up, up and away

I’m off on vacation for the next week or so. First stop is Florida, to visit my friend Lisa Hunt and take in some sunshine (a commodity sorely missed these last few months in NYC). Upon our return, we’ll have family staying with us for a week — kind of an extention on our vacation in a way.

This past week has been a flurry of appointments and preparations for our time away. I met with the good people at Doubleday, who were full of helpful advice and exciting plans for publicizing Doomed Queens. They’ll even be producing a Youtube video for it.

Toward that end, I’ll be relaunching my website, something I’ve been long planning — and equally as long putting off. But I now have no choice. Aside from it getting too close to my pub date, my ISP was hacked into last week, which disabled some of this site’s functionality. One example: I can no longer receive e-mail notifications for comments for this blog. So update I must!

You can grab an advance look at the front page teaser for www.kriswaldherr.com here. It features my new author photo by the illustrious photographer Nina Subin.

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An unveiling…

The studio/gallery is coming together. Now that the edits for Doomed Queens have been turned in, I’ve been able to focus more fully on getting the studio ready for the world (though I’ve been working there for the past month or so).

Next up, a friend who does exhibition design will be installing my window design. This logo is just one small element within it, which rests inside an art nouveau/Macintosh-inspired (the designer, not the computer) flowering tree that wraps around the front of my store window. I’ve also to hang some art up, though I’m not planning my first “official” exhibition until later this spring. So far, I have three exhibitions planned for the year, including one to commemorate the October publication for my book.

It’s a slow process — I now understand how setting up a retail space can take over one’s entire life. But when I consider how the storefront looked when I first saw it, I know I’m making progress.

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of queens and shamans

Another two weeks has gone by without a post here. Can you tell that I’ve been busy?

During this time I’ve:

~ Finished the cover for Doomed Queens and hand delivered it to Broadway Doubleday. Fortunately, they were all very pleased with it! Once I have a scan, I’ll post it. Oh, and on a related note, there’s now an Amazon.com page for it, over nine months before the pub date — sort of like being pregnant, only with a book at the end instead of a baby.

~ Got Doomed Queens edits back from my editor. Final revised manuscript is due March 1st.

~ Along with those edits, I was asked to revamp the manuscript into a 32-page blad (book laid out and design). Doubleday plans to send the blad out to various publicity outlets in advance of my October 2008 publication — a very good sign that the-powers-that-be are excited and supportive of my book.

~ On top of this, I’ve been hard at work on the art for Nicki Scully and Linda Star Wolf’s The Anubis Oracle. This 35 card oracle deck and book set will be published by Inner Traditions/Bear & Co. this winter. I’ve finished just about everything save for the cover (below), which is still under development.

I also illustrated Nicki and Star Wolf’s Shamanic Mysteries of Egypt, which came out last year. The art for The Anubis Oracle is adapted from this book, using both digital and traditional watercolor techniques. It’s been a very intense process, since the deadline for it was hot on the heels of finishing the manuscript.

~ Am still moving stuff into the new-and-expanded Kris Waldherr Art and Words storefront. Everything is coming together nicely, though it’s a slow process! A friend will be helping me with my window signage later this month, as soon as I design my logo. I have a few ideas, but need to spend some time focusing. Which I will do as soon as I finish the queens’ edits and the oracle cover.

Toward that end, I love the idea of a somewhat arts and crafts-themed design, maybe a bit fin de siecle Vienna meets William Morris in the type treatment. But what’s giving me pause is the thought of branding: Whatever I ultimately choose to do will reflect on my business, my work as an author, and my art. So I need to plan carefully. I’m also planning a relaunch of this site sometime this spring, so I’d like to tie in my studio design with that for consistency’s sake. Anyway, lots to think of here!

And that’s the latest here. I did manage to take an afternoon off to see Persepolis, which I highly recommend. It’s wonderful — it gave me hope that we author-illustrators can make a difference in this world through our art and words, if we create powerful enough products that make it out there. I was simultaneously devastated and enthralled by it.

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the new studio!

Presenting the official new headquarters for Kris Waldherr Art and Words. (Which is, as you can tell, still very much a work in progress).
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View of the entrance. Nice big storefront window! Note half pint assistant on chair awaiting instructions (or inspiration).
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View of my work area — drawing board and tables. Still need to bring my desktop computer set up and file cabinets over.
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What will be the gallery area. Already I’m planning three exhibitions for the year, the first of which will probably go up this spring. (The recycling is not an art installation.)
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Another view.
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To get to this stage of semi-completion took a lot of work — all done while finishing up the queens book and working on a new oracle project. (No wonder I’m so tired these days!) But there’s much more to be done, stuff to be moved and so on. But all of this will be done over the next few weeks. The important thing is that I can now paint and work in the space without tripping over boxes and cans of paint.

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finished! (for now)

As you may have guessed from my silence, I’ve been engrossed in writing the last pages of my tragic queens book. And, as you may have guessed from the title of this post, I’ve finished — at least until I get edits back from my publisher.
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The manuscript went off to Doubleday last week. No word from my editor yet save a “we received it and how many bound galleys would you like” e-mail. So I assume all is well! I sent the manuscript as a design dummy — have about twenty pieces of black and white art to do, but that’s not due until July. For now, the heavy lifting is over (knock wood!).
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Predictably, I woke up the morning after sending the final book off with a sore throat which rapidly ripened into a nasty cold. Within twenty-four hours, I was coughing up a storm worthy of Violetta in the last act of La Traviata. As of today, I’m still under the weather, but am functional.
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Though I’ve met my book deadline, there’s lots of other projects on the horizon. Work on my storefront-studio-gallery is moving forward. Wood flooring has been installed and the space is currently being painted. Shelving will be delivered Friday. After that, I plan to start moving in and setting everything up this weekend!
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On the work front, I’m illustrating (actually adapting existing illustrations for) a new oracle deck with Nicki Skully and Linda Starwolf, authors of Shamanic Mysteries of Egypt. Some have you may have noticed that some areas of this site aren’t functioning as they should, primarily the newsletter sign up and e-cards. That’s because my website got hacked into over the holidays by a spammer; I’m currently looking for a new mailing list host, so if anyone has any recommendations, send ‘em my way. I’ll be fixing up the nasty mess the spammer left over time, since I plan to relaunch Art and Words in a month or so. In the meantime, things are what they are.
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Even with all of this, after the intensely focused labor of writing Doomed Queens, I feel like I have breathing room again — even with the croup. \

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In my next post, I’ll bring you up to date on what’s going on with my storefront, complete with photos! I hope everyone’s new year is off to great start.

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