Kickstarter Cat Poster Project Now Live!

Hello kitty folks, and friends of kitty folks. I've just launched a quick kickstarter project to raise money to make four 11"x17" posters with eighty cats from the Cat Scratchin' book. It will run for 13 days (oh no dear friends, no superstitions here!!) and $500.00 is my goal. I hope I reach it. These posters look great and I'm only going to make as many as the project sells. So limited editon, and only available at kickstarter. Got it? Thanks! Here's  #1

Follow this link to the project. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1547701634/cat-scratchin-limited-edition-posters-for-your-wal

THE BOOKS ARE HERE!

Cat Scratchin' books are here now and they look fabulous! I am so happy, and kinda slap-happy giddy too. If you were a part of the kickstarter project I will begin shipping your 'rewards' next week. If you were not in on the project (and I'm sorry you weren't) you will be able to buy these books at my etsy shop or by contacting me. There will be an ebook available on Amazon (and if I get it together the actual book will be available there too.) In the meantime, take a look here, and never give up on chasing whatever dream you may have. I'm so happy to have been able to do this twice now. And stay tuned, there will be a new book project in 2014.  I will launch a limited edition poster series project with all of the cats from the book soon at Kickstarter. Thanks!

Little Cats On The Scratchboard

I've been scratchin' like crazy on little 2"x2" scratchboards that I will either turn into pinbacks or fridge magnets, or both. These still need some color on them. I'm out of town and away from my inks and such, so scratchin' is all I'm doing for the next two weeks.
The Cat Scratchin' book is in the capable hands of Liz Lester, the designer. I've sent off some final edits and changes and as soon as I see those we will pull the trigger and send the files off to the printer. Everything is on schedule and that makes me happy.
There are over seventy cats and their stories--I have read and re-read each story a ga-gillion times to proof and they are just as engaging, sad, funny, and sweet as they were the first time. This is going to be a great book, and I'm proud of it. I'm also very grateful for all who participated in the project, in whatever way--y'all are appreciated!
The above pins/magnets will be available (or some like them) in my etsy shop and also at the various holiday shows I plan on selling at. Price will be somewhere around $8.00 each. Not a bad price for a little original I think.
Ok, even though I'm on vacation I need to get a little scratchin' in. Later cats!

Cat Book--Down To Details

Just in case you were wondering...the above is my living room workspace today. Stacks of paper, photos and such. This is the Cat Scratchin' book in progress. The stories have been printed, edited, and now I'm making corrections and formatting all in order to upload to the dropbox container. My book designer is on a river trip until the 11th so I have a few days to get all of this together. The artwork is done, the page order is decided, and so this is the last of it. I usually don't like such detail work, I'm more of a 'big-picture' kind of person. With the dog book I found a spot in myself that really, really enjoyed all of this nit-picky stuff. Go figure. I guess I've evolved with age. Everything is right on schedule for the book to be in my hands by October, and then in all y'all's hands soon after. I hope sooner, but no promises on that. I'm working on figuring out a few places to do sales/signings in Fayetteville and Austin.
The other thing going on is my 'experiment' to see if there is interest in posters of the artwork. Right now until July 22nd I have a kickstarter project to create a series of four posters of eighty dogs from the dog book. It's already funded, but I'm open to more folks/funding--check it out by clicking HERE. It's pretty basic, you chose a funding level, I send you posters. I hope to gather at least double of what my goal was. If it closes high, I will most certainly do a similar thing with the Cat Scratchin' artwork.

Cats & Dogs Scratchin'

I know this blog is all about the cats, but some of us are cat & dog folks so I thought I'd pass this info along to y'all. The above are two of the four limited edition posters of the Dog Scratchin' book dogs. I just launched on this project on kickstarter, so please take a look and share with friends and folks who might be interested. If it's successful I will do the same or something similar with the Cat Scratchin' book cats.
Click here to see the project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1547701634/dog-scratchin-limited-edition-posters-for-your-wal
Oh yeah, by the way, I am done scratchin' the 74 cats and am down to FIVE more stories to collect and edit.(herding cats and all) Then, everything gets formatted, the art gets scanned and cleaned up for print, the story page photos are tagged and it goes to the designer around the middle of next month. If things go well, we should be ahead of schedule. I'll keep y'all posted on that. Many of the smaller rewards were shipped this past week...ahead of schedule. I love that. Thanks for looking!

Kickstarter Rewards For Cat Scratchin' Project Are Here!

The above are the hand-colored postcards (Rocky) and greeting card (Maggie) rewards for the kickstarter project. So, if you funded at below $50.00 I will be contacting you for your mailing address soon. I'm pretty excited about these. Well, I'm excited about all of it.
Here's the other news, while sorting through archives of my dear friend and poet/editor, Miller Williams, I found a cat poem he had written, that he forgot about. It was written in the 1960's and it's perfect for the book. He has given me permission to use it, and that's made me very happy. I had been sweating a little about this, okay, maybe a lot. I didn't have a poem, and he thought he didn't have one, and so I was just going to forget about it. Or try and write one myself. Whew, problem solved, I can breathe now. The other problems, which are vexing me; there are still a few stories to round up. At least I have all of the photos I needed to draw from. Come on people, you know who you are. There is no prize for being the last one to get your cats story to me.

Cat Scratchin' Deadline and Such...

This is today's drawing table boards. The rest are stashed away in a plastic tub, already scanned into the laptop, and waiting to join their stories and owner's photos next month, when I turn everything over to the book designer. That being said, I am still wrangling a few cats/stories/photos. But with 74 total cats in the book, I'm only missing two to draw, and 8-9 stories to edit.  The photos that go on the story page are the least of my worries (but I am missing quite a few of these, so send them damn it).  I'm pretty happy today. I've done or am in the middle of doing the last of 72 drawings...since March. Not bad. I'm also about to launch a limited edition poster project on kickstarter using the artwork from the Dog Scratchin' book, and I'm pretty excited about that. If it is successful I will definitely do something like that with the Cat Scratchin' images.
My message to y'all today is; please get the stories to me, and any other photos or information I need. Today is the deadline, but of course I will stretch it...just a bit.
When July 10th rolls around if I have nothing or am lacking info from y'all it'll be too bad, so sad. Really, this is it. I can not hold up the book when so many have been so good at responding quickly. Bad kitty, bad!