But not "here" here. Just with me. Sorry!
I've now seen all six illustrations to go with the guidebook entries of my mythical creatures, and I'm thrilled to say they're incredible. James Brouwer has such a wonderful style that matches the tone of my story (he designed the cover of the book, by the way). One of his mythie pictures literally took my breath away. When I first saw it I was staring at the screen, unable to exhale.
This whole illustration process has been a dream. My editor, Zoe, chose James because she thought his previous work gave a good indication that it would go well with LINTANG. She and I decided which six mythies out of the twelve would benefit most from in-text illustrations. There were multiple reasons for choosing the ones we did - some mythies diverged so much from real world mythology that I wanted people to have a good idea of what they looked like; some were important to the story; some were just for fun.
Then Zoe sent James the guidebook entries of the six mythies he'd be illustrating. He drafted some design ideas, and Zoe and I sent him back comments. There wasn't much we wanted to change, to be honest. And the little additions he made were fantastic. It's bizarre to see how someone can take what you've created and make it their own. In some cases, the mythies he drew were different to how I imagined, but we left them how they were because he did it better.
I can't wait to share the guidebook entries and illustrations with you! Just under four months to go!
