The Unintended Book

Election Day Special!

I never set out to write or do this book. I never intended to pitch the book. I did it by mistake and just generally in conversation.

When I left my meeting with Marty of the Weekly Humorist in the summer of 2019, I had the realization that I sold my book that I’d worked on for years and sold another one. The other book was done already - it was easy to sell. I didn’t need to do any work. But now I needed to actually figure out this new book. All the questions circled in my head on the train.

How am I going to write poems?

I’m not a poet.

How am I going to parody Silverstein’s art style?

Sure it looks simple but I know it’s anything but.

Oh my god, what did I do?

I eventually told the good news to people and the realization set in on how awesome this was. I’ve always been a firm believer in assigning yourself a project. I don’t think in single images but series. I just had a new project to work on.

I got home and broke out my Shel Silverstein books. I read over them for days. I was studying the art and the prose. The first poem I wrote was a direct parody of the actually poem “A Light in the Attic.”

I decided to not worry about the art yet. Let’s just write.

I looked over Shel’s work a lot in the beginning and then eventually decided to keep it simple. Put his work away and just write what I was seeing and feeling about Trump and the world around me. Eventually like all good art practices, it became a ritual.

I started writing about three poems a day. Some long and drawn out and some small.

Every day was something different. There was lots of material to work with. Each poem had to have silliness and humor but end with saying the quiet part out loud. Whether it was about his wife, his daughter or his brazen corruption.

The best part was there was nothing off limits. I would wake up and say let’s write about Kanye or his love of dictators. What kind of stupid image can go with this?

Some would be really pointed and cut to the quick like Terrorists above. And others, would be about making dirty jokes about his small hands. The balance needed to be there with seriousness and silliness. Something I’ve always been fond of. My college gallery show was called “Seriously Silly” in fact.

Other times, it could be both! I can talk about his weird hugging and “love” of the American flag and also his issues with consent and women in the past.

I loved dressing Trump up as the Burger King, Kellyanne Conway as a Crypt Keeper, Rudy as a reindeer and Trump as Santa, Mitch McConnell as Jiminy Cricket and Trump as a lying Pinocchio, Bill Barr as Batman (The Stark Right!) or Igor doing Trump’s bidding, Trump as The Queen of Hearts and his sons as Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumbass. What kind of stupidity can I do next?

As the school year came around, I worked on the book but was struggling to do both. I had more than half of it written but the art wasn’t there yet. I was originally using the Trump caricature I had from the last book but wasn’t happy with the art. It wasn’t Shel’s Trump. I worked on it and eventually came to a breakthrough.

I started to try to draw out the spreads and really struggled still. I was using a nib like Shel but I still wasn’t comfortable. I’m a very tight artist. I like to have things neat and orderly in my linework and thought out.

Most of the work happens in my head before anything ever touches paper.

After a few spreads, I had a talk to myself (not out loud, of course) I came to a conclusion. I need to go quicker and make mistakes. I need the lines to be shaky and wiggly. I need things to not quite match up. I need to embrace the spontaneity more. Once I did this, I was off to the races!

If You Give A President A Twitter Account came out before Christmas 2019. The book layout was off by a page in the initial run and it never really got fixed. It never lived up to my expectations. Does anything ever actually for an artist?

Sales were okay but I was really excited for the Satire and Parody Festival that was happening in March. I was going to be a feature of their booth, be on a panel about the book and get to sell the book to people who love Satire and Parody! Plus, show them what I was working on and what to check on next! It was going to be awesome.

The Satire and Parody Fest never happened because of Covid. The book sort of died because of Covid, like so many books that time. Since I was remote, I was able to really hunker down and finish this new book. But with everything, I couldn’t stop. New things happened everyday and I found new areas I missed. I added stuff about masks, injecting bleach, Biden, Barr, his sons, Pence, Roger Stone, blackmailing Ukraine, it went on and on. Things would happen and I would be pissed off and raise to the computer and fire off a new piece.

I found one of the hardest thing to do with this book was caricatures. Again, like the last one, I wasn’t caricaturing them as I would but how would Shel Silverstein draw these people?

I finally finished the book and said no more. It was published before the election in 2020 and did okay. Again if the world was a little different, I thought it might have done a little better than it did.

I did a virtual panel about a year later with the Humorist Books editors, publishers and other authors from the imprint. We had maybe 10 people attend and maybe 5 or 6 books featured. We all presented our work and talked about it. We did have some sales come in that night. They were all for my book which gave me a little boost of my ego but also had me thinking “What if?” a lot. If only I got it in front of more people and were able to do cons and sell it in person.

It’s not fun playing the What If game. You never win.

I’m still really proud of some of the writing and art for this book. It changed me as an artist for the better and gave me a new perspective on what I can accomplish by forcing myself to take on a challenge. I still try to embrace that a bit in whatever I do.

I get asked a lot - “What’s your next book going to be?” (last week in fact!)

I always reply with different things but really - I needed some time away from books to process these ones. When Trump started running again, I thought of doing a sequel but never got it past the title. I didn’t have it in me.

Maybe one day, I’ll do Shel Silverstein’s “Falling Up” as Trump’s “F*@king Up” but not today. Hopefully, I never have a chance to do it again.

I ended the book as I started it, exposing the brazenness of the subject. I think its important on Election Day to reflect on this again and not forget that those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. Hopefully not in our case.

If you are interested in picking up a copy of A Gaslight in the Attic, you can here!

Until next time…

P.S. - Want to read about my first book’s long and winding journey? Click below!