SVS Virtual Studio JANUARY 2023

[Melissa_Bailey]

Took a bit of a break from social media and things to focus on personal work -- getting picture book dummies ready to submit to agents. The goal is to start submitting this month. Here is an illustration from one of the dummies:

[ArtistErin]

@Melissa_Bailey Beautiful Love it!!!!

[ArtistErin]

Mice Basketball

[mag]

@Melissa_Bailey Now I really do hope I haven't messed up!

[mag]

@ArtistErin This is awesome!!!

[mag]

@Melissa_Bailey Such a nice scene! 🥰 How many book dummies are you preparing? Are you going to submit all of them at once, or just one and have the rest of the manuscripts ready just in case the agent asks for more?
I've queried agents with only one book dummy, but I had about 3 more other manuscripts ready for them to see. But now - I am trying to work on multiple book dummies at once, and it seems a bit difficult for me to skip from one to the other, so I wanted to know if you have some kind of a trick how to schudule the workflow, if you have multiple book dummies to work on...?

[mag]

@kirsten-mcg I love it! It's really cute and the textures are so nice! 🥰

[ArtMelC]

A simple illustration I made for my monthly handwritten newsletter. I still find writing on iPad not as nice as pen on paper but I try to enjoy it more!

[Melissa_Bailey]

@mag it was a cute book! Your characters, as always, are delightful. And I loved your adorable guinea piglets!

[Melissa_Bailey]

@mag thanks!

About the book dummies — I will have 3 ready for agents to see. Two are about ready to go and 1 needs some work on back matter (it has nonfiction elements to the story). I worked on them pretty much one at a time, but there has been some skipping back and forth. There are other manuscripts I’m working on and am starting another book dummy this week, but those will not be ready when I start submitting to agents.

As far as how I’m going to submit them, it will depend on what each agent prefers. I’ll be submitting to 5-7 agents to start. One of them has already critiqued a dummy for an SCBWI event I took part in, so I’ll be submitting the revised dummy to her. For most of the agents, I’ll be sending a link to a private page of my website, so they can read more than one dummy if they want (as some do, according to their submission guidelines).

Work has been really slow the last 2 months, so I’ve taken advantage of the lull to work on getting these dummies ready to submit. I don’t really have any tricks on managing workflow. It might have been knowing that this slow period isn’t going to last that kept me productive!

It’s been a tough year, and I’ve found that I really don’t want to work digitally, so a lot of the work was done traditionally, and I found that I worked faster that way. If I tried to switch over to my iPad I became really unmotivated and slowed right down.

Not sure if any of this helps or not; it’s just what has worked for me the last few months.

[kirsten-mcg]

@Melissa_Bailey I love the silly kid pose! So typical!

[Melissa_Bailey]

@kirsten-mcg thank you! It's always fun when you can illustrate a silly kid pose!

[lpetiti]

First new Dnd character!

[Asyas_illos]

Working on another piece for my traveling mouse

[ArtistErin]

A dancing ballerina

[Mewie]

Really enjoying drawing skeletons and cylinders based on references. Much to learn but I feel faster and more confident in these exercises

[Asyas_illos]

Here’s the first in case you missed it

[carlianne]

@mag love this idea mag!

[Chantal Goetheer]

@Asyas_illos love the hike mouse is making. Brings me back to my own hikes.

[ArtistErin]

@Melissa_Bailey This is so beautiful I can almost hear the story Grandma is telling her grandchild... I love your work Melissa Incredible!!!