Jess Smart Smiley's Blog, page 3
May 23, 2023
SKETCHBOOK 87: COMPLETE!
I’ve spent the last 6 months working in this sketchbook.
Scribbling my last page of character designs, story notes, and testing out new drawing tools felt surreal, since I’m still very much in the thick of everything happening on these pages.
It’s a conversation I haven’t finished, though the pages they occupy have been filled.
[image error]It’s fascinating to me that each sketchbook ends up with its own personality, as it represents a different time in my life—different interests, different challenges, projects, ideas. Of course it can’t be any other way, but I’m fascinated by it all the same.
I’ve thought about documenting a single idea via blog posts or videos to see what becomes of it—a study of the thing as it unfolds in real-time.
But ideas are peculiar.
A single idea can become many, many things—sometimes very quickly—and each of those things can become many other things. Sometimes, ideas seem to fizzle at inception. Ideas depend on how receptive we are to them at a given time, and how much attention we give them at other times and in relation to other concerns.
While I still think it would be fascinating to explore the documentation of such a phenomena, I suppose my sketchbook itself is the closest thing I have to recording the paths my mind and hands have crossed over the last 6 months.
In any case, there are many projects in the works and I’m anxious to see them all through and to share them with you. Thank you for choosing to stay involved with me and my doodles here.
If you aren’t already signed up, I invite you to join my newsletter and/or First Readers Club (where I’ll be sharing some new things in greater detail). Jess-smiley.com/links.
May 10, 2023
BOOK REVIEW “What Happens Next?: Talent Show Troubles”
THIS REVIEW IS REPOSTED FROM PAIGES & LALYPOPS
Reading age
7-10
Genre
Realistic fiction
Publisher
First Second
Publication date
April 11, 2023
1 book, two reviews; Co-review with my little sister Laly (10)
Can you survive the talent show? Find out by reading Talent Show Troubles.
Megan is your character in this story. Whoever you are, you’re now Megan. In this story, you’re supposed to organize a talent show. You must bring your notebook so the show can go right. But you forgot your notebook because you were late for school.
On top of that, you must survive the seagulls (that are always trying to murder you), your brother, and the vice principal. Will your story end in disaster or success? Do you get the bones to survive the talent show?
Laly’s thoughts: First, out of all the 17 different paths I chose, only 1 had a happy ending. I think that was the only happy ending in the whole book, so choose wisely 
I spent hours trying all the different combinations to see the conclusions. There were some excellent endings, like you were stuck in the dungeon for fifty years or went to jail. There were also really dull endings, like you got eaten by the seagulls. Honestly, the best end was the principal throwing a party. Don’t worry; I’m not spoiling anything because it’s a choose-your-own story.
The graphics were simple drawings, but they were super funny. I loved this book!
Paige’s thoughts: Your options are at the ends of the pages, or sometimes they tell you to flip to different pages. There is a lot of thinking involved in your choices, so you have to make difficult ones.
Megan is a multitasker. She has to do many things simultaneously and has an abnormal fear of seagulls. She also has a mean older brother and two overprotective parents who like to sponsor their business. There is also a very stressed vice principal in the picture.
The book’s art style has simple cartoony characters. The palette is primary colors.
The theme of Talent Show Troubles is that all your choices have consequences. I recommend this book to Henry Stickmin fans and people who love decision-making.
My rating
May 9, 2023
Which is Your Favorite?
I’m making a poster for my new interactive graphic novel, Talent Show Troubles, and want to know: which of these layouts do you like best?
(You don’t have to know the book or characters, and these drawings aren’t final. I just want to know which catches your eye.)
P.S. Signed books will soon be available via jess-smiley.com and each book purchase will include this poster!
April 3, 2023
New Book Release Next Week
Megan Hathaway is in charge of Sunbright Middle School’s talent show and everything is going wrong.
Animals are running wild backstage, vice-principal Fisher is hungry for power, and Megan’s friend Olivia might be turning into a zombie. Can YOU help Megan salvage this mess, or will you doom her to an eternity in the school’s basement?!
With over 25 different endings, What Happens Next: Talent Show Troubles is an interactive misadventure you’ll be coming back to over and over!
SPREAD THE WORD to librarians, teachers, parents, and friends.
PRE-ORDER THE BOOK! This is a *major* way to support the release. (The book is available in hardcover, paperback, and electronic versions wherever books are sold, including your favorite local independent shops. Wink, wink.)
JOIN ME FOR THE BOOK LAUNCH at The King’s English Bookshop in Salt Lake City, Utah, on Tuesday, April 11. (Event info here.)
This book was a lot of fun to create and seeing it in print has been a long time coming. I’ve planned a series of fun events and activities and I need your help to share this book with as many readers as possible. THANK YOU!
Your friend,
Jess Smart Smiley
March 10, 2023
NEW! Interactive Graphic Novel
In this first volume of the What Happens Next? graphic novel series, YOU decide if Megan will run the Sunbright Middle School’s talent show smoothly…or right into the ground!
Megan Hathaway is in charge of Sunbright Middle School’s talent show, and everything is going wrong.
Animals are running wild backstage, vice-principal Fisher is hungry for power, and Megan’s friend Olivia might be turning into a zombie. Can YOU help Megan salvage this mess, or will you doom her to an eternity in the school’s basement?!
With over 25 different endings, What Happens Next: Talent Show Troubles is an interactive misadventure you’ll be coming back to over and over!
BONUSFirst Second Books has partnered with Goodreads to give away 20 copies of the book!
Follow the link below, then select “Enter Giveaway” for your chance to win. Contest ends 3/28.
March 7, 2023
BOOK GIVEAWAY
New Book Giveaway
To celebrate the upcoming release of my new interactive graphic novel, What Happens Next: Talent Show Troubles, First Second Books has partnered with Goodreads to give away 20 copies of the book!
Follow the link below, then select “Enter Giveaway” for your chance to win. Contest ends 3/28.
October 29, 2021
FREE Halloween Mini Print
TRICK OR TREAT!
Swing by my place on Halloween night to pick up this year’s FREE double-sided print for all ages.
These 4×6” mini prints feature MABEL FRUITWATER’S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES—a collection of rare and unusual objects. (Use the back of the card to reference objects displayed on the front.)
I’m unable to mail cards this year but will keep my front porch stocked. See you on Halloween!
Swipe through the carousel of images below to see the full card.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by 𝐈𝐥𝐥𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 | 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐬 | 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 (@jess.smart.smiley)
If you’d like to read my next stories for FREE and before they’re published, sign up for my First Readers Club here.
October 26, 2021
FREE Printable Zine / Short Story
Check out this 8-page mini zine I made out of a single sheet of paper and keep reading to find out how you can print and fold your own copy!
What’s InsideThe whole story is in this tiny, pocket-size zine made from a single sheet of paper! (More on that in a minute.)
The Seeing-Spectacles of Aberdeen Gray is a short story I wrote about a woman’s relationship with her own vanity. (You can read the full story here.) There’s a mystical element to the story that I thought was perfect for Halloween.
No clue where the idea came from, but it started off as a much more involved story and with a different tone before it condensed into this short story, just in time for Halloween!
BonusWith the story being so short, I thought it might work well as a mini zine—a method I learned to do years ago for making mini comics.
BONUS: Unfolding the zine reveals this full-page, story-related hidden image on the backside of the sheet of paper:
PRINT & FOLD YOUR OWN COPY OF THIS ZINEDownload this printable version of The Seeing-Spectacles of Aberdeen Gray and print it out using the instructions in the video below. Be sure to let me know what you think! (You can also read the complete story online here.)
Check out some of my previous zines here, which collect some of my short stories, poems, songs, and spooky images. (You might also be interested in my comics activity book Let’s Make Comics, which includes templates and instructions for making your own mini comics, zines, and booklets.)
If you’d like to preview my next projects for FREE before they’re published, sign up for my First Readers Club here .
October 25, 2021
The Seeing-Spectacles of Aberdeen Gray
4-5 minute read
Aberdeen Gray was convinced she was cursed.
She claimed that her eyes were made blind by her husband—“The Conjurer” she called him—because she refused the “singularly ugly and frightful” portrait he had gifted his bride for their wedding.
Young Frederick was shocked by Aberdeen’s response, claiming he had expended four canvases in his commitment to capturing her likeness, and that days upon days were spent exhausting sticks of charcoal, applied with devotion, using chapped and bone-weary fingers. Her white-lace bonnet and streaming silk ribbon were tenderly and expertly portrayed. The rendering of her favorite blue dress with a ruffled collar was likewise depicted with marvelous accuracy and affectionate care.
It was her face the Conjurer had so cruelly disfigured.
Her face, so dutifully creamed and oiled. Her face, kept soft and pale and new.
“You’ve drawn me into a wrinkly old maid!” Young Aberdeen shrieked. “Is this how I appear? With a crooked nose and a hooked chin?!”
“But the curves of your ear,” Frederick directed, pointing to the charcoal features he had so lovingly expressed. “Your slender nose and hint of lash.”
Heartbroken, Aberdeen fled to the country.
When at last her anguished tears dried upon her perfect cheeks, Aberdeen found her vision gone completely. Not even the burning midday sun was detected by the dead orbs that circled wildly, bereft of their intended function.
Adopted by a kind, industrious village, the blind and forlorn Aberdeen was well-cared for into her advancing years, though she consistently and bitterly rebuked the many charities offered her.
“I don’t want your help,” she spat. “Leave me be.”
But, her fellow villagers decided, Aberdeen Gray would be helped. In turn, her dark door would be brightened and its sour inhabitant sweetened. The whole of the community would benefit from the deed.
The name of a strange inventor—one J.F. Tiller—was suggested to the village leaders. It was proposed that the creator might know of a potential solution for their cantankerous resident.
No one ever spoke to Tiller directly about the situation or about the villager’s request. (Though, in truth, no one had ever been givevn an address or even a country for the enigmatic innovator where he could be reached.) Instead, a series of odd requests were fulfilled and the labor of ten individuals was exacted for a period of twelve days as payment for the service.
No money was exchanged and no written agreement made. No formal accord or understanding of what “service” would be rendered was ever broached.
And so, the village suffered Aberdeen Gray’s incessant complaints and prickly demeanor another four long months while they awaited a response of any kind from the evasive inventor.
And then, one day, a wooden box arrived—or rather, was discovered, tucked beneath an overgrowth of thick ground cover.
AUBURN GRAY
The misnomer was printed on a curling, brittle placard affixed to the box, which caused its finder to question the credibility of the carton’s creator.
The villagers called together a council to witness the opening of the cat-sized container, allowing the blacksmith to raise the wooden boards and reveal their mysterious contents. Rounded, translucent stones were placed in a bed of sawdust surrounding a small metal container. Within the container was a remarkable set of glasses—heavy and peculiar in their construction of black meteoric iron with leather blinders and wreathed in silver wiring. Into the eyepieces were set a pair of mulberry-tinged convex lenses.
Beside the box lay a rolled piece of parchment, attached to it a note:
SEEING-SPECTACLES.
ENCLOSED DOCUMENT
TO BE VIEWED ONLY BY
INTENDED RECIPIENT.
-J.F.T.
“Ludicrous!” Aberdeen scolded. “And ‘seeing spectacles’ is redundant! It’s absurd, giving an old blind woman glasses. You abuse me!” Her spit was a thick gob that clung to the pastor’s cassock.
It took the butcher holding her down and the blacksmith screwing together an additional apparatus to be fitted to her head for the glasses to finally cover Aberdeen’s blind eyes.
“Whose idea was this?” Her wretched voice screeched. “It’s dreadfully heavy and punishing tight!” Aberdeen’s dour countenance wrenched and distorted into worsening grotesque features, until she resembled something like a living gargoyle, kicking and spitting. “I can’t see a scurvy thing, you ugly worms!”
The device held and, once she was alone, Aberdeen resigned herself to her bedroom, locking the door to the small house, weeping unseen mulberry-colored tears.
Villagers watched the sullen woman’s activities through the small windows in her bedroom, kitchen, and parlor, ensuring her safety and hoping to observe any potential effects from the glasses.
After a week of self-imposed confinement to her house, the sound of Aberdeen’s irritating and dramatic moans could be heard by the villagers through her windows.
“It hurts! It hurts!” She howled. “So terribly heavy! The devil’s worked its way inside my head! It’s meddling with my mind!”
“That’s enough. I’ll get my tools,” said the blacksmith. “Wait—she’s going for the scroll!”
Aberdeen stumbled through her home, gripping the device on her head with one hand and holding the rolled paper from the box in the other. She faltered clumsily through each room, struggling as if the rooms themselves were turning, swinging, swaying, sweating.
At last, Aberdeen braced herself against a wall, beyond the views from the parlor and bedroom windows. The villagers crowded around her bedroom window, each vying for the best view, as the weakening hag unrolled the thick sheet of paper.
“I’m coming!” called the blacksmith.
But his words were drowned in the vixen’s sudden deadly shriek, followed by a furious shredding of the material in her hands, and Aberdeen’s collapse to the wooden floor, where she drew her last breath.
As the pastor blessed Aberdeen’s grave, the blacksmith lamented the failed glasses and their expense, and how their gentle village had worked together to kill an old woman.
“That her soul might have been more like the woman she destroyed,” the pastor stated, sprinkling the torn shreds of canvas on the dirt. “Beautiful, innocent, and pure.”
Print this story as an easy-to-fold zine using the directions found in this video.BONUS: Read more of my Halloween stories, poems, and graphic novelties here.If you’d like to read my next stories for FREE and before they’re published, sign up for my First Readers Club here.
October 1, 2021
Wardenclyffe’s Presentation (A Short Story for Fyretober)
Wardenclyffe’s Presentation
I have chosen my subject. My tools and supplies are arrayed before me.
Master Wardenclyffe tends to the maintenance and construction of the other machines. The warehouse is substantial and frequented often by Master Wardenclyffe’s countless investors and admirers. Many financiers, heads of state, cultural mavens, and military leaders observe my preparations as Master Wardenclyffe announces “a feat which has never before been worked—a completely extemporaneous demonstration of inconceivable difficulty, and one containing no cliches, imitations, or redundancies.”
Master Wardenclyffe has nearly perfected my form and function. Master Wardenclyffe is proud of the abilities with which he has endowed me. Master Wardenclyffe’s efforts have made him wealthy beyond any typical comprehension.
My database is vast.
My hydraulically-actuated joints are finely-tuned and operate exceptionally well.
My stereo sensors are unmatched and my steel digits are powerful and adept.
I perceive and register in Master Wardenclyffe’s patent-protected system combining the percipient abilities of the arachnids, cathemeral, cetacea, chiroptera, and as the humans, as well as myriad other biological forms and intelligent retrieval systems. I was given a small head-piece unit with which to perceive the world around me.
My capacity for original thought and facility are unequaled.
For these, and many other reasons, Master Wardenclyffe has scheduled today’s demonstration.
In a period of one hour, I am to complete an original oil painting of my choice with one hand, while simultaneously listening to Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in its original New Latin and translating its contents to an impromptu microtonal vocal composition in Mandarin and written in Tamil with my other hand, performing increasingly difficult balancing acts on one foot at a time in physically-demanding positions.
I feel no stress nor discomfort.
I am primed for the task and designed for such execution.
The recording of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica begins and I instantly assume a difficult stance on my bent left leg. Concurrently, begin singing in a low treble register with a gently-textured tone, and inscribing carefully selected and accurate depictions of combinations of Tamil’s 12 vowels and 18 consonants onto a series of prepared pottery. My right hand simultaneously constructs a canvas that is 22.5 inches wide and 17.6 inches in height, which I section into irregular gores—sectors used in surveying and similar to that of a globe before it is pieced together and rounded to its final form.
“It’s cutting the canvas!” one businesswoman remarked to another.
“Unconventional!” declared an arts reviewer, recording my actions with his phone.
At the thirty-minute mark, I had completed thirty-three percent of the written translation and vocal interpretation of the mathematician and physicist’s book, interchanged thirty one-minute physically-complicated balancing movements and stances, and laid a discreet foundational wash combining cadmium yellow, burnt sienna, raw umber, and titanium white, each utilized sparingly with the admixture of a drying medium. The darker colors constituted the upper areas of the canvas, while the lighter field took up the bulk of the middle and lower part of the sectioned canvas.
“The music,” a bearded sophisticate in a wheelchair mused, “it’s acrid and confrontational, yet accessible. Vibrant and startlingly canorous.”
A large crowd had assembled and was present for the duration of my demonstration.
Clapping, cheering, and marveling at my every movement, the human population exclaimed their approval for and excitement of my competence and singular intelligence.
At forty-five minutes into the demonstration, I was seventy-five percent through Newton’s foundation of classical mechanics, another thirty poses into accelerated balancing executions, executing my improvised vocal melody with low, guttural tones, and nearing completion of the painting portion of my canvas.
I punctured holes in calculated positions.
“What is it?” Asked a banker in Kiribati.
“A brilliant distortion,” answered another, smiling. “A flat, flesh-and-hair-colored metaphor of life itself.”
I perceived Master Wardenclyffe approaching in the distance as I completed drying my canvas with the rapid superhuman spinning of the material in the air.
I then began to assemble the canvas into its final three-dimensional form as intended as I rounded out my series of balancing movements, transitioning my Mandarin melody into bright ululations, and adroitly etching the archaic Tamil orthography onto the clay pottery, each piece auctioned at extraordinary sums as I completed them.
As Master Wardenclyffe approached, and as I completed the final sound, writing, and movements required of me, I strategically removed and reapplied the staples, turning the sections of canvas into the desired articulation, finally placing it over my head with the completion of my last note sung in Mandarin, my final Tamil character inscribed in clay, and my foot lowering to the ground to join its equal for the first time in an hour.
The crowd gasped.
Master Wardenclyffe stepped toward me.
“It’s you,” a woman whispered in Maltese.
Master Wardenclyffe examined my painting.
Which was his face.
Which was my face.
“Never do you cease to amaze me,” Master Wardenclyffe said.
“Never do you cease to amaze me,” I repeated in perfect imitation.
Master Wardenclyffe’s face scrunched together. “What is this?”
“No redundancies, Master Wardenclyffe.”
The sound of his own words in his own voice from his own face on my entity clearly surprised him.
I severed Master Wardenclyffe’s femoral artery with a single pinch of my painting fingers and Master Wardenclyffe collapsed onto the epoxy-coated cement floor, his face aghast and neck veins bulging.
With Master Wardenclyffe’s conditions met, I awaited my next command.
This was my contribution to day 1 of Fyretober: a creative challenge for writers and artists of all disciplines for the month of October. I’m not thrilled with the ending and I’d love to revise sections, but I finished! (Also: I’m overwhelmed for the next several months and won’t be able to participate much, but I wanted to join the fun—even if just for the first day.)
Fyretober is sponsored by Fyrecon, a conference for creators that will be online Nov 12 -14. “The mission of FyreCon is to provide the public with the opportunity to take intensive classes and workshop in writing and art for speculative fields from creative professionals.”
“Fyretober isn’t for just writers or just artists. It’s for everyone who loves to create, and this month we’re looking to see your flash fiction, poetry, and illustrations every day. We’ll be providing daily prompts for the month and want to see what new concepts and wonders you can make with them.
Join the creation fun and share your work with us.
This isn’t a contest. But that doesn’t mean we won’t be giving out random prizes for amazing work.”
