Hello friends.

This past Saturday I had the privilege of sharing my first picture book even though I haven’t finished the paintings.  I have the rest of the pages’ backgrounds and outlines done, but haven’t finished painting the characters.  I only have 4 pages to go!

I shared it with a local writing group called Redding Writer’s Forum which my husband has been a part of for several years.  He also took over doing their monthly newsletter and website.  You can see what they do here:   https://reddingwritersforum.com/ 

I am sure there will be a new post there with information about who read their work that day along with pictures of the group.  I met a nice lady there who wants to start another small writing group to get together maybe once a week over the summer break from the Redding Writer’s Forum group. She has a lot of excitement and energy to start this, so I am hoping to do it with her and a few others.

This is my first rough draft.  I want to improve it.  Also, on the parts where there is just text, those will actually be separate pages, and I want to do some ocean backgrounds for those that I have not come up with yet.  For the purpose of sharing it on Saturday, I printed out the words that will be on the pages of the characters and cut and temporarily attached them to those pages.

So for now, this is the first picture book I have been working on longer than I have Mr. C. Turtle Makes New Friends.  I have yet to finish the drawings, much less the paintings for that one!  So I have a great deal of work ahead, and I love it!  So here it is so far…

Larry the Lonely Leatherback

© Patsy H. Parker

Larry is lonely.

He does not have any friends to play with.  Last week he had to say goodbye to his best friend, Alicia, because she wanted to go explore a different part of the ocean.

Now Larry is sad.  He feels like crying.

When Larry feels lonely,

He is hoping to find a new friend.

Then suddenly he is surprised when his tummy starts growling.  

He was missing Alicia so much, he forgot to eat!  So Larry decides to look for his favorite food.

Larry dives…

Diving is Larry’s favorite part of swimming.

He dives all the way down to the bottom of the ocean to rest.

He sees a swarm of jellyfish!  Then they see him, too!

They swim fast to get away…

To be continued…

Now back to the drawing/painting board!

Have a wonderful day, and give someone you love a big hug!  🙂