still life with tribble and ferns

cold ferns today

walking home from work at night

Every year I look forward to this spaceport

walking home from work at night

Kulshan

Kulshan

madrone tree

Big Shrimp

Salish hound

The Salish Sea

fish

fish

Cerberus

ferry sound

ferry hound

Guemes and Cypress Islands

imaginary textbook

The cover spread for new book. An imaginary Japanese school textbook.

pilgrim

The first song on Lee Morgan's The Rajah album is "A Pilgrim's Funny Farm."

ganymede

ganymede

There's strong evidence that Ganymede has an underground saltwater ocean that may hold more water than all the water on Earth's surface.

eye in the sky

eye in the sky

Getting to work this morning. See the eye in the sky?

The Cratchits

Follow Your Friend will be published December 8, time for Bob Cratchit to order a Christmas copy. The beautiful cover painting is by Rosa. Priya helped me put the cover together. 292 pages of animal stories. There will also be a hardbound version of book!

Animal Index

This is the index to the animals in the new book, FOLLOW YOUR FRIEND

Introducing Follow Your Friend

FOLLOW YOUR FRIEND. For a while now I've wondered about gathering the animals from my writing into an animal book. This summer I finally began that roundup. There are a lot of them! They're hiding in novels, poetry, essays, and short stories. I couldn't catch them all, but here are some favorites. I realized there are animals in everything. They arrived on their own and they walked themselves onto an ark I didn't know I was building. Mostly there are animals from around our neighborhood: birds, rabbits, deer, owls, and coyotes. There are also elephants, lions, dinosaurs, unicorns and the like (and I'm not sure if mermaids count but they're here too). This isn't a zoo with the occupants put in order by continents, it ordered itself while I went through stacks of Good Deed Rain. You'll find migrations across these pages. Animals helped with my own migrations too, from Seattle, to Portland, to Ohio, and back to the Northwest. There's a reason you find them on totem poles, invisibly guiding or otherwise. Finally, in order to keep this from becoming "The Best of the Animals," the book ends with the release of a new collection of animal stories, "Octopus Motors." I hope you find more friends waiting for you just ahead, in this inspired illustrated collection of animals from sewn, stapled, and printed books spanning 34 years of writing.

FOLLOW YOUR FRIEND

COVER for the NEW BOOK: titled FOLLOW YOUR FRIEND stay tuned for more info...

pumpernickel

At lunchbreak I read William Steig's The Amazing Bone. The bakers are taking hot loaves of pumpernickel out of the oven! Where is this bakery!? I've been searching all my life for it!

the tower translation

The wooden tower atop Sehome hill, and the view of town. In the book Mermaid Translation there are gondolas that go up and down to the bay.

Tribute to Lowly Worm

misty morning

The King in Seattle

disguise #2

Truck disguised as a bush

disguise #1

Telephone pole disguised as a tree.

Spock Amok

photo and hand by Rob

Monday office

swimming lessons

The Morning Herald

whose counting?

The Sea Visitor

page-spread from the forthcoming animal book collection

"Down, Fang! Down!"