Alex: When starting a book I always use pencil and
paper to start, and when the drawings are finished I scan them into the
computer and color them in Flash. I like using this program because it is quick
and easy to use, and with the style I draw with I feel using the simple colors
of Flash really complements the pictures and gives the characters life.
GAP author, Janet Ann Collins, will be one of about fifty authors and illustrators at the Northern California Storybook and Literature Festival in Roseville, CA on Saturday, July 31. She'll also be at the SCBWI table for a while.
The festival will be at the Maidu Library and Community Center, 1530 Maidu Drive, Roseville, CA from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. Admission and parking are free and hundreds of people are expected to come for the events and children's activities. Collins will be reading a selection and signing copies of her book, The Peril of the Sinister Scientist.
You can visit Janet online at www.janetanncollins.com.
Guardian Angel Publishing has many talented writers, so let’s take some time to find out all about the, person behind the talent.
Tell us about your book.
The Peril of the Sinister Scientist is about Joshua, who thought he was cloned from the blood on the Shroud of Turin because a scientist who had worked on that experiment twelve years ago is stalking him. Problems with friends and enemies at school and his active imagination get him into all sorts of trouble as he tries to figure out who he really is.
Did you always want to be a writer?
When I was a toddler my parents told me I should become a song writer because I was always making up rhymes but I didn’t consider becoming a writer until I was old enough to read. I’ve been a book-a-holic ever since and write partly to give back some of the things I’ve gotten from books.
Where do you get your ideas?
I have no idea! Ideas are everywhere and not having any is the only thing I can’t imagine. My mother used to tell me I had too much imagination but I don’t think there’s such a thing.
I read that you had a conversation with Koko...tell us about that.
My husband was a Sign Language interpreter, and worked at the California School for the Deaf, and we had a deaf dog who had learned to understand about 350 signs. A linguistics professor friend told us about a woman he knew who was teaching ASL (American Sign Language) to a gorilla at the San Francisco Zoo and arranged for us to meet her.
I was hoping our dog could meet the gorilla but her trainer, “Penny” Patterson, said gorillas are terrified of dogs because they are prey animals and likely to be eaten by canines in the wild.
Miss Patterson did meet with us and left us in front of Koko’s cage. A man was in the cage with Koko and she didn’t want him to leave so she slammed the door shut and climbed up on top of his head so he couldn’t scold her. I asked if he wanted me to get someone to let him out and he said someone would be there soon, but that it was hurting his neck to have Koko on top of his head. She was only about a year old, but weighed quite a lot. I told her in ASL to get down, but she refused by turned her head away. When she looked back at me I asked her politely to give the man a hug, so she climbed down and did so and he was able to hold her.
That wasn’t much of a conversation, but it was one I’ll never forget.
About a year later after Koko was no longer there we happened to go back to the zoo and all the gorillas were signing to the people watching them, “Want food.” Apparently so many people who knew ASL had visited Koko and signed to the other gorillas that they had learned those signs.
Mending a Gutenburg Bible? How did that come about?
I was working part-time in a library and one of my tasks was mending books. I got to be so good at it that the head librarian asked me to mend the Gutenberg Bible. I used Elmer’s Glue and mended it like any other book, but it was a thrill to touch something so precious.
Once at a book fair a dealer in antique books asked to touch my hand since I’d touched the book Gutenberg himself had handled. And now my book, The Peril of the Sinister Scientist, is available on Kindle. I wonder what Gutenberg would think of that. He’d probably love the idea.
Any advice for struggling authors?
Rejections prove you’re really an author, so don’t let them discourage you. But don’t expect getting published to be easy, either. Writing is a profession and, like any other profession, requires a lot of training. Read books, attend conferences, join a critique group, and keep trying.
Any thing else you'd like to add?
Thank you very much for interviewing me.
The title of the next book for a drawing from names on Donna Shepherd's Facebook Fan Page on November 4 is "Secret Service Saint" by Janet Ann Collins.
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