Hello everyone!  Happy New Years, in case I forget, and hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. 

This year I decided to make some watercolors for presents.  It was more fun than I expected.  I also printed out family photos and framed them for my mother, and she loved it.  Doing this, I learned that making presents feels a heck of a lot more appropriate for Christmas than buying them.

This painting was for Kazu's mom, my mother-in-law (sweetest one out there!), who loves dance:

This one was for my brother, who's the first person to read Rema in its final draft version so far (I'm only up to chapter 10):

For dinner, we went to Tan Cang and had a delicious meal of crab, french style beef cubes, sauteed pea sprouts, and fried tofu.  Man, it was so good!  If you live in LA be sure to try Tan Cang, and get there early because the wait is pretty long.

After dinner we played Settlers of Catan (Tim won), and Halo (I played Phantom Hourglass on the DS).  Things I got for Christmas: a coat, a scarf, some stockings, Final Fantasy 4 on DS, and the Sleeping Beauty dvd.  My mom knit my brother and husband a sweater, and it reminded me of Mrs. Weasley giving Ron and Harry her home made sweaters.  It was hilarious and wonderful, and they had their own special magic.  Kazu and Tim proudly wore them, and will continue to do so. 

I think this was my favorite Christmas in a long while, maybe because it felt so great to have a day off, and maybe because I didn't have to worry about my Mom and brother having to fly back to Hawaii a few days later.  It was fantastic.  :)

I feel refreshed and ready for more work, both on Rema and Amulet.  There are two more watercolors, but I can't post them yet because I'm not sure if my friends recieved their packages yet.  Once I know they did, I'll post them up.

This used to be a scene in chapter 1, but it got cut.  I was playing around with the idea of frames, but I think I went overboard with the eels.  It was fun to draw, though.

Things are going well here.  The next few weeks will be swamped, as we're coming down to the wire on Amulet 2 (not to mention the holi-daze).  I've made significant progress on the Rema novel.  I won't say too much because I don't want to jinx it... but it's lookin' good and I'm super amped!!

Hope everyone else is doing well too!  I'll pop back in later with some scans of my sloppy, sloppy sketches. 

It's so good to be home. A lot has happened since Kazu and I left for our trip, most notably we elected a new president. All I'll say is, Thank You.

Italy was wonderful. It's a beautiful place, rich with history. There's so much to see and think about, our biggest mistake was trying to pack too much into the time we were there. We didn't get to see Florence, but it just gives me more reason to want to go back.

We took so many pictures (too many pictures?) that it took me a whole week to post them all up on flickr in between coloring Amulet pages. I finally finished last night, and here's our photostream:

Week One - Milan, Rome, Lucca, Pisa
Week Two - Milan, Lake Como, Cinque Terra, Venice

*PHEW*

It was pretty crazy! But worth it. I feel both Kazu and I learned a lot, and we walk away from this trip more excited than ever about what we do.

Guess what I did the other day? That's right:

And so should you! Don't forget to research your local candidates and propositions. All it takes is some time and google. It'll probably impact you just as much if not more than your presidential vote, and it will give you a good idea on the importance of your voice in politics. You can do it, I believe in you!

So if you've been reading my blog, you'd know that I'm 1000% for Barack Obama. This election season has been an amazing journey, one that I'll remember for the rest of my life because this is the first candidate that I've found genuinely inspiring. So, to celebrate this, I thought I'd link to some of my favorite Obama videos because they're extremely well done. By the time Kazu and I return from our trip to Italy, the election will all be over. This is my way of getting some closure on what has been a fascinating, entertaining, and all-around dramatic presidential campaign. I chose these four videos, because when I think about why I support Obama, they tend to pop up in my memory:

Guy with purple shirt
Super Tuesday speech
Obama speaks to headquarters after primaries
DNC behind the scenes

What can I say? I'm a fan!

Aside from politics, things have been pretty busy around here. Kazu and I have been painting Amulet pages non-stop with lots of generous help from friends and assistants (see Kazu's blog for updates!). Amulet 2 is turning out to be quite a beast with tons of locations, a broad cast of new and awesome characters (my hands are itching to do some fan art!), and a storyline that spans generations. It is a lot of work! But it's been a pleasure doing it, and it's worth it, even if it means running hours from 1pm - 6am!

With the new skills I learned, I tried painting some stuff from the Reman book, and well... let's just say the doodles made me giggle. Because I'm not so stressed about making things look right anymore, everything's turning out extremely cheesy and lazy-looking, which is probably a bad thing. But I'm more interested in just having fun and enjoying the act of drawing, because that's its primary function now, which is probably a good thing.

But as for writing, oh how I miss it! It's been so hectic here with Amulet, there's barely time to read let alone write, but with its absence there's an increased longing to get back into it and knock the book out of the park. Plus, helping Kazu with his book gives me the perspective I need to approach mine with an objective eye. Having read it again, it's ever more clear what needs to be done to make sure I send out the book I'm happy with. I refuse to settle for anything merely good enough when it comes to this story, I've been obsessed with it for far too long to let that happen! I intend to do a lot of outlining and brainstorming during travels.

Speaking of travels, as some of you may know, Kazu and I leave for Italy on Monday. We've been really looking forward to this trip for so many reasons, and we're so grateful to the kind folks at Renoir for inviting us to attend the Lucca Comics Festival! Our editor, Michele, has told us our itinerary and man... it sounds pretty intense and amazing. I can't wait to meet everyone!

I've been listening to an Italian podcast over at mydailyphrase.com, and it's been incredibly useful. They make podcasts for learning all kinds of languages, and space out the learning to one phrase per day. It's very effective! When we come back, I want to listen to the podcasts for Japanese and French, too.

Well, I have a few more Amulet pages to paint and some packing to do before we hop on that plane. I'll return with photos. Hope you all have a great two weeks, and have fun voting! I shall leave you with the corniest of my digidoodles: a kiss that doesn't happen in the book. ...Or does it?!

D'awwww....

I realized I haven't updated my website in a while.  Boy, does this place need a major overhaul...

Well, I've finished another full draft of my book.  It's around 400 pages (if each page had 250 words on it), and 30 chapters.  Kazu is reading through it right now.  My friend Jen (she's open for commission, folks!) has also read through and seemed to like it, but I know there's a lot of edits that need to be made before I feel comfortable handing it off to seek publication.  Kazu's been giving me some awesome story notes, but I'm taking some time away from it to work on Amulet, which, by the way, has been a blast.  We have a few people helping us, and doing team comics is just... well, it's just a lot of fun.  Way more fun than solo comics, in my opinion.  :P  It's been nice to be a part of a team again after a year and a half swimming around in the not-so-dark recesses of my imagination.

Not much else is going on besides that.  We're trying to wrap up as much of the book as we can before heading off to Italy for the Lucca Comics Festival October 27th.  We'll be there for two weeks, thanks to the kind folks at Renoir Comics.  The first week will be a five city tour to promote the Italian edition of Sorcerers & Secretaries, and the Italian edition of Daisy Kutter, both published by Renoir.  You can be sure there'll be a nice flickr report when we get back, like the one we did from Japan.

In the mean time, it's gonna be pretty busy around here.  I'm hoping to squeeze in some personal art time between painting pages to keep my visualization skills sharp.  That's something else I realized while writing, drawing so much has really helped me visualize landscapes and such in prose.  I used to struggle with that when I was writing intensely in high school, but now it comes quite easily.  Don't want to lose that.

The above picture was a drawing I've had in my head for a while and had to get down on paper.  It's just the beginning of chapter one, Tabby waking up on her last day on Earth.