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As I pull back and slide slowly out of her mouth, she opens her eyes and the expression on her face is almost dreamy She daintily wipes at the corners of her mouth and says, “That was nice”

Nice? Yeah, not nice

Utterly fucking fantastic and not just in a physical way

I know that Pepper Nantais could never just be casual tosince I’ve sat at htly weird in e in front of me for just a moment, and then start to sketch

As both the writer and illustrator ofmy books worthy of the children that read them

I didn’t alant to be a children’s book author, but I had always loved kids and I was a decent artist While both my parents and my sister are doctors, I was the creative one in the fan I got an entry-level job doing ad design for a clothing company and in my free time I fiddled with some sketches for an idea I had

It took me almost three years to develop the full concept of The Grand Adventures of Penelope and Bert into a comprehensive line of illustrated children’s stories, but I was proud of what I’d accomplished

I was stunned when I landed an agent

Al when I was h money for me to leave my day job

My own story is like a fairy tale, though, because when s of the Canadian geese, Penelope and Bert, who rate every year to the same pond—no one expected that it would be so popular It hit the New York Times bestseller list for seventeen weeks in a row and when the next offer came froh to quit my day job

Each successive launch was as good, if not better, than the one before, and I wasmore money than the doctors in my family

But I do have a deadline starting to loolected This particular story—which tells of the hatching of Penelope and Bert’s first gosling who they name Princess—is set to release in the summer and my first sketches are due to my art editor in teeks I’ll later do the watercolor renditions after the actual sketched scenes are approved as fitting to the written story, which I turned in last month to my copy editor