Mom sent me a clip of Dame Maggie Smith on the Graham Norton show, and I couldn’t resist doodling this during it:

Screw fancy mechanicals: I’m switching to cheap pencils.

Okay, confession: It’s because this is too cool an idea to pass by:

I’m cheap about some things, but the sky’s the limit when it comes to tools that will let me make endless amounts of creative products, or do my thing anywhere.

It’s like this weekend: I was rolling a big log of vegan sausages, then cutting them up, and I wanted to laugh like a comic book villain. “I can do it MYSELF — mwa-ha-ha!”

The latest book for Strategic Coach is out the door — on time! And, in addition to our team learning how to work even better together, I had a breakthrough in the process about sticking to a limited colour palette to distinguish each chapter. (Exciting! What, no?)

Since finishing that project, I’ve been using my extra energy to blast through side projects, both at work and in my spare time.

One big “Wahey!” is finishing the first interactive story for my website. It’s called: wait for it: “How I Spent My Summer Vacation“. (I’m still chasing the bugs out of it, so if you play it and get stuck, let me know where it happened. And sorry in advance!)

My goal with these is to create little “Choose Your Own Adventure”-type stories that the user can play through in five minutes or less. It’s a much more fun way to show my work, I figure, than posting a bunch of out-of-context illustrations. (And I can’t really show a lot of my work for Strategic Coach, ’cause it’s full of their ideas and intellectual property.)

I also wanted to lower the bar to entry by illustrating this first one with simple, raw pencil drawings — ’cause “done” is much more valuable to me here than “finessed forever and never seen”. It’s one thing to have whole work-days to pencil, scan, lay out, ink, letter, and colour my cartoons for the books; it’s quite another to do that in the evening or at the weekend, when I’m also trying to be a husband, friend, and, y’know, general person.

Along that theme: Yesterday I got stuck full of needles. The Children’s Aid Society basically requires its adoption applicants to get all their vaccinations again. I know some people go bugnuts about these shots, but a) I had them once, and was fine (and didn’t get any preventable, horrible diseases, which I see as a plus), and b) I appreciate that CAS doesn’t want to place vulnerable children with anyone who could harm them in any way.

So now I’ve got a sore arm and a bit of tuberculosis living under my skin. Yick!

~

Tomorrow at lunch I’m teaching a bookbinding workshop to two of my colleagues. They’re good friends, and excited about learning this skill, so that’s going to be fun. And I haven’t taught in a long time. It’ll be good to get back to that.

I also submitted an application to volunteer at TCAF this year, and pitched the idea of teaching a class on using the comics software package Clip Studio Paint  — which I use just about every day. Howevermuch they decide to use me, it’s exciting to think about being involved in this event.

In my absence, Toronto has become one of the brightest spots in the comics universe. The one year I happened to be here when TCAF was on, I ran up and down the aisles, saw a bunch of my heroes, and sheepishly left again without speaking to anyone. Not this year! I need to develop relationships with other comics professionals.

Amazing as it was to live in the Highlands, it didn’t turn out to be the haven for creativity that I expected. All that time and space — surely I’d write and produce all kinds of books. But no, I didn’t feel like it, and life there was about other things.

Now that I’m here in Toronto, though, something has awakened inside me: a burning need to play and to tell stories.

I’m reading a book called Playful Parenting — an approach I can get my head around! — and it strikes me that play is an essential, vital part of life, yet one we neglect, thinking it’s a pointless luxury. Play, says the author of this book, is how children practice experiences, and thus learn about the world.

The things I’m dealing with in life right now are kind of Big and Important (potentially becoming a father, illustrating a long series of books, adjusting to an international move, &c.), so I love the idea of having a parallel play-world of my own in which to try things out, dabble with outcomes, and just pretend!

I’m wondering if, ultimately, we really need to take anything seriously. I mean, this life is all made up, and we don’t survive it, so why not make light of it and have fun? As Kurt Vonnegut said, “I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.”

I loved writing novels, because it was such a great chance to exercise my imagination like that — to create worlds and figure out what I think.

So I’ve started a few projects that give me a chance to do these things — and, of course, use my skills to create literal products of my imagination. As I said about my project-management materials, I’m drawn to use things that I created.

One of the projects I’ve been working on is a role-playing game. Over the holidays, I did a ton of reading and research, and there’s a ton of great material out there about creating games to play on your own (like Solo Roleplayer and DriveThru RPG).

From all this, I derived a very simple gameplay system that works for me, and my first campaign (story setup).

It’s just like writing a novel — setting up a premise, characters, and potential conflicts, then following the storyline along — except here it’s just for fun! No worries about being original or interesting.

(This story is about a cartoonist who’s just landed a job in a satirical magazine while a dangerously inflammatory politician rises to power. Think Charlie Hebdo meets The Dead Zone.)

So I look at the situation, decide what action my character wants to take, then roll a die. The result can be:

• “No, and:” It didn’t work, plus something worse happened.
• “No.” Simply no.
• “No, but:” It didn’t turn out like he wanted, but there’s a bright side.
• “Yes, but:” It kind of worked, but there’s a catch.
• “Yes.” Success!
• “Yes, and:” Not only did it work, something even better happened!

If I need to fill in some random twist in the story, there are Rory’s Story Cubes (wonderfully unexplained picture dice) and Deal-A-Plot (an ingenious free printable deck of random story-generating cards from the 1930s).

So it’s kind of a Rorschach Test for imagining and playing, along with “generative storytelling”. I’m writing down the story that emerges, and, of course, tempted to share it. But then I’d start second-guessing and trying to make it good for other people. That’s not the point.

What is the point? ‘Cause this is kind of a dumb, pointless exercise, no?

The point is play, and actively using my imagination —  which is an invaluable resource for the kind of things I want to do.

~

Speaking of which, my other project is a “visual novel”. That’s a “Choose Your Own Adventure”-style story that you click through on the web.

This is made possible through an insanely cheap piece of software called TyranoBuilder (seriously: it’s like fourteen bucks), which features simple, visual programming for creating branched stories and spits out HTML5 code. So when that’s finished, I’ll feature it here on my website.

This is something I’d like to do lots more of — produce simple, interactive stories featuring my drawings: Something fun, as opposed to just “look at my work”.

I figured I’d start with a quick autobio story called — wait for it — “How I Spent My Summer Vacation”. It’s tough to find time for this, especially while illustrating a book (as I should be right now), but I’m making slow and steady progress.

I’ve outlined the branches of the story, gathered together reference material, and this morning I did the character designs:

So that’s what I’ve been working on while not writing here over the past little while.

The new year is well underway, and so far I’ve experienced a real boost of creative energy.

I’ll write more about specific projects later, but for the moment I wanted to share something I made this weekend: a paper-based planner.

Since the company gave us all Apple Watches last year, I’d switched my scheduling and project management to apps and programs, but over time I’ve realized that this doesn’t work for me: Digital is a deep well. When I put things in there, I don’t review them or interact with them regularly, so I tend to forget about them.

So I made this instead:

Appointments go into the calendar.

Each project gets its own chit, then gets filed into a timeframe:

• 25 years
• This year
• This quarter
• Fortnight

Every fortnight, I take everything for this quarter out to review it, file away the things I’m not working on right now, and make up a little booklet to help keep track of what I’m up to.

Technology is fun, but I’m much more inclined to stick with a system I made.

Hello! Hope this finds you well.

Our Canadian adventure has been fun so far, though I’m (Craig) happy to be home in Stirling for a visit over Christmas and New Year. The transition from Wick to Toronto hasn’t been easy, adjusting to how busy it is, to the noise and the impersonal nature of the big city, but it has its good points too. There’s such a lot on offer, something for everyone. Our first few weeks in Canada were spent house and dog-sitting for friends.

Hamish was right back to work on-site at The Strategic Coach where he’s been working for 17 years (14 of them from Scotland). My job was to hunt for a new home. Which wasn’t too difficult; there were lots of places available. So when our friends got back from holiday we had a few days together before moving into our new flat (or condominium to be exact, a weird concept to me, but they’re all the rage in Toronto).

Our friends’ house where we stayed for the first few weeks.

Hamish’s cartoon of us walking Fogle, the wee doggie we were looking after.

Our place is central, on two floors, has two bedrooms and a study area, with the living/dining/kitchen all open-plan. There are wrap-around windows on the first floor with a view out to high-rise buildings and the CN Tower.

We saw a great fireworks display at the CN Tower from the comfort of our living room at the end of the Pan-American Games which were happening in July and August. It was like Glasgow 2014 all over again: the place was buzzing with a sporty-party atmosphere.

Our condo building; we’re on the bottom two floors, on the right, with a ginkgo tree on the terrace.

The view from our condo.

Some of the Pan-American Games festivities.

The next period was spent furnishing the flat. We didn’t bring any furniture from Scotland and at first all we had was our two suitcases. We borrowed plastic patio plates, cutlery and other essentials from friends until our own things arrived in our shipment from Scotland (which arrived earlier than expected in mid September). Several trips to IKEA and other furniture places later and we had most of the main items we needed and started to feel like we had a home again.

The arrival of our own things was a big step in feeling more at home, but it’s an ongoing process and there are still bits and pieces we’ll need to pick up over time.

While it’s great to be in the condo just now we’ll probably stay there for about a year. The plan is to move out of the city centre so we’ll have a bit more space and, hopefully, be able to get something a bit more reasonable. The condo is costing us £1,200 a month!

It’s good to be central right now though and to get a feel for the city. And Hamish has a neat 20 minute walk to work.

I got my Canadian Permanent Residency in August. That was a relief as we thought it might take a lot longer. It entitles me to work in Canada, to register for health insurance, get a driver’s licence and such like. I had to leave the country and re-enter Canada to validate my paperwork. So we had a day down at Niagara Falls and crossed over the Rainbow Bridge into the US, walked round the American flag in New York State and promptly left the US again to re-enter Canada. All to the tune of “Some Enchanted Evening”, which the bridge’s bell tower was playing as we crossed. Surreal. We were prepared for a long wait at the border, but it took just 15 minutes! So we had the rest of the day in the theme park that is Niagara Falls.

Getting ready to go on the Hornblower at Niagara Falls after getting my Permanent Residency.

As I say, Niagara Falls is like one big theme park:

Hamish about to climb on to the moose. What you can’t see is the sign to the right saying ‘Do not climb on the moose’!

Work-wise things have not been so straightforward for me. And they’re still a bit up in the air. The Canadian Speech and Language Therapy qualification is very different to the UK’s and there is no guarantee they’ll allow me to practice here. There’s a long (and costly) process to have qualifications verified and compared to the Canadian system. My 9 years of work in the NHS won’t count for anything unfortunately. The process of verification can take about a year and at the end of that they may say, ‘No, you can’t practice here’ or ‘Okay, you can practice if you do X course and sit Y exam.’

In the meantime I’ve signed up with temping agencies. I had one interesting job working for Elections Canada during the general election, which handily introduced me to the Canadian system of Government. It was tricky to get anything else though, as my plan was always to be back in Scotland for a month from mid-December to mid-January.

When I get back to Toronto I’m aiming to find something to see me through to next summer (when we’ll be home for my brother Gregor’s wedding on 2nd July ).

The rest of our time has been spent exploring the city, entertaining visitors (5 sets so far) and reconnecting with friends and family in the area.

Hamish’s nephew Andrew is in Toronto. We’ve seen a fair bit of him and his girlfriend Diane.

My cousin Brad and his family are also in Toronto and it’s been good spending time with them. Brad took us all out sailing on Lake Ontario in September which was great fun. I also have an Aunt and Uncle in Orillia an hour or so north of Toronto and three cousins with all of their families. We’ve been up to visit them a couple of times, including a lovely weekend spent at their cottage in Algonquin National Park.

Hamish’s brother Ian, sister-in-law Ellen, nephew Andrew and his girlfriend Diane when Ian and Ellen visited from the Yukon in October.

Brad, his wife Tomomi and their son Thomas on the day we went sailing on Lake Ontario.

Hamish taking in the view.

Shabu-shabu (a wonderful Japanese dish) at Brad and Tomomi’s place.

Visiting my aunt and uncle, June and Hap, in Orillia.

At the cottage in Algonquin Park with my aunt and some of my cousins — another delicious meal!

The view from the cottage in the morning with the mist rising up from the lake.

Hamish’s mum visited in November and we took a trip out to the Toronto Islands.

Hamish has a bunch of friends from work and from living in Toronto for 10 years until 14 years ago when he moved to Scotland. And I have friends I met in Japan who now live in Toronto. We’ve also been attending a weekly evening class and have met a nice bunch of folk through that.

In September we had a lovely 10 days visiting Hamish’s folks in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

Hamish, Joan and Bryson in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

Out for Lobster Supper which has become an annual tradition.

Some bits and pieces: Maybe it’s just a big city thing, but folk don’t really make eye contact or look at each other in Toronto. Is it the Canadian politeness thing? They are certainly polite. In our building no one says hello in passing: if I say hi they look at me like I’m an alien and mutter something back, surprised. Folk have been very friendly once we’ve got to know them though!

Everyone seems to have a little dog, even though most of them live in flats. When we were house-hunting we’d be standing at the lift (elevator) with the estate agent (realtor), and when the doors opened someone with a small dog would emerge. So much so that Hamish asked one agent, ‘Does every condo come with a dog?!’

Snapped from our window — one of the many dog-walkers taking city-workers’ pets out for their morning walk.

There is an amazing variety of food and any niche foods are readily available. Toronto has a Little Italy, Korea Town, Chinatown, Greek Town, Little Ethiopia and many more. There’s every type of food you can imagine (though come to think of it I haven’t spotted a Scottish restaurant yet:)

We’ve been having green breakfast smoothies since getting a new blender and Hamish has decided to eat vegan. It’s not a problem in Toronto — there are vegan restaurants and vegan sections in grocery stores galore.

There is a lack of open space: the city is very built up and there are only a few parks here and there. Where there are parks, though, there are free outdoor swimming pools in summer and ice rinks in winter: fab!

The Toronto Islands are the nicest part of the city in my opinion. Very green. And looking back over Lake Ontario to the city is my favourite view of the place. I also love the main city square outside Toronto City Hall.

Taken in October from Toronto Islands when our friend Philip from Edinburgh was visiting. The autumn (fall) colours were wonderful.

Toronto City Hall (a really cool building in my opinion, with its flying saucer-esque chamber in the centre) and the square in front with the big Toronto sign. The pond is now an ice rink over winter.

The cold weather hasn’t materialised yet for my first Toronto winter, even though I invested in a pair of warm winter boots following the strong advice of friends. The temperature was still around 10-15 celsius when I left on the 16th December! I’m sure it will catch up with us sooner or later though.

The transit system is both fun and infuriating. The streetcars are cute, but can be incredibly slow and are frequently overcrowded. Walking is possible downtown, but the distance from one major street to another is deceptive. You can end up walking miles and miles without realising it. We’ve walked more here than we ever did in Wick!

We’ve joined a couple of car-sharing schemes. They’re practical for occasional car use, like a trip to IKEA or getting across town quickly. Or getting home late at night.

Everything costs more than you think. Sales taxes are charged on top of the purchase price at the point of sale. So you never really know how much you’re going to have to pay: a calculation is done at the till to come up with the final amount. Expect it to be anything from 5-20% higher than the marked price. Grrr:

And talking of extra charges, banks in Canada charge a fee to run your account. And there’s a charge to withdraw cash from another bank’s cash machines. We don’t know how good we’ve got it in Scotland!

The place runs on coffee. It’s the must-have item to carry while walking down the street. You don’t belong until you have a take-away coffee cup in hand. Add to that a loud mobile phone conversation on hands-free (with a headset) in which you don’t mind what other people passing hear and you’re a true Torontonian!

Fire engines, which have an incredibly loud, blasting horn on top of their siren, pass our condo on average seven times a day. I’ve counted! And the bin lorries come to empty our building’s recycling at a hideous 7am on Thursday mornings. The crushing and engine noises sound like the end times have come. I do miss the peace and quiet of Argyle Square!

Thanksgiving isn’t as big a deal as I thought it would be. Hallowe’en, on the other hand, is a big thing here. The lengths folk go to to decorate their homes is amazing. We went trick-or-treating with friends and their kids and then went to a fancy dress party.

Some of the loot the kids got from Trick-or-Treating. Even Folgle the dog was dressed up!

Hamish’s Hallowe’en get-up — hipster zombie.

So there’s the good, the bad and the ugly, a quick summary of our first 5-6 months in Canada. Reading through the above, it sounds like I don’t like Toronto very much, but it’s growing on me and moving from Caithness to Ontario was never going to be straightforward.

Speaking of Caithness, recently we gathered together some of the memorabilia we have in the flat: Ah, we have very fond memories of Caithness!

The other day Hamish sent me a photo of the Old Pulteney on the shelves of a liquor store in Charlottetown with the subject line *sigh*.

Have a lovely festive season and I hope to see some of you while I’m back on this visit, and both of us when we’re back in the summer. We enjoy having visitors, so please do come and see us if you can. Our spare room is available!

Love, Craig and Hamish

Someone wrote me today, asking about how to produce her own children’s book. I get this one a lot, so here’s my answer to her questions, in case it might be useful to somebody out there:

— –

So many people I talk to want to produce a children’s book! I think some folks think it’s an easier market — “It’s just for kids” — but it’s actually much tougher, as kids’ books are more expensive to create and it’s a very crowded market.

Still, if you’re doing it just for the love of it (which is the best place to start, anyway), it’s entirely possible to make your own books at home. It’s just a bit more expensive than text-based books, mainly because the most common and accessible kind of colour printer is an inkjet, and the price of inkjet ink is ridiculous. (It might be cheaper to print in blood or whale-oil, though more controversial.)

Still, being able to produce a real, hold-in-your-hands is a wonderful feeling, and probably the best way to prove your dedication and talent to a publisher if you did ultimately want to go that way.

So, to do this you’ll need:
— a computer
— a scanner
— a printer
— software to lay out the pages

I featured some software packages in my podcast, and it’s beyond what I can do in an e-mail to explain how to use them, but it’s easy to find something cheap and fairly easy to use, if you’re okay with learning by trial-and-error. Otherwise, I’d recommend hiring a designer to assemble the book once you have all the elements planned out.

Professionals will say you need Adobe’s InDesign (a layout program), but I managed to do my books in Apple’s Pages (before they wrecked it a few years ago by oversimplifying it). Since then, I’ve switched to a PC, and I use a program called Serif PagePlus. Both of these programs are much, much cheaper than InDesign, and in the podcast I mentioned an open source program called Scribus that’s free. (It’s just a little ugly, though, and not so easy to use.)

Again, the printing and binding are described in videos on my podcast.

Strong card is going to be hard to run through most home printers (which roll sheets of paper through their innards while printing on them), but is a good idea for a flipbook. You might want to get everything ready on-screen then go to a local copy-shop and have them do it.

A hint: stick to an easy paper size, like 1/4 A4 or Letter, so you can easily measure out and cut the pages: Getting the front and back pages to line up properly is challenging enough without using special dimensions!

Like you, I understand not using Print-on-Demand, as it’s impossible to know beforehand exactly what the end result is going to turn out like. That’s why I’ve never done it, though CreateSpace has become quite user-friendly and relatively affordable.

There’s a wealth of help out there on the internet if you search. One of my favourite sources is the user “Sea Lemon” on YouTube, whose bookbinding videos are much clearer than mine!

I hope that’s all somewhat helpful!

This is the presentation I made for the company present to Dan and Babs (who own & run Strategic Coach): D&B Present 2015

It won’t make much sense if you don’t know the people involved, but it was fun to do — though the deadline was short!

(The music from the Force Awakens trailer is supposed to play under the second half of this but doesn’t for some reason. It was there when I played it on-site at least.)

I saw Star Wars last night, and it was total fun, a grand, heartfelt story that really carried along the saga honourably.

I love that I was surprised by it, it was stuffed full of action and character moments, and I had no idea where it was going next. Like seeing Kate Bush perform as a mature woman and be extra-wonderful for all her added wisdom and experience, it makes me really happy to see people be good at creating something that retains all the fresh and foreign air of that other place that imagination comes from.

Sure, the boardrooms will still churn out recycled muck, but it’s wonderful that integrity and originality will still win out.