Sweet Circus Dreams

A little corner of my mind lives forever in this particular dreamspace. 

All that and a bucket of inspiration. 

Framed Art and Coffee

I guess this post is particularly for my more local friends:

Tomorrow (Saturday the 6th) a big batch of my original art, including a good number of the watercolors from Julia's House, will find a place on the walls of Happy Creek Coffee and Tea in Front Royal. Some of it will be for sale! I just brought some of the pieces home from the frame shop (Sun Studio Framing in Front Royal) and they look very fine. Here's a little peek:

The art will be on display for the rest of December, but if you come by Happy Creek tomorrow, from 3 to 5pm you can catch me giving a little presentation about the work and an showing a small sneak peek at some of my upcoming projects. Click this link here for more information.

Julia's House Travel Schedule and Blog Tour

Friends! Julia's House for Lost Creatures will be released in less than one week! Somehow, even though I thought I was "Mr. Organized" this still managed to sneak up on me.

People have been saying some nice things about the book so far, and that's been encouraging (if you're into reading reviews you can find some here, here, here and here).

I was a little nervous about Julia's House at first. After all, picture books are a less forgiving format for storytelling than are graphic novels. A picture book is shorter, for one thing, and so every moment, every beat, has to count all the more. But I think the book will find its readers.

To help Julia's House on its way, I have put together a series of bonus illustrations for the book and the good people at Macmillan have helped to arrange a sort of online traveling bestiary. The idea is that between Sunday August 31st and Saturday September 6th you can visit the sites on the list, take a look at some of the bonus art, and read some of my thoughts about dragons and mermaids and goblins and the rest. Click on the banner below for links to the various sites:

I will also be attending several events in September, October and November. Here is a list, with links, of the places where you will be able to find me signing, drawing, speaking or high-fiving in the coming months:

* September 6th: Baltimore Comic-Con
* September 14th: Small Press Expo
* September 20th: Princeton Book Festival
* September 21st: Brooklyn Book Festival
* September 27th: Baltimore Book Festival. Speaking at 2:00 pm
* October 9th: Children's Book World
* October 11th: Odyssey Kids Books, 2:00pm event
* October 11th, McNally Jackson Books
* October 12th: New York Comic-Con!
* October 26th: Over the Moon, 3:00pm (I believe this one's a costume party).
* November 21st-23rd: Miami Book Fair

Top o' the Summer

Summer is winding down now, isn't it? I'm always sad when summer starts to fade. Even though Autumn touches my soul with its beauty, I think its Summer that I was born for and where I am most at home.

It's been a quietish summer this year at House Hatke, and we've tried to be more like Ants than Grasshoppers for a change. Still, the summer has had its moments. The video below shows one of my favorite moments of this summer: spinning fire poi at Cristina's Cafe 6th anniversary party:

20140819 213333 from Ben Hatke on Vimeo.

Here's to summer!

Home from Angouléme!

So I'm home from France, and what can I say about my first time at Angouléme?

One of the particularities of my life right now is that my work seesaws crazily between long periods of quiet steady work at home (my girls all get out of the house more than I do) punctuated by these very intense trips -they are adventures in cities around the world, filled with new friends and old friends, feasts and chance encounters, long conversations, late night parties, surprises and magic.

Angouléme in particular is already starting to feel like a dream -but the kind of dream where you wake up with some small token in your hand that makes you think that maybe, just maybe, it all really happened (in this case the token is a great handful of business cards and a pile of some Very Wonderful Books).

I'm working on a few journal comics to tell a story or two but, just like any dream, it's difficult to catch once it's gone...

---

Okay, I suppose I do have a few pictures and words...

The stone cat below is (I'm told) Angouléme's little mascot and the reason for the little cartoon cat in all the festival posters and literature. He perches with more gravitas than Batman on the corner of their ...I guess you'd say city hall? at the end of a row of gargoyles. And I'm pretty sure he quietly defends the town from all kinds of unseen dangers:

Here's a picture of my First Second editor, Calista. We didn't get to spend nearly enough time together, but it was a very busy week for both of us. The little Angouléme cat is visible here too -can you find it?

Pulling back even further, here is the Main Street of Angouléme. It's a town of a little over 40,000 residents and the festival draws over 200,000 visitors. Where do they put everybody?

Well in my case it was in an amazing old fortified tower-turned-house. Here's the gate to the garden.

On the floor above mine I found a room that made me catch my breath. It was a fantastic painting studio. I asked if I could stay in that room forever. (the answer was no):

But of course there was no time for painting. I was in town to work. Here I am at the signing table.

And here is my view of the festival floor:

And the Rue de Sevres booth:

Oh! and one of my signing buddies was the famous Mo Willems! It was nice to get to know him a bit and also super helpful because he speaks fluent french. I have a picture of Mo and I together but... well you know how sometimes you see a picture of yourself and you look like you're making some kind of noise like "hork! hork! hork!"? Well, I'm not going to post that picture. Instead here is a picture of the empty signing booth with Mo and I drawn in:

Of course it wasn't all interviews and book signings. The evenings were filled with lovely dinners and then late night gatherings at the Mercure hotel which is nightly packed to the gills with comics professionals (who are all packed to the gills with champagne). One of the professionals I had my eye out for but failed to meet was Boulet. The problem was that I didn't really know what he looked like until later when I read Jen Vaughn's Angouleme Report.

(here's a picture of Jen and I that I swiped from her report):

So anyway, on the plane ride home I found this picture on my camera roll:

I had thought I was taking a picture of a random group of dudes hanging out under a Zita poster... It turns out that it was a picture of Boulet himself hanging out under a Zita poster. Better luck next time Ben Hatke.

And finally the amazing and hard working Rue de Sèvres team! These ladies arranged every single part of my visit and made me feel completely welcome. They were truly the best hosts in the world and I could never say enough good things about them. Rue de Sèvres is a new publisher and this was their first Angouleme as well. But they hit the ground running they have some fantastic books coming up, and I think they made a big impression on the whole festival:

And books! I came home with a big pile of excellent comic albums and picture books, many of which had beautiful inscriptions and art from the authors:

Angouleme 2014!

Claus the Mighty

His beard is white, his sword is sharp, his magic is thunder:

Nicholas was...

A bishop in warmer lands, uncounted lifetimes ago. Now blessed (or cursed?) with something like immortality he wanders the Frozen North doing small kindnesses, leaving small gifts, vanquishing terrible things.

And all the time he waits.

He waits for the day when the cities crumble and the Dark Things rise and he is allowed to charge, laughing, into the last great battle.

Ho!

Ho!

Ho!

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Happy Saint Nicholas Day! The format of the description above was taken from Neil Gaiman's hilarious, dark interpretation of Santa from the very short story "Nicholas Was..." which you can read here. By format I mean it starts with "Nicholas was" and ends with "Ho, ho, ho."

Good ol' Saint Nick, patron not just of children but also of archers! And thieves. I take heart. This guy was made to look after the Hatke House.

Oh, and thanks to everyone who ordered a copy of Memory Dragon! There's still plenty of time to nab a copy of your own!

Burning Ring of Fire

Today, because I'm a little behind on art and comics, I thought I'd post a collection of highlights from my little Independence Day fire show. If you've ever heard me mention my hobby of breathing fire and spinning poi and wondered what that was all about, this video will give you a pretty good idea.

This was filmed edited by Jacob Schmiedicke. Thanks Jake! I wouldn't have anything to post today without you.

Of course this was only the prelude to an excellent and enormous fireworks display by Michael Schmiedicke of the Strong Oaks Woodshop.

The Bread Wife, Part 2

For those who missed part one of this short tale, click here. And now let’s pick up where we left off. At only 3 pages, this will be the shortest of our four parts:

There are several sources of inspiration for this little mini-story. A couple people have already mentioned the legendary movie, Kiki’s Delivery Service, but that’s a topic for another post. Today I want to mention how much I love old mills.

The millers mill, as seen in the first illustration (in part 1), is based off the Burwell-Morgan Mill in the little town of Millwood, Virginia. It’s a beautiful stone mill building that was restored through the help of a twice-yearly art show. (I participated one year, though I failed to sell even one painting). It’s a magical place, and wonderful for sketching. The most amazing thing of all is to go into the mill and look at the enormous wheel and complicated, interconnecting gears. All the parts are made of wood and leather. A machine like that, run by water, is incredibly powerful and unsettlingly quiet. It demands respect.

The Burwell-Morgan Mill still grinds grain on weekends. My wife, Anna, has taken wheat there for grinding. It's not just a great homeschool adventure, but a good way to get stone ground flour.

If you look closely at the illustration of the miller mixing the dough, you’ll see I went ahead and gave him the family name of Clarke. Because the Burwell-Morgan mill is in Clarke county and because just recently I found this:

Which sure seems to fit our story.

Hair Loss Solution

I have a bit of a bald spot on my crown and this bothers me sometimes.

See, I know we can’t all be David Tennant, and even fewer of us can be Jason Statham (to say nothing of the inimitable Patrick Stewart). Sadly, as we get older, some of us guys are destined to fall into the odd in between ground -the uncanny valley of hair. And what should we do? Common sense tells us to gracefully accept the loss, and to get a modest close cropped cut. The world, on the other hand, promises solutions to every problem of aging. There are drugs and elective procedures and herbal extracts and special shampoos. The head spins.

So after careful deliberation I have decided to try one of the world’s solutions. It’s not a spray or a special shampoo, but something bolder.

I’ve purchased a hairpiece.

But I’m not 100% sure about how it looks, so I’m reaching out to you, dear readers. Please click on the link below to see a picture of me in my new hairpiece. Take a good look and then leave a comment to let me know if it looks natural or not. It’s possible that you won’t be able to tell I’m wearing anything at all!

CLICK HERE FOR A PHOTO.