Jackson Sugar WANTED DEAD is an illustrated novel for adults.

October 1, 2015 

Illustrated Novels

I've always been an avid, even compulsive reader. From cereal boxes to medicine labels, if it's in print, I'm compelled to read it. 

As a (of age to read) child of the 1960's, there was always the newspaper, and Readers Digest and McCall's Magazines (with Betsy McCall paper dolls)

and a set of World Book Encyclopedias that were a decade or more out of date. And the Information Please Almanac, and comic books (Superman and Archie were my favorites). And library books. I read all the biographies they had at school, and my favorite fiction book was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle.

And then there were the Readers Digest Condensed Novels. Sigh . . .I loved these. I began every novel in every book we received, and read to the end many hundreds of them. And to this day what I remember are that most contained at lest one full page, sketched illustration about halfway through.

I read somewhere recently that having images of your novels characters is not a good idea. That people need to come up with their own idea of how the characters in a novel look. I get it, and I agree overall. My favorite book of all time (my stranded on a desert island book) is A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.

A character like Owen, who is very, very small, growing up, might have looked comical in an illustration - and Owen was never for a moment comical. But I love the idea of the illustrated novel with some books. And obviously, the Jackson Sugar series is among them.

The Maggie books are illustrated because (a) I have an accomplished artist who was able to capture draw Maggie as I see her, and (b) because even grown-ups enjoy looking at pictures. I mean, what's not to like?  These are some of the images from Crazy Red. 

    

We see Maggie growing up, Going from a timid child to a young adult who learns to assert herself. Because she has to in order to survive.

In Wanted Dead, we also see a progression, a maturing, 

   

And in many of the images, we get to see the action. I like that. And I like putting a face on the bad guys, too.

Back to work.  

Kaley Craig