I illustrated a kids book. It released in April. Two weeks ago, the author of the book and myself set up for a 3 day book festival here in Baltimore. The overall experience was cool, and encouraging. I shared conversations with a wide variety of authors, educators and creative minds. I was inspired, motivated and further receptive to the fact/truth that I’m on the path that I always wanted to be on — professional artist. Now for the sour moment. We shared a tent with 3 other authors — all experienced in navigating the book festival world. Two guys and a lady. On the 2nd day (I believe), it’s mid-afternoon and one of the guys just asks out the blue “so I looked your guys stuff up on amazon and I noticed it doesn’t have the illustrator’s name on there. Why is that?” I don’t remember the response we gave him. In that moment, half my energy was dedicated to suppressing a “man go the fuck head somewhere with that instigatin’ ass shit!”. I was in autopilot mode. His response was “ahh.. I just wanted to give you guys a hard time about something.”

I wanted to toss him in the harbor.