Cartooning Women Conversations: Patricia Storms

Words and pictures have always been a big part of Patricia Storms' life, ever since she was a little kid. Patricia has always loved to write and draw, especially cartoons and humorous illustrations. Her teachers in school enjoyed her cartoon work, but often encouraged her to move beyond cartoons into more respected forms of art. As soon as she finds a more respected form of art, she promises to drop the cartooning. Patricia worked for 10 years in libraries, and 5 years as a graphic designer before she got into children's books. In fact, she used to catalogue children's books for the Toronto Public Library when she worked as a Library Technician. So she is extremely delighted to be fortunate enough to create children's books that are now in libraries across Canada. As well as illustrating children’s books, Patricia also draws editorial cartoons and provides illustrations for magazines, newspapers and humour gift books. Patricia has worked for Scholastic Canada, Kids Can Press, Owlkids Books,TD Bank, ChickaDEE Magazine, American Greetings, Barnes and Noble, and Chronicle Books. She lives and creates in Toronto, Ontario, with her husband Guy, and two fat cats in a 93-year-old house that’s full to the brim with books.

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Patricia, we first met at an NCS Christmas party in Toronto, right?  At the time, you were building a freelance magazine gag career and had some success with publications like Reader's Digest.  You were also working on a comic strip idea.  Were you committed to the idea of syndication and gag cartooning at that time or were you just trying to find a way to make cartooning a career?

Yup, we did meet at an NCS Christmas party! In fact, it was YOU who invited me, after reading my ramblings on the Wisenheimer (an online forum for cartoonists).

And yes, back then I really was committed and determined to focus my cartooning career on syndication and gag cartooning. I sent out a few comic strip ideas to syndicates, and got back some kind rejections, and I did manage to publish quite a few gag cartoons in a variety of Canadian and US magazines. But as time wore on, quite frankly, this kind of spec work just wore me out. I found it was so very, very hard taking the time to create a comic strip concept, write and draw 24 samples and mail them off to syndicates and then wait months and months for the usual “no thanks”. And mailing out numerous gag cartoons to magazines was time-consuming, too, and for me, just not worth the pay-off in the end. I had to really start re-thinking my goals. As I was going through this period of doubt, I began to notice that the magazine and newspaper industry was changing, too, and not for the better. I don’t want to sound negative (because, hey, you and some of my cartoonist friends are syndicated cartoonists) but I just did not see a viable future for me in newspaper comic strips. And let’s face it – being a syndicated cartoonist is a very, very hard job. You’ve got to think of a new funny idea every day, keep your artwork fresh, and stay ahead of that merciless deadline. And after all this hard work, the syndicate takes 50% of the cut? Not for me. I do think that cartoonists who are already established in this field will manage ok, but for a new person to break into this field, and hope to earn a decent living – I think it’s a tough slog. So that’s why I turned my energies to illustration, editorial cartoons, and writing picture books. Not that those areas are any easier, but, I do think the survivability stats are a bit better. Time will tell if I am right on that.

 
I think all syndicated cartoonists are wondering what the future holds for us in the newspaper industry right now.  I don't think print is going to completely disappear but it's very apparent that the web is going to play an important part in our careers in future.  Exactly how is anyone's guess at the moment.  You began writing your blog "Book Lust" about the time you were rethinking your cartooning career, didn't you?  What aspirations did you have for the blog? . . . or was it strictly a "I'll give it a shot and see what happens" type of thing?  Has your blog had any impact on your career?

 

It's a bit of a catch-22, isn't it?  The blog is responsible for career success and the career success is responsible for a lack of time for the blog.  There's never enough time, is there?  The really fantastic thing is that you're making such inroads in the areas you've chosen to focus on.  You recently won an award for one of your editorial cartoons.  You were surprised by this as you hadn't entered the competition. 

 I started my blog ‘BookLust’ in May 2004 (Yikes! I’ve been doing this for a while, haven’t I?) Definitely I felt that I was at a turning point in my career when I started that blog. I wasn’t entirely sure of what I wanted to achieve by starting up the blog, but I know I did want to share my cartoons and silly ideas to a much wider audience. So yes, I think it was certainly more of a “I’ll give it a shot and see what happens” attitude. Because back then, we pretty much all had no idea of the great potential there was in having a blog.

Definitely the blog has had an impact on my career. It was through my blog that I (briefly!) acquired a New York agent, got interviewed by Rex Murphy and had lovely email communications with authors like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, and Malcolm Gladwell. A children’s book editor found my blog, and liked my writing, and it really was because of her interest and encouragement that I had the confidence to continue to pursue writing for kids. (I’ve yet to be able to get anything published with her publisher, but I remain hopeful!). I’ve also connected with many talented writers and cartoonists through BookLust, which has enriched my life in so many ways.

Sadly, these days I am just so very busy with working on my career, that the quality of the blog has suffered. I just don’t have the time or energy to write as much as I used to on BookLust, but I still want to maintain the blog, and connect to whoever still might be out there reading it.

 
I was awarded Cartoon of the Year (over 10,000 circulation) for the Ontario Community Newspapers Association 2008 Better Newspaper Awards. (That’s a lot to try and remember – even I had to double-check online to get it right!)

Yes, the nomination for this cartoon award was a total surprise – the Managing Editor of the Town Crier, Gordon Cameron, entered some of my cartoons without my knowledge, and then out of the blue I received this email with the subject heading ‘Congratulations Patricia’. I was just about to trash the email, figuring it was just spam, but thankfully my curiosity got the best of me! That’s when I was told that I was a finalist for this award. So on April 17th, Guy (my husband) and I went to the Marriott Hotel in Yorkville in downtown Toronto to attend the awards dinner. It was a wonderful evening, and yes, I ended up winning in my category, and it really was a fabulous experience, especially because my husband with there with me to share in all the excitement. That’s the first time I’ve ever been nominated for an award, and the first time I’ve ever won an award.

 

You've also illustrated some cartoon collections and quite a number of children's books, one of which won an award.  Could you tell us about these books?

I don’t believe in limiting oneself, so I do cartoon/illustration work for adult books as well as kid’s books. The award you’re mentioning is for my first trade illustrated picture book, ‘13 Ghosts of Halloween’, which was published by Scholastic Canada in 2007. The French edition of this book recently was named one of the Great Books for 2009 by the Canadian Toy Testing Council, and so all the new editions get a nice sticker on it with that honour. ‘13 Ghosts’ has done quite well, and the publishers recently sold the US rights as well as the Indonesian rights for the book. My 2nd trade illustrated book, ‘Edward and the Eureka Lucky Wish Company’, published by Kids Can Press, came out this year in February. I’ve also illustrated a few educational kid’s books, in fact, that’s how I got started in this field.

Probably my favourite illustrated adult humour book is ‘Good Granny/Bad Granny’, published by Chronicle Books in 2007. It was lots of fun to do, and Chronicle is an amazing publisher to work for (Hello, Chronicle! I’d love to work for you again!) and the response from the book has been just amazing. And I also wrote and illustrated a little cartoon book, called ‘You’re My Guy Because...’, which is published by Red Rock Press.

 

The really big news recently is your new book coming out called "The Pirate and the Penguin".  Not only did you illustrate this children's book, you wrote it!  Isn't this unusual in the children's book industry . . . to both write and illustrate your own book?  How did you make the leap from illustrator to writer?  Where did the idea for "The Pirate and the Penguin" come from?

I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s unusual to write and illustrate a picture book – I’m sure there are plenty of talented artists/cartoonists who are skilled at writing, too. And I know that publishers do like finding artists who can also write – it means just working with one person! Heh. Also some people would argue that an artist who is also an author has a better chance of creating a better quality picture book, because they will have a much more intimate relationship with both the words and pictures. The same theory obviously applies for a cartoonist creating a comic strip.

Making the leap from writer to illustrator didn’t happen out of the blue, mind you. I knew that I wanted to write my own picture book stories, because I have plenty of silly ideas bouncing around in my head that would love to see the light of day. I suppose the first thing I did was seriously read a LOT of picture books, both old and new ones, so that I could get a sense of what was getting published, and what kind of stories I was drawn to. I joined an online critiquing group, and eventually took some courses in writing for children. During this time I was working mostly on this one story I enjoyed, called ‘The Pirate and the Penguin’.

The story of ‘The Pirate and the Penguin’ came about by pure happenstance. About two years ago I was at a café kvetching with one of my writer friends, Liam O’Donnell, about how tough it was to get something published in this business. I made a flippant comment about how if someone really wanted to tap into marketing trends in kid’s lit, that they should write a story about a pirate and a penguin. Liam immediately thought that it was a cool idea for a story, and encouraged me to pursue it. Eventually I wrote a story about a penguin who is unhappy living in the South Pole, and a pirate who is sick of treasure and travelling, and what happens when these two characters meet up by chance. It’s loosely based on the switching roles theme of ‘The Prince and the Pauper’, but with lots of changes to the original story, of course. Anyway, that’s how the story came to be, and it ended up being accepted by the 2nd publisher who read it. The book will be available September 1st, 2009, so stay tuned for information about a book launch, as well as a very fun presentation which will be taking place at Toronto’s Word on the Street, September 27th!

 

I hear you're traveling this summer . . .

Yes, I will be travelling to Nunavut, though sadly not in the summer – I’ll be going there in November!! So I had better pack good winter woolies. I’m travelling to Nunavut as part of a very special children’s author/illustrator book tour that takes place every year in November. As the web site for Children’s Book Week states: “TD Canadian Children's Book Week is the single most important national event celebrating Canadian children's books and the importance of reading. Every November, close to 35,000 children, teens and adults participate in activities held in every province and territory across the country. Hundreds of schools, public libraries, bookstores and community centres host events as part of this major literary festival.” So 26 children’s authors and/or illustrators travel to various provinces across Canada, promoting reading, writing and books. I’m very excited, and also a little nervous! Here’s the web site for those interested in the program: http://www.bookweek.ca/

Every time we talk, you have some exciting new thing happening in your career . . . and it's always something different.  Do you enjoy the variety or are you finding one area where you would like to focus your attention?

 
You know, I often say that I would prefer to just focus on one area, but I don’t know – doing different kinds of work (ie, magazine illustration, book illustration, working in film) is very interesting, and I learn so much, and never have a chance to be bored. I do think that I would like to focus a bit more time and energy just on writing and illustrating children’s books, though. And then I’d also like to do a lot more school presentations, because I have discovered that I really enjoy interacting with young kids, and connecting with teachers and librarians. It can get very lonely working alone, and the school visits really energize me (even though I’m always exhausted afterwards!)

You have a web site, a blog, a Facebook page and you twitter.  You've really embraced the web as a marketing tool.  There's no question it's time-consuming.  Do you see the social networking aspect as vital to your career?  Do you have any other plans for utilizing the web in your career?

 
I think that viral marketing is essential in my career. I’m not fortunate to be super-popular like say, JK Rowling, so I have to do a lot of the promotion of my work myself. Blogging, Facebook and Twitter are great tools to connect with fans and readers, and a great way to provide news about upcoming books and events, as well as any personal facts about myself that people may find interesting (what those facts may be, I can’t imagine. My addiction to cheese, perhaps?) I think the one area that I’d like to try out is using YouTube to create videos advertising upcoming books. I know of quite a few authors who are already doing this, and I think it is just one more creative marketing tool to help promote one’s creative projects.

What's your schedule like? 

 
For the moment, my schedule is fairly relaxed because it’s summer, so there’s no school visits, and for the moment (but hopefully not for too long) I’m not working on a specific book project (but I am writing stories, some of which will hopefully get accepted by a publisher!) Other than working on writing, I’m VERY slowly working on updating my web site, and of course, doing any freelance projects that come my way. My schedule is never consistent, and I really like it that way.

What are your tools of the trade?

 
My tools of the trade are very basic. I hand draw and ink with a brush all of my artwork (some people are quite surprised when I tell them that I don’t actually do my drawings on the computer). And then I scan my artwork, and colour it in Photoshop. One thing that I do find annoying is that there is still a percentage of people who for whatever reason think it is sacrilege to use Photoshop when illustrating children’s books. One not-so-nice review of my artwork mentioned that my art was ‘manipulated’ in Photoshop, implying that I was using some sort of nefarious, under-handed techniques in order to create my art. I find that these people are usually the same folks who are offended at the thought of illustrating kid’s books using cartoons. I have encountered this attitude every now and then – that my work is pretty much at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of artistic merit. I really find this quite tiresome. There is room for all kinds of art and writing in picture books – high realism, serious stories, as well as fun and silly stuff. And not to belabor the point too much, but in my experiences so far, kids really like the fun and silly stuff. Anyway, that’s the end of my little rant. Heh.

What are you goals for the future?

I’d really love to have my art (perhaps one of my picture books?) developed into animation. It’s a big dream, but hey – all of my accomplishments were dreams at one point in my life, so why not dream? Other than that, I just hope that I can continue to write and illustrate stories that will one day be on bookshelves for kids to enjoy.

Thanks, Patricia!

Visit Patricia's web site here.

Visit Patricia's blog, Book Lust by clicking here.

Here's an Indigo link to Patricia's upcoming book, The Pirate and the Penguin.

Check out a complete list of books that Patricia has illustrated by visiting Book Lust.

Comments

[feet fetish]

This is a great character, I like to see on this character, since it gives much grace, I really would like to receive updates on this, thanks!

[Benita]

That was a great interview, Patricia! You are certainly one of the most talented people I know. The best.

[patricia]

Awwww, Brian, you are so sweet! And please, continue being delusional. I thought Sandra asked some really smart questions. She did a great job, and I think this series of interviews with women cartoonists is a fantastic idea!

[Brian Fies]

I swear I already commented on this once. Anyway, great interview! Patricia is the best, and I've really enjoyed watching her career develop and succeed from afar. It confirms my delusion that good things eventually come to good people.