I have been posting pictures of my travels so much lately that this blog has turned into something other than what it used to be. But now I am all caught up… and it is going to get weird and artsy and poury all up in here.

My daughter and my wife flew home early and I had three extra days at my mom’s house in the Bay Area. The crack squirrels were going nuts! You might remember that I did a post about all the stuff I was doing.

I read through the first copy of my new book… book 3 of the Otherwhere Chronicles. (The first two books of this hilarious and action-packed series are available on my book page, which you can get to by clicking on the pictures of the books over there in my sidebar… just sayin’)… I just this morning emailed the few small changes that need to be made to my older daughter, Jessica, who is my tech expert on formatting the books for publishing. Then that book is going to be available too.

I also am working on another children’s book, but I will get to that later.

But here is a new twist… I am writing a novel… aimed at teenage girls. Hey, don’t try to make this weird. Jessica is always challenging me to try writing new kinds of stuff. She encouraged me to write the murder mystery set in World War Two London that is being edited as we speak by my head blog minion, Mr. Trent Lewin. (Hi Trent, get back to work, or no minion chow for you!)… and as Jessica points out, I raised two awesome daughters as a house daddy… before it was even cool to be one… and most of my best friends have always been female. So I am digging deep into the female side… the better side… of my artistic soul.

Here’s the thing… and this is just one of those things I like to do to challenge  myself… but, unlike my sci-fi books, which I force myself to write without any pre-planning at all… (I just let me get myself into tricky situations and then try to figure out how to get out of them)… I am planning this one out in advance. I mean really planning.

Here is a glimpse into the creative process for this new novel, which I hope will break the barriers that Disney has set up around the whole ‘Princess’ genre…

Oh yeah… storyboards, character sheets with descriptions and motivations and details, notes, sketches and maps of who is going where and why and what they did and what they are going to do… all laid out on my mom’s piano. I even, since I had the watercolor paints out to do some more artwork for my next children’s book, did a hand drawn and painted map of the fictitious world the story takes place in.

This novel is going to take the princesses back from Disney. This ain’t a book aimed at 7-year-olds. This is Disney princesses meets the Hunger Games… only without kids fighting to the death as entertainment. I am talking kick-ass teen princesses who become pirates in order to rebel against the evil empire taking over their world.

One last bit of art to pour out, and it isn’t mine. Remember all those hand-made robots that Jessica made for Willie’s third birthday party? Here is the one I adopted.

I love that little guy. And I am giving you all a chance to come up with a name for him.