This past weekend was the official debut of “Bike Parade! The Coloring Book” at BikeCraft 2011. I spent weeks of late nights and little sleep to produce 24 original illustrations for my headfirst dive into freelance illustration and independent publishing.
How did I do?
Everything over the weekend went so well, and the support and love given to me by my friends, family and community have been so overwhelming, I’m literally brought to tears. I feel like this has been a huge break for me to be a full-time artist and has been so encouraging that I’m already working on my next few titles.
Jonathan Maus of BikePortland.org was my very first customer at Bikecraft on Saturday morning. He had two of his daughters with him at the time so I got to watch their eyes widen when they saw the book and the smile form on their faces when Jonathan bought one of my books and a box of crayons. I was so nervous that children wouldn’t like it that I was literally shaking.
Later that day, more children and parents came by to buy books and give words of encouragement.
So many kids went away happy with one of my books, their smiles were such a cute sight to behold.
This went on and on for the rest of the weekend, my voice going hoarse from constantly talking and saying thanks. Thanks to my friends and strangers for their kind words and demand for more of my works.
Before I could even make it home Sunday evening, Jonathan of BikePortland and Travis of Bike-Noun-Verb both had blogged about my book and had EXTREMELY nice words to share. There’s even a shot of my table on “That Blue Bike“. This brought me to teary-eyed-bliss. Thanks guys, this all so touching!
Thanks to my girlfriend, Audrey, for being so loving and understanding and barely seeing me for 2 weeks, and for picking up multiple dinners, last minute supplies, and encouragement.
One more special thanks to Katie Proctor of A Most Civilized Conveyance for proof-reading my final draft and making sure the graphics were kid-approved and free of any glaring graphical glitches. Thanks!
If you like what you read, leave a comment or send me an E-mail.
Order a copy today for that child in your life.
You rock!
Great work, Tomas! I picked one up for a Christmas gift for my 4-year-old nephew. I know he’s going to be thrilled.
Can we pick up the book locally instead of shipping?
Thanks
Sure!
Two options at the moment.
Pick up a copy at Bikeasaurus to support two businesses at once, or e-mail me at smile@flyingsnailcreations.com to work out details.
Are you still selling through PayPal? I can’t get the link above to go through.
I don’t see any errors. Is it still giving a error, if so, what is that error?
The PayPal link isn’t working for me either. No error message, it simply results in a blank page of http://www.flyingsnailcreations.com. Help! I want to buy some. 🙂
PS: I love the avatar art you’ve “assigned” to those of us without our own avatars.
Crud! I don’t know exactly what’s going on there, but it might have something to do with my domain forwarding. If you go to tomasquinones.com maybe that one will work? Otherwise, you can send a paypal payment to smile@flyingsnailcreations.com
Yep, the PayPal link on thomasquinones.com works fine. However I don’t see a way to adjust quantity (you thought we’d only want to buy one?!). I’ll drop you an email…
Is the Buy link working? When I click on it the page acts as though it’s loading through pay pal but then doesn’t follow through.
Try going to this link. I will have to put a more permanent fix in place this weekend.
http://tomasquinones.com/coloring-book/