Available now!

Ollie Bug and the Icky Sticky Thing from Space! Illustrated picture book for children and adults.

Ollie Bug, five-legged Adventure Spider, peers through Moonwater Observatory’s Giant Telescope on his nightly search for intelligent life.  Meanwhile, a fiery light streaks across the sky above Moonwater Meadow and crashed beyond the hillside. 

Is it a meteor?  Is it a new space friend?  Brain melting space pirates?  Tonight, Ollie will find his answers…

This hand-illustrated picture book story is available in a 32 page softcover and a deluxe 36 page hardcover with bonus art. It is an adventure tale of friendship hope and happiness for children and adults too!

Ollie Bug and the Icky Sticky Thing From Space is available on my Etsy shop and soon directly on this website and major retailers. Hey, I’m new to the whole e-commerce thing so I’m still figuring it all out.

Deluxe hardcover edition with bonus art.

Softcover edition.

Hello and welcome (a sort of mission statement).

I’m Tom, a writer, visual artist and general tinkerer. 

I’ve always been drawn to creative pursuits.  My mind is a vast colorful  spaghetti landscape of ideas on automatic- no-static- cinematic. 

I love writing and illustrating silly stories.  I write the kinds of books that kept me up all night reading instead of studying.  I’m a story teller by nature, a smile merchant in the business of entertaining.

Making people happy is sacred work I do not take for granted.

But chasing after those things is just a dream because only the very lucky succeed in the arts, right?  Most of us board the Train of Reasonable Thought going express into a life prescribed by the societal norm.   Good old Norm.

I rode that train.  I got the degree in psychology.  I doubled down and got another degree in human biology and another in chiropractic.  I suited up and joined the force as a health care professional.  I almost suffocated.  The dream, though paved over was sprouting roots between the cracks and growing until I couldn’t ignore it anymore.  I pulled up the stakes and took a different road. 

I believe in those big stupid life-affirming dreams most of us fear empowering as we ooze into adulthood. 

 We’re more afraid of having those dreams than of losing them.  At some lonely rest stop on the journey of Life most of us leave those dreams on line paying for gas while we take off down the Road of Sensibility.  I almost did. 

It’s nonsense if you ask me.   The creative life of writing, painting and making things is an uncertain crazy vocation-life of euphoric highs, creative breakthroughs and depressing lows followed by expensive lessons.  But I choose to spend my life making things adults and children enjoy.  I’ve never been happier and I recommend it to everyone.

I write other stories that are part comedy, part mystery and a little absurd.  Those appear on the blog.  I hope they make you laugh.

I also paint landscapes, beachscapes and whatever else I see in dreams.   

Please have a look around.  I’m sure you’ll find something to make you smile.