some time and I’m happy with the results. Above all, it contains an “opt-out” option at the bottom which is just polite, but I never had the means to do it in a standard, email-friendly format.

It means a lot to have the support I’ve gotten from many friends and even strangers in this journey. The book is out in the wild, I’ve gotten my first press coverage in our hometown Claremore Progress, and I’ve lined up my first book signing.

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.

…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.

“The Last Picture” Show

As promised in my previous post, I’ve completed a “making of” video of the final large illustration for my BLEAK HOUSE project. It’s not the last chronologically in the book, just the last one to get to. In fact there are two more small, or “spot” illustrations still to do, and those I can do in a few days or a week at most.

The larger ones take more time to work out a more elaborate composition, and can take a month. Shooting a video while doing this work adds a great deal to to process, and of course cutting and editing a video can be time consuming, but I hope the results are worth your time.

Blocked.

It’s been awhile since I posted here, and the longer I go without posting, the guiltier I feel. I had to think about the reasons for this gap, aside from the usual distractions of life, of which I have at least as many as any other person.

No matter what I may be doing at any given time, there’s always a part of my brain thinking about BLEAK HOUSE, about the next picture, about finishing this project, about NOT finishing this project, and about constantly moving it forward, in big and little ways.

I’ve finished a few new pieces and made good progress, but wasn’t moved to write any posts, as my list of topics had been dwindling. Then things in other areas got busy and BLEAK HOUSE was put aside for awhile. It didn’t last, but when I came back to it I found I was blocked.

Four New Spots

As work proceeds at what sometimes seems like a glacial pace, I would like to present these four recently-completed small illustrations. I’ve strived to provide some context for each with excerpts from the book.

It may seem like there are some spoilers here, but BLEAK HOUSE is so jam-packed with catastrophic plot twists that you’ll forget all about these once you’re reading the book!

VOLUMNIA FINDS LORD DEDLOCK

Here, Lord Dedlock’s flighty cousin Volumnia, a fairly minor character, stumbles upon his prostrate body in the dark.

The Dedlock town house changes not externally, and hours pass before its exalted dullness is disturbed within. But Volumnia the fair, being subject to the prevalent complaint of boredom and finding that disorder attacking her spirits with some virulence, ventures at length to repair to the library for change of scene. Her gentle tapping at the door producing no response, she opens it and peeps in; seeing no one there, takes possession.

Elon Musk, The Wall Street Journal, and me

On October 3, I got an email from Ellen Gamerman, an arts writer for the Wall Street Journal. Elon Musk was in the process of being sued by Twitter for backing out of his offer to purchase the social media giant. No news there, right? So I get this email:

Hi Gerry,
I’m an arts writer with the WSJ, and I’m working on a story about Bleak House and the chancery court, pegged to the start of Elon Musk’s trial in a (very different) chancery court. I hoped to talk with you because I saw on the Dickens Society site that you were interested in illustrating that novel. It would be great to hear your thoughts about the visuals in Dickens’s chancery court. If you’re free, I’m on a tight deadline and hoped to reach you today if possible, or tomorrow. Thank you!
Best,
Ellen

Inspector Bucket

It has been said that Inspector Bucket, the police detective in BLEAK HOUSE, was the very first fictional detective, pre-dating Sherlock Holmes among others. I don’t know about that, but I do love this great Dickens character!

It’s tempting to compare him to others of the genre, and I often think of Columbo for some reason, but that’s not even close. Bucket is not rumpled and never feigns confusion, but the attribute they share is a totally disarming likability. Bucket’s greatest skill as an investigator is instantly being everyone’s best friend and confidante. He can speak to little children, Lords and Ladies, or street sweepers, and within a sentence or two bond with them like an old friend.