Yesterday morning marked the debut of a new presentation with a longtime friend.
As you may know, Don Tate and I have created two picture books together: The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch and Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions.
Yesterday, we got to present about our journey “From Critique Partners to Collaborators” at the monthly meeting of the Austin chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, after which Don received the SCBWI Crystal Kite award for his book Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton. (Congratulations, Don!)
Preparing for this presentation meant plunging into our electronic archives as well as the memories stored up in our heads, and the process was a lot of fun for us both.
The big takeaway of our presentation was a set of ten tips equally applicable to critique partners and collaborators alike, based on our own experiences with each other over these past 11 years. But we opened with this timeline, which we thought might be of interest to folks who weren’t able to attend yesterday’s meeting.
2005
First (documented) contact!
First manuscript critique
First lunch together
2006
First road trip together
Chris suggests Don write about George Moses Horton.
2007
Don critiques unfinished first draft of Chris’ manuscript, The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch.
2009
Eerdmans Books for Young Readers acquires The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch.
2010
Chris recommends Don to Eerdmans as candidate to illustrate The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch.
2011
Charlesbridge Publishing agrees to publish biography of Lonnie Johnson written by Chris.
2012
Don is announced as illustrator of The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch.
Chris recommends Don to Charlesbridge as illustrator of Lonnie Johnson book.
2013
Peachtree Publishers acquires Don’s biography of George Moses Horton.
Don is announced as illustrator of Whoosh!
2015
Chris and Don make first in-person appearances as author-illustrator team.
The Amazing Age of John Roy Lynch is published.
Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton is published.
2016
Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions is published.
And that’s just the high-level version — the nitty-gritty could take up a month of blog posts. But if you’re involved with a conference or organization that would be interested in hearing more of the story, well, maybe we’ll just have to update our timeline to include you.
[…] Don and I are indeed friends. Here’s a brief history of our friendship and our history as collaborators. […]