2. Stinkalope Tex and his Stomp-N-Glo BootsPicture book, 30 pages2004The idea for this story came from a game that my brother Ian and i were playing one day at his house near Roosevelt Park in Albuquerque. We had played a few rounds of Boggle, then we sat at his kitchen table and made words with the boggle cubes. One person would spell out a three letter word and provide a definition. The next player would add a letter cube to any place along the line of cubes to make a new word, and then provide a definition. This continued untill all 16 cubes were used. Two of the "words" we came up with during this game were STOMPANDGLOBOOTS and STINKALOPETEX (it had 3 more cubes after that iteration, but i don't remember what the final 16-letter word was). The story is about a herd of Stinkalopes who threaten a small town in the west with their terrible smell. Stinkalope Tex arrives to save the town, using his stomp-n-glo boots. I sent this story to an agent who loved it and thought that she could get it published, but told me that it was far too long for a children's book, so i trimmed it down to about half its length, but i still think that the full-length version is better (and matches many Dr. Seuss books for length). My friend Aeron really wanted to illustrate this book and she did some samples, but they were never finalized as the book never got a bite from a publishing company. My agent tried for a few years to get it published, but no luck. I sent her a few subsequent books, but she's lost interest in my work. |
3. Dance of the PillbugsPicture book, 20 pages2004Chuck Hawley wrote a song called "Dance of the Pillbugs" while in the band Splinter Fish. I took much of the words to this song, added more, and formatted it as a story. It's about a boy named Charlie who has all the toys in the world but would rather go out in the yard and play with pillbugs. I can envision the illustrations for this book as being along the lines of biological illustrations, very clean lines... |
4. Alyssa Mae Foos and the Knitted World OrderPicture book, 20 pagesSeptember 7, 2006I have a friend named Alyssa Foos (her middle name is NOT Mae) who knits and has postulated the Knitted World Order. I took her idea and made it into a story. I've thought that at the end of this book could be basic instructions on how to knit. |
6. The Six Sisters and their Flying CarpetsPicture book, 18 pagesSeptember 26, 2008In June of 2008 i was looking at my friend Damon's photoblog and saw this picture. The idea for the story behind his title came to me quickly and i wrote it down. I changed the title from "Magic" to "Flying" because, as the story subtly demonstrates, the carpets aren't magic at all. This is my first children's book that does NOT rhyme. The story is about 6 sisters who fly their carpets until the Lord of the Province arrives and takes them all away. But the lord finds that flying what he thinks are magic carpets isn't as easy as he thought... I have an idea to expand this out to a full-length movie script too... Published on November 6, 2012 by H Bar Press.I was looking for an illustrator for one of my books (any one of them) and i came across Courtney Huddleston, who's style i liked. I asked (through his agent) if he'd like to illustrate any of my books and he didn't seem terribly enthusiastic about them. The agent asked if any of her other illustrators would do and i liked the work of Kristin Abbott. Kristin was really excited about The Six Sisters, so i decided that i'd have that one illustrated as my first published book.
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7. Molly RidesPicture book, 14 pagesFebruary 26, 2009Most of my stories have a grain of inspiration from some other source besides my own brain. This one didn't. It's about a skier named Molly who breaks a ski and decides to learn how to snowboard. Published on February 25, 2014 by H Bar Press.For my third published book, I asked my friend Brian Berley, with whom i'd worked on projects for Siren Interactive in Chicago, if he'd be interested in illustrating one of my books, and we settled on this one. I was blown away by the samples he produced and very happy with the final product. In the summer of 2016, Burton Snowboards contacted me about featuring Molly Rides on their Burton Riglet Summer Reading Series and did a little interview about me and my book.
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13. Big CatPicture book, 16 pagesMarch 16, 2012This is my first book that does not have human beings as its main characters. I'm really a dog person, not a cat person, but this idea works with a cat. It's basically about a housecat who goes out to explore, becoming larger and larger as she does so. Published on December 1, 2015 by H Bar Press.For my fourth published book, I asked my friend Chrystal Cleary to illustrate it. It took a long time, but eventually, she settled in and cranked out some great illustrations.
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14. Jam-Bo, Litta-Girl, and the BulliesPicture book, 32 pagesMarch 19, 2013"I love the power of words, nouns and verbs..." -Jurassic 5 A comic-booky rappy story about two small kids who take on three bullies by using successively bigger and bigger words. Published on September 3, 2013 by H Bar Press.After i self-published my first book, The Six Sisters and their Flying Carpets, i wrote this book, specifically for the illustrating style of Courtney Huddleston. He did a great job and this became my second published book.
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15. Little CarPicture Book, 24 pagesAugust 20, 2013The full title of this book is: Goodbye Little Car And yes, it's all in haiku. This story had been in the back of my head for a while. When i was in elementary school, we went to the beach and i let my purple Tonka dunebuggy roll into the surf, from which it never returned. Just imagining where it might have gone... |
17. Klutzville!Picture Book, 24 pagesJuly 6, 2015This was originally going to be a stand-alone book, but it wound up living in the same universe as Stinkalope Tex, with an appearance by him as well. I started this in February of 2015. |
18. We Are StarsPicture Book, 16 pagesApril 6, 2016I wrote this in January–February of 2016 but didn't format it out until April. I'm not sure how i feel about the whole "after-death" theme of the book, but it was an interesting idea to play with. It's a sad book about a sick girl who dies and becomes a star in the sky. |
19. Donny DumdumPicture Book, 24 pagesAugust 7, 2016Yes, this is about a certain narcissistic millionaire. It may soon be out of date, but you can read it by clicking on the cover above to see a PDF file of the book. |
20. The Mighty StrangerPicture Book, 28 pagesOctober 20, 2016This was inspired by the website A Mighty Girl and is about a mysterious hero who saves people in the town and the search for who this stranger is. |
22. Smiley-Face!Picture Book, 28 pagesText: December 15, 2016
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23. Punch a NaziPicture Book, 16 pagesJanuary 24, 2017There was a white-supremacist who got sucker-punched on live TV and Patton Oswalt started tweeting some hilarious tweets about always punching nazis. I took that and ran with it, writing a short little rhyming book about nazi-punching. |
24. Ryder, Sky, & EmmalinePicture Book, 24 pagesMarch 23, 2017My friends Kara & Ryan, Josh & Meadow, and Nikki & Robbie all had their first kids in the past year; Emmaline, Sky, and Ryder. Two of these three couples are farmers and i just got the idea to write a book about kids on a farm. Published on August 10, 2020 by H Bar Press.This is my first book to be in landscape format, which i would have liked for some of the earlier books, but wasn't an available option. I found the illustrator, Cindy Zhi, through the #VisibleWomen hashtag on Twitter. She lives in Sydney, Australia.
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29. Stinkalope Tex and the RescuePicture Book, 18 pagesMay 16, 2018The latest installment of Stinkalope Tex, where he heads out into a snowstorm by dogsled to rescue a downed plane. |
30. Stinkalope Tex and the PoopapotamusPicture Book, 14 pagesJuly 9, 2018Completing the Stinkalope Tex "seasons" quadrilogy. I had the idea for the title of this book way back when i was finishing up the first Stinkalope Tex book, but i never wrote it until now. It's got a lot of poop in it. |
33. Four and a HalfPicture Book, 24 pagesOctober 18, 2019Ben Hatke is an author of children's books and graphic novels who i very much admire. In early September of 2019, his four-and-a-half year old daughter was killed in a horse-related accident. This tore me up, but i got the idea of a story about a little girl who stops growing up. It can be thought of as always remembering someone gone as the age that they were, but i think that it also works as a metaphor for autism—someone who just stops maturing at a certain age. |
36. Browny the ChickenPicture Book, 13 pagesAugust 10, 2020Bulo got into the chicken coop at my friends' farm and killed 44 of the 48 chicks in it. One of the four survivors was the only brown chicken. This horrible gory story about a chicken surviving being killed over and over came out of my head. The curious thing about it is that every single line ends in a rhyme with "dead." |
37. The Alphabet from AAARRGH! to ZZzzz...Picture Book, 32 pagesAugust 11, 2020I’ve had the idea for this kicking around for a while and came up with most of the rhymes while out on walks with Bulo. Every letter corresponds to a nice sound effect with a rhyming couplet about it. Published on July 11, 2022 by H Bar Press.I follow Len Peralta on Twitter and he posted something about being in a lull, job-wise, so since i’d just received some unexpected money from a parent, i contacted him. He gave me a fair price and i decided to go for it, thinking that i’d get all the illustrations by summer. No, he had all the pages sketched within a few days, inked in another couple of days, and the cover a week later. Crazy fast. So i put it into production for release!
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39. Horton Hauls a HuffPicture Book, 28 pagesSeptember 28, 2020Having had a children's book editor note that my stories sounded "too much like Dr. Seuss," i went ahead and wrote a Dr. Seuss story starring Horton the Elephant. I began writing this in the summer of 2016 and came back to it with a revised plot in the fall of 2020. Publishing options seem slim. |
41. The Witches of the Long TrailPicture Book, 28 pagesOctober 24, 2020The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators was having a contest—fifty scary short stories, one frome each state. I had an idea for one, wrote it and submitted it, but then got a second idea about witches. The first story was a straight-ahead story; this one was a rhyming children's book type story. It is specific to Vermont and mentions a few places along the Long Trail. |
43. Planet ZeroPicture Book, 32 pagesFebruary 28, 2021A rhyming excursion from planet to planet, each one having a problem that makes them unlivable. The travellers in the story eventually end back home on Planet Zero—Earth, with a pledge to take care of it. |
52. No, Baby! No!Picture Book, 32 pagesMay 14, 2023This story came to me in a half-awake dream state the morning of August 4, 2022. It’s a bit gruesome, but fun and crazy. Basically, a baby keeps doing things that will cause death and destruction, with the baby’s parents barely saving the day each time. |
54. The Fettler’s ShopPicture Book, 16 pagesNovember 2, 2023I wrote the first couple of lines of this story on July 5, 2019 and it sat for a long time. In the fall of 2023 i finally dug back into it and worked it into a whole story. There’s not really much of a plot to it, but it uses a lot of words like doodad and thingummy and whatsit. |
56. The Creepity CrudPicture Book, 28 pagesMarch 13, 2024I got this idea after buying a couple of drawings from Ben Bender which had a beautiful goopy monster in them. It’s a story of a gooey slime that slurps people down into its lair because it’s looking for friends. |
