It delights me to report that on March 4 2020 ,a package arrived which contained the final and complete version of Gladiola Groundhog Sleeps In! It has been a very long journey!
Away back in 1987 I created the story for my class of kindergarten children. It was typed on a primary print typewriter-yes you heard me-typewriter. The illustrations were stick figures done on white paper. The kids loved it and the telling of it kicked off activities in the month of February for many years. The whole month involved fun and games with shadows and groundhog games.
Fast forward to June 2015. At that time I joined a group of emerging writer/illustrators. Under the amazing tutelage and encouragement of Peggy Collins of Loyalist Collage, we all proceeded to up our game. I had been a landscape painter for years but I soon realized that this was a whole new ball of wax. With coaching, my stick figures morphed into more realistic shapes and by the end of the course I had a good sense of the journey I would need to take to complete this story.
Revision after revision occurred, new ideas flourished and fleshed themselves out! Gladiola became a constant presence by my side and developed a life and personality of her own. The months and years ticked by. I found I had a lot to learn about computers and that was a whole other learning curve.
Once the story was written, illustrated and then printed I was astonished to find out how many errors can slip by a watchful eye. Gladiola proved herself to be impervious to the demands of time and schedules and after a while we learned to let go of expectations around her appearance in final form.
Which brings us up to date. All of a sudden, all of the impediments seemed to dissolve and on March 4 2020, Gladi appeared at our back door ready to take on the world. It has been a crazy, interesting and informative wild ride.