The children's book Little Cloud is now available in print and as an e-book on Amazon.com First published as an e-book in 2014, and a print edition on Blurb, it has now been made available as a print edition on Amazon. Here's more information about the book, in the form of an interview:
Interviewer: What is the story behind the story of Little
Cloud?
Lucy
Autrey Wilson: I wrote and illustrated
Little Cloud in 2014, at the peak of California’s driest period since
record-keeping began, between late 2011 and 2014. I was wishing for more rain so thought a
story about a rain cloud might be nice.
Interviewer: Is there a reason your other main character
is a blue jay named Jack?
Lucy
Autrey Wilson: Since I made the cloud
feminine, I thought it would be good to make the bird male. I have twin grandsons who were four years old
at the time, the age target of my story, and by making one of the characters
male I hoped to appeal to them. Neither
of the twins is named Jack, but that name seemed to fit. I was also inspired by
my backyard blue jays.
Interviewer: Can you tell the reader a little bit about
your illustration process. It looks like
your illustrations were drawn using vector software, is that correct?
Lucy
Autrey Wilson: Yes. I wanted to make both a
digital and a print book. The
requirements for an e-book meant getting the file size as small as possible. I needed to create the art using
vector software, instead of raster images.
A raster image is artwork created in a non digital medium, then scanned
in to the computer becoming a digital file made up of pixels. When these raster images are enlarged, the image
quality diminishes significantly and the file sizes are much bigger. Vector artwork, on the other hand, is
composed of mathematical lines and curves.
Not only does vector art take up a lot less digital space, it can be
scaled to any size without losing quality.
Interviewer: How did you come up with your book title?
Lucy
Autrey Wilson: The title Little Cloud
just fit the story. After I first
published the e-book in 2014, I realized it was the same title as a book by
Eric Carle, one of my favorite children’s book author/illustrators. That was certainly not intentional.
Interviewer: What source material did you use for your
illustrations?
Lucy
Autrey Wilson: I am a photographer and
am always looking for new ways to use the tens of thousands of photos I’ve
taken over the years. At the time I
wrote Little Cloud, I was also travelling up to Seattle a couple times a year
to visit my daughter’s family, including the aforementioned twins. So the photo reference in the beginning of
Little Cloud was shot in Washington State.
Where Little Cloud travels south to, is Marin County, California, where I
live.
The
tall mountains in my story are based on the Olympic mountains, as seen from the
top of Mount Walker, in Washington State.
The tallest of the Olympic mountains is Mount Olympus at 7,965 ft.
The
body of water Little Cloud and Jack fly over is Puget Sound, as seen from
Seattle.
Small
Mountain is based on Mount Tamalpais in Marin County. Although the biggest mountain around where I
live, its peak is 2,572 ft. much shorter
than the Olympic mountains.
The
various flower drawings are based on photographs taken at the Botanical Gardens
in Fort Bragg, California in 2013.
Interviewer: What do you hope your readers take away from
the book?
Lucy
Autrey Wilson: First and foremost, I
hope the reader is entertained.
Secondly, I hope the message of friendship, and the benefits of helping others,
resonates. And finally, I hope there is
a little more awareness of the beautiful world we live in and a desire to help
combat climate change to keep it that way.
