One step closer! Naturalist Numbers is going to be released in hardback by a different publisher and offered through Lulu.
Authors John Maddin and Michelle Walch are now waiting to learn what the revised release date is going to be.
The continued success of Letters of the West informed Walch and Maddin that it was time to publish the second book. Their crowd-funding campaign that ran in October was highly successful, assuring the authors that fans are excited for more of their books.
Those who backed the book on Indiegogo will be notified of progress, and when they will receive their perks.
Comment from Facebook during the Naturalist Numbers October 2022 campaign:
“I can hardly believe there’s not an absolute clamoring from publishers about this. It looks to be brilliantly masterful.”
–Ends–
John Maddin garnered his chops as an illustrator by attending the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, OR. His main medium is Scratchboard, which allows for a great deal of fine detail.
Michelle Walch went to the University of Oregon, earning an English degree. Her writing career came later in life: first with the Letters of the West book, then hired as a blogger by her small business advisor.
Media contact: Michelle Walch, 503-266-3998, michelle@michellewalch.com John Maddin’s Website: www.dev3.johndmaddinart.com
It’s a counting book on the curious anatomical features of the animal world which are often ignored. Once again I worked in Scratchboard, but this time I added some Pen & Ink in token of the inspiration for this book; Victorian-era naturalist diaries which typically use a lot of pen & ink illustrations incorporated in the text. So each text page will have some old-fashioned “drawrin’s” up against the main image on the facing page which is in Scratchboard, colored in Photoshop.
We had fun researching the land and sea creatures, looking for just the right interesting features. Sometimes it was a bit difficult, like the numbers 5 and 7 (what has 5 or 7 of something? Turns out the Sea Urchin has 5 teeth, and the California Flying Fish has 7 separate fins…). And sometimes it was fun turning typical expectations on their head, like the Octopus, for instance. EVERYONE always goes on about the tentacles, but how many people outside of oceanic biologists know that the Octopus has 3 hearts? And illustrating the 8 eyes on the Jumping Spider was a heck of a lot of fun. All those weird spider-hairs….