First Draft Episode #253: Pseudonymous Bosch and Shane Pangburn
MAY 19, 2020
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
Pseudonymous Bosch, the pen name for Raphael Simon, is the New York Times bestselling author of The Name of This Book is Secret and the Secret series, Bad Magic and the Bad series. Shane Pangburn is a writer and illustrator and producer of YALLWEST (hear his First Draft interview here). Simon wrote, and Pangburn illustrated, The Unbelievable Oliver and its sequel, The Unbelievable Oliver and the Sawed In Half Dads. Pseudonymous Bosch, Shane Pangburn, and Melissa de la Cruz are joining forces for a new middle grade series, The Reject Room, out in 2021.
Sarah Enni: This episode is brought to you by HIGHLAND 2 the writing software made by writers for writers. From acclaimed Hollywood screenwriter and novelist John August, writer of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Big Fish, Aladdin, and the Arlo Finch middle-grade series. Though it started as a screenwriting software, HIGHLAND 2 is capable of handling anything from blog posts to dissertations, and yes, even novels.
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Sarah Enni: Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Pseudonymous Bosch and Shane Pangburn. Pseudonymous Bosch, the pen name for Raphael Simon, is the New York Times bestselling author of The Name of This Book is Secret and the Secret series. And Bad Magic and the Bad series. Shane Pangburn is a writer, illustrator and the producer of YALLWest. Simon wrote and Pangburn illustrated The Unbelievable Oliver and its sequel, The Unbelievable Oliver and the Sawed In Half Dads.
Everything we talk about on today's episode can be found in the show notes. First Draft participates in affiliate programs and specifically bookshop.org. That means that when you shop through the links on FirstDraftPod.com, it helps to support the show and independent bookstores at no additional cost to you.
If you'd like to donate to First Draft either on a one-time or monthly basis, simply go to paypal.me/FirstDraftPod.
Also, I hope you're listening in to the Track Changes episodes that have been dropping in the First Draft feed. Track Changes is the spinoff series from First Draft that gets into everything you don't know you don't know about traditional publishing in the U.S.
We got into Publishing 101, Agents Who They Are, What They Do, and How to Get One. And Selling Your Book from the perspective of the author and agent. The next episode, which will drop May 28th, goes behind the scenes of what a book sale looks like from the editor's side. Acquisitions meetings, P&L's, BookScan, and more.
If you're looking to get even more in-depth about publishing, I've also created the Track Changes newsletter. Where every Thursday I share more of the information I gathered in researching for Track Changes, as well as links to other articles, podcasts, and resources that I hope will empower every reader to think about their art as their career. You can sign up for a 30 day free trial of the newsletter and learn more about both Track Changes projects @FirstDrafPod.com/TrackChanges.
Okay, now please sit back, relax and enjoy my conversation with Rafi and Shane.
Sarah Enni: Okay. To get us started, since we are three different voices on the podcast, I'd love it if you guys could introduce yourselves so the listener gets your voice correct.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Hi, I'm a Pseudonymous Bosch, but for the purposes of today, I'll go by my other pseudonym Rafi. That's short for Raphael Simon in case anybody really wants to know.
Shane Pangburn: And I'm Shane Pangburn. Uh, that's it.
Sarah Enni: Shane Pangburn also...
Pseudonymous Bosch: That's not it!
Sarah Enni: It's not all, an author and illustrator.
Shane Pangburn: Oh! Am I giving credentials?
Sarah Enni: Well, yeah!
Shane Pangburn: Author and illustrator. Illustrator of The Unbelievable Oliver series by Pseudonymous Bosch or Rafi, if you will. And an event coordinator including YALLWEST Book Fest.
Sarah Enni: Yes. And any listener who hasn't, should go back and listen to the First Draft episode where Shane was interviewed with Tori Hill, the two of them put together the YALLWEST festival every year. And that was a really informative and interesting interview about how book festivals come together, uh, or don't! Or all the challenges along the way.
Pseudonymous Bosch: And have we all occasionally come together.
Sarah Enni: Yeah! Yeah. Which is so fun. So I like to start all my interviews with a little bit of bio, a little bit of background. So, I'd love for each of you to let me know where you were born and raised.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Where I was born and raised? Okay. This is in the nature of a scoop. For listeners who don't know, I've written under this name Pseudonymous Bosch for over ten years, I guess the first book was in 2007. And for many years it was a real secret, my identity. I wasn't even Google-able for a long time. And we worked hard at that. Eventually the shell cracked and here I am.
I don't usually talk too much about my actual real childhood and background. But you know what? Here we go!
Sarah Enni: Let's do it!
Pseudonymous Bosch: Born and raised in Los Angeles. Laurel Canyon is where I grew up. If anybody knows LA, it's like the Joni Mitchell Ladies of the Canyon, that's the Canyon. And I was a child of the seventies in and around the Houdini mansion and homes of aging rockstars, and what I always called Laurel Canyon Gothic. A lot of ghost stories and stories about murders and overdoses, all kinds of things. And they were going on in the Laurel Canyon in the seventies.
And aside from all the books I read, I think that contributed a little bit to the imaginative landscape that I grew up in.
Sarah Enni: I was gonna say, I'm seeing connections. That makes a lot of sense. Shane, how about you?
Shane Pangburn: I was born in Urbana, Illinois, which is as close to a big city as we had. And then grew up in rural Illinois in a small town called Tuscola just north of Arcola where my mother was from. And really just kind of a cartoonishly, idyllic, childhood that people write about in books and then people call the books unrealistic.
Sarah Enni: So I would love to just hear a little bit about how reading and writing was a part of growing up for you guys and also drawing.
Shane Pangburn: So growing up in a small town, but it's really true, that the library is an incredible window. And so we would go to the library, I want to say every day after school, I'm probably telling a lie, but we would go very frequently. And that was also where they showed movies and things downstairs. And so it was a huge part of my life. And some of my earliest memories were trying to figure out books and researching books with my twin brother.
And I remember not doing particularly well at school really early on. My brother was very good at school in this kind of preternatural way. So then they were confused by the other twin was slow. And then you got to first grade and you just read whatever. In second grade, third grade you started to learn to write. And the minute I could tell my own stories, it made this huge difference. It was this open up of like, "Oh, I can draw and tell my own stories? This is what I want to do and this is how I want to interact with the world."
And then from then on was just like, push up my glasses, too good of a student, really, really into it. Had to be right, had to know everything I could. And in a small town you can't know everything you can, but try and do the research there. And then drawing was just always part of that. And the ability to draw was just something that I always had but wasn't ever really set up to be an artist.
Pseudonymous Bosch: When you say drawing was a part of that, do you think you thought of drawing as a storytelling medium?
Shane Pangburn: Only. Only. Yeah, I only thought of drawing as a secondary to the story. And all through life that way. When I really started drawing professionally was college and I started doing a daily cartoon. And that was really just, they had an opening for a daily cartoonist cause someone said something, I can't remember if it was racist or against a corporation, but it was maybe both. And they had an immediate opening for a cartoonist.
Pseudonymous Bosch: And if you know, Shane, Shane's the kind of person that takes whatever job is assigned. Without considering whether he can do it, or whether he would naturally be the right fit, if it needs to be done, he's game.
Shane Pangburn: Yeah, so as a freshman in college, I was like, "I know the voice everyone needs." And then that just became my voice for like five years of drawing every day. And that then became like riding a bike to where drawing was a professional possibility.
Sarah Enni: Was was the daily cartoon you were doing a one frame or was it a strip?
Shane Pangburn: It was a strip. It was an intense amount of work. And then I would do also one-frames. And not so much political cartoons, god knows what my politics were in college. I mean, I know. Libertarian who doesn't know what he's talking about, and that also grew as I got older in college. And even the political cartoons got more nuanced and the strip got extraordinarily nuanced. Like when I would go through breakups or something, you would just be like, "Oh, he's got two hours to draw today." [Laughs] And you would really see it either take off or fall precipitously.
Sarah Enni: What were you actually studying in college?
Shane Pangburn: Cinema, I was a film student with an art minor. So film studies, which has a huge amount of overlap with cartooning, I would even say they're the same field.
Pseudonymous Bosch: You're story-boarding.
Shane Pangburn: You're story-boarding. And they lend a lot of credit to each other. And you can actually see this rise and fall of the two, early cinema and early comics, like around the 1920s. You see this really amazing cartooning work and this amazing camera work. And then, at the same time, you got sound in films. And then comics ended up taking on this verbal tone at the same time, and the image got locked down, and it's been this slow turn of the two industries to come together like that.
And so they really, I think, work together to fuel. But I don't want to say then that it made either work better. Honestly, my own ability to work and time management is the only thing that was limiting that. And it limited it severely.
Sarah Enni: Okay. But I love that getting that gig, doing a daily cartoon, was so integral to generally what your education was as well.
Shane Pangburn: I would recommend literally anyone who wants to do any creative field find a way to force themselves to do it on the daily. And I know Rafi's his previous jobs in writing were more structured than a novelists.
Pseudonymous Bosch: A few. Actually, one of my regrets in life is that I dropped out of, in college, they had a class called Daily Themes where you were supposed to write an essay a day. And it was kind of a bootcamp for writers. And I chickened out at the last minute. Some people might not be that surprised to hear. And it's to my regret every day cause I think it would have really instilled some good habits in me. It would have stood me in good stead years later [laughs].
Sarah Enni: So I would love to hear you talk about how writing was a part of your young life. And then how did you come to actually be a professional at it?
Pseudonymous Bosch: In terms of reading and writing when was little, maybe I had the opposite trajectory from what it sounds like Shane had. Which is that when I was very young, I was a storyteller and my mother would transcribe the stories for me. But I was late to learn to read by the then standards, at least in Los Angeles. So I went into second grade not knowing how to read.
And I had gone previously to a quote unquote "alternative school" which was essentially like an extension of preschool where I could do whatever I wanted. And do arts and crafts all day long. So why would I study? Or learn to read, as it happens. But I went to a more typical suburban elementary school for second grade, and all the other kids could read. And I was utterly humiliated and shamed and learned to read in two weeks because I was so motivated.
Shame being, as we know, one of the best motivators in life. Not that I would recommend it, but it certainly worked for me. But then I became a voracious reader. And not so much of a writer after that. I mean, it was a real switch for me. And I didn't think of them as being continuous, really, at that time. And I read from the ages of certainly from eight to fourteen, no exaggeration, I would say an average of a novel a day. That's all I did, I didn't really do anything else. I didn't do my homework. I didn't play sports, I didn't talk to people [laughs]. I remember at meals, and I think I aged. That's pretty much it besides reading.
That's what I loved to do and it's all I did. And there were occasional stories that I remember writing and my parents were writers, both of them, they were screenwriters mainly at the time. But I grew up in a household where it was natural to break down stories over dinner or lunch. And I edited my parents' manuscripts from the time I could read really.
And to this day, that's what I'm most comfortable with and probably what I should've done with my life. So writing, I remember I wrote a couple pieces in high school for a free weekly in Los Angeles, kind of a predecessor to the LA Weekly, called the LA Reader. And that was kind of thrilling to me. It was paid professional writing and I was a teenager and that was very cool. So I think that gave me an idea, at the time, that maybe I might have a career in journalism, or as an essayist. That was the word I sort of hung on to.
But then in college I got a little bit discouraged. I remember as a freshman I submitted a story to a literary magazine or whatever. And then happened, by a stroke of bad luck, to be at the meeting where my story was discussed. And it was so, so devastating, I can't tell you. To hear my story taken them apart by these pretentious Ivy League lit students.
It was a kind of LA teen story that I'd written. Some people may be amused to know was kind of inspired by experiences with my best friend from high school, Margaret Stohl (author of Beautiful Creatures, Jo and Laurie, and many more. Listen to her First Draft interviews here and here), who is also a YA author people may be familiar with. And anyway, I wrote this story, and it was kind of dismissed as a sort of wanna be Less Than Zero, I think it was. And it was all factual and LA life, but you know, whatever.
So, of course, I didn't write another word for years afterwards cause who would? But then what happened was, as I was a senior in college, I once was having a conversation with my father when he proposed writing a screenplay together. And that's a whole other story that I'm not gonna really get into, right now cause it could be a whole other podcast.
But we did wind up writing a screenplay together and then Margie and I actually started writing screenplays together after that. And that was what I did for several years in addition to a little bit of journalism. And then I wrote on a cartoon series. What I realized later was that the only scripts that sold, in the case of the cartoon series were produced, the things that I'd written were all for children.
Although that wasn't something I was thinking about at the time. I mean, I tried all kinds of things. But clearly there was something in me that didn't have the maturity to write for older audiences.
Sarah Enni: I love that you stumbled into realizing that your voice was better suited for kids.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Yeah. Well, the whole thing, I mean, I really just stumbled into being a children's author. What happened was that about fourteen years ago, Margie actually, since we're on the Margie theme, literally forced me to volunteer at her daughter's elementary school where they had a program called writing partners. And in the writing partners program, fourth and fifth graders in the school were partnered with parents, or not parents actually, but just adults from outside the school.
And we were supposed to exchange writing through the mail for comment and critique. We were basically pen pals. So my writing partner was Margie's daughter Mae. And I started writing my first book The Name of This Book is Secret, for Mae, in that context. Not having any real plans for it, not thinking that I would ever finish it, let alone publish it, let alone, you know.
Sarah Enni: So The Name of This Book is Secret and the Secret series really took off. There are what?
Pseudonymous Bosch: There are five books in the Secret series.
Sarah Enni: Five, yeah. And I love that the last one is You Have To Stop This.
Shane Pangburn: Which he didn't.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Which I didn't.
Sarah Enni: And then write this book, which is so great. And the Bad book series.
Pseudonymous Bosch: This book is a half written book that the readers are supposed to finish for me.
Sarah Enni: Yes. And I'm interested in how this works with Oliver as well. But what was the draw to having... I love that your books use comedy. And they also are a lot of breaking the fourth wall and giving the narrator like a lot of authority.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Well, the tone, the voice and the breaking of the fourth wall, that all comes really from the fact that the first book was written for Mae. And was written, essentially, as a series of letters. So for people who haven't read the book, there's a lot of use of the second person. The reader is addressed directly and I think that's what kids respond to in the books in particular. Cause the book was a communication and a conversation with Mae, that sort of established the tone going through.
Sarah Enni: You wrote that with Mae. How old was Mae at that time?
Pseudonymous Bosch: She was in fourth grade. She's now graduated from college. She's in graduate school.
Sarah Enni: So that was kind of the age group that you were thinking about and writing for?
Pseudonymous Bosch: I mean at the time, of course, I didn't know anything about these publishing categories. The whole category of middle-grade for example, was something I'd never, I mean, I'd barely heard of young adults. And like many people, maybe less so now, but certainly at the time, I just sort of vaguely thought that there were picture books and then there were young adult books. I didn't really know.
And it turned out, of course, in publishing it's micro-targeting really. And the category turned out to be middle-grade. And I remember the publishers, to me somewhat arbitrarily, said that the readership should be eight to twelve. I think that was what it was in the books.
Of course in real life, your readers will be all ages. And I had some fans that were five and six years old, some who were having the books read by their parents, some who were reading the books themselves. And now to this day, some of my favorite fan mail comes from teenagers, or people in their twenties, who had been maybe reading the books when they were younger and picked them up again recently.
Sarah Enni: I think the benefit of humor too is that it makes something so much more broadly appealing.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Yeah, I mean, when I think about audience and when I talk to other people about audience, I think first of all it's very important. You'll hear a lot of writing advice which is basically, write for yourself. And I don't agree with that. I think you're always writing for someone else. And the whole point of writing is communication and that it brings writing to life when you have an audience in mind. And maybe a particular individual in mind. It turns writing into a whole other thing.
So I always was specifically thinking about writing for kids. At the same time, one of the truisms that I agree with is that you don't talk down to children when you're talking to them, or writing for them. And so I allowed the humor to be sophisticated. And in that sense, I was certainly aware that maybe things were working as I was writing, on different levels for more than one age group.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Okay, and we're gonna get to Oliver in a second. But I love this story. How did it go from being this fun project with Mae to, I mean, at what point were you like, "Maybe I should actually try to sell this?"
Pseudonymous Bosch: Well Mae had started to show chapters to her friends and family and I would hear back from Margie, in particular, that people were enjoying it and wanting to read more. So then I was encouraged. And after I was about two thirds done with it, let's say, when the writing partners program ended. And at that point I thought, "Well, hm. Who knows? Maybe I have something here." And a friend of mine from college was friends with the agent Sarah Burnes (Listen to Sarah and I chat on her episode of First Draft here), who actually also I vaguely knew from college.
And I set up a lunch with Sarah and she was encouraging. And then I sent her what I had, and she was very encouraging about that. And, in fact, was willing to go out with it then as an unfinished manuscript. I, I think rightly and surprisingly for me, said, "No, I'm gonna finish it. I just wanted to know that there might be a real audience for it."
So I did that and then she went out with it. And so it was, really in the end, it was Sarah's encouragement that got me to the finish line.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And Sarah's also been on the podcast. I interviewed her when my book came out so people can go hear her speak very intelligently about publishing. Then you got to explore a little bit, something different in the Bad books. I feel like there's less of a narrative.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Well, I was trying to experiment a little bit with my voice. Cause I'd felt that in the Secret series, Pseudonymous Bosch sort of tended to take over and I wanted to see if I could maybe foreground story, I guess, and have a slightly more mature style. I don't know to the extent whether it worked or not, but that was the attempt.
Sarah Enni: So let's talk about Unbelievable Oliver and how this idea came about. But by first saying how did you guys meet? How did you come to know each other?
Shane Pangburn: We met through book events. I was a children's book seller and I ran the children's department at a Barnes and Noble back when they specialized people like that in Santa Monica. And I already had come across his books as they were promoted. And I think by then there were about two books. I remember his grandmother came in and...
Sarah Enni: [Laughs] Amazing!
Pseudonymous Bosch: Yeah, that was at the time that I was really trying to stay anonymous as well. I took the whole secrecy thing kind of seriously.
Sarah Enni: And grandma's like, "No!"
Shane Pangburn: Extremely secretive author, but not to his grandmother who was like, "Well, you know, this is my grandson." And she was very proud and rightfully so. And I had already intended to read the book, and did, and made it part of my...
Pseudonymous Bosch: I like that it was partly my grandmother which inspired you to read.
Shane Pangburn: Yeah. If you could just hand sell with your grandmother everywhere, that's literally what did it.
Pseudonymous Bosch: That's so funny.
Shane Pangburn: And I then put it as the book club, the super cool top secret book club that we had, which was just like two kids and me. But it was part of that. And then we did sell a lot of the book. They sent you to the Santa Monica store.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Yeah, we did an event together. We wound up doing a few.
Shane Pangburn: Yeah, we ended up doing four events over the years, but I did my first event with him for, I think, the third book. And just kept in contact after that cause we got along. I had to wear the white gloves for the first book event.
Pseudonymous Bosch: And then I believe I was the one who suggested you for a job at YALLWEST.
Shane Pangburn: The story goes that it was Lewis.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Maybe it was Lewis. Maybe so. I don't know. As I remember it, I was the one. It probably was Margie's husband.
Shane Pangburn: I think you were confirming factor.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Maybe so.
Shane Pangburn: So I also did book events with Margaret Stohl, Melissa de la Cruz (author of The Isle of the Lost: A Descendants Novel, Alex and Eliza, and more), and all the YALLWEST crew. So when YALLWEST needed someone to run the event, my name came up maybe through Pseudonymous Bosch, maybe through Lewis Peterson. And so then we worked together through YALLWEST, and then I actually worked as an assistant to Mr. Raphael Simon.
Pseudonymous Bosch: For several years.
Shane Pangburn: For several years.
Sarah Enni: Well, let's talk about how the idea for Oliver came about.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Well that aspect of it, at least, came from one of the rumors about Pseudonymous Bosch. When you're an anonymous pseudonymous and mysterious author, like I am, people will say all kinds of things about you. And one of the rumors, that I tend to repeat, is that I don't write the books, that the rabbit writes them for me. That got me thinking about a magician and a rabbit because, in fact, that was the history with my rabbit. From the very beginning when I would do appearances as to Pseudonymous Bosch, I would bring a real live rabbit made out of felt, and three dimensional, who fit in my hat.
And I thought about a magician who had a rabbit who was like the secret brains behind the magic act. That was the seed of the idea. Then that became, for purposes of children, a white rabbit and a boy magician. And hence Oliver was born. A kind of hapless eight-year-old who teams up with this rabbit named Benny who's on the lamb having escaped the Las Vegas stage. But knows all the old tricks and promises to teach them to Oliver in exchange for his share of the money. They split it right down the middle 60/40 as Benny says.
Sarah Enni: [Laughs] This story to me, the first book is, The Unbelievable Oliver and the Four Jokers and it's a little bit younger of an age group. And your books always have beautiful illustrations as a part of their presentation. But what made you want to have this book have illustration be more of a part of the story?
Pseudonymous Bosch: Well now this is when we get to my own children, really, was the origin of that. I have twin daughters, India and Natalia. I, Raphael Simon not Pseudonymous Bosch, who were seven and eight years old when I first started thinking about Oliver. At the time, they were avid graphic novel readers and manga as well. Big fans of a Sailor Moon if anybody knows Sailor Moon. And lots of wonderful graphic novels that I loved, but it was all they would read.
And I began to get a little frustrated and antsy that they wouldn't read anything else. As much as I might like graphic novels, I wanted them to read, oh... I don't know, maybe my books for example! [Laughs]. And they just wouldn't. They out-and-out refused to read anything other than graphic novels.
But there were a couple, what they call in publishing, chapter books that they liked. Ivy and Bean being the one that really pops up in my head, but a couple of others as well. And I thought, "Well, you know what? Maybe it would be fun to diversify a little bit and try this format." I've tried once or twice over the years to write picture books, and still may someday. But if anybody's tried to write a picture book, it's not as easy as it looks, at all.
Sarah Enni: Not at all.
Pseudonymous Bosch: And I thought, "Well, maybe this would be a more natural fit for me." And I started talking to people who liked the idea of doing that. And that, of course, would have more illustration if I was gonna do a chapter book. That was a big part of the point. And I thought, "Well, who could do illustration for me that also might have a little bit of a comics background?" And I sort of walked around in a circle, and you know, stumbled into Shane. He just happened to be sitting by my side [laughs].
Shane Pangburn: Yeah. He looked everywhere. And quit looking.
Pseudonymous Bosch: I will say this. Shane is an incredibly talented illustrator and a man of many talents in general. But I will say that, on the one hand, it was natural. Because I knew him really well and I knew he, better than anyone in the world, understood my sensibility and humor and would be able to collaborate with me. But it was also a slight leap of faith because he had never done a book before.
Shane Pangburn: Yeah. I'd done textbooks and comics, but never a full book. And it's a lot. I mean, this book, the first book, is roughly almost 200 pages with an illustration on every page. So frankly, it is the biggest project I'd ever undertaken, at least in print. And it was a lot of faith to put in me, and I think most of it not misspent. But it was, to have that collaboration to have someone trust me and someone I trusted, go into that was, I think, a good fit.
And it's been a lot of work, but it's been rewarding too. To have a product that I think fits the demo we were both working with. I mean that chapter book level is one I think that gets overlooked and one that I certainly didn't want to overlook as a bookseller. And then later thinking about what kids need. So both of us focusing on that and just putting the intention into it, it was a nice project.
Pseudonymous Bosch: And I think what Shane's particular skill is, or one of his particular skills, is to be able to interweave text and art in a way that I think is, I'm not gonna say unique, but it's particular to him. And he's brilliant at it, I believe. And that was used a lot in Oliver and that part of it was collaboration. I couldn't have done that with any other illustrator cause I wouldn't have had a relationship with them. They wouldn't have had that particular skill.
But he was around from the beginning. I mean, I came up with this idea on my own and the characters, but then he was really part of it from the get go. And the whole thing has been a very collaborative process. And it's different for me because in the past, like most novelists, even ones who have illustrations in their books, I didn't get to work with the illustrator. Gilbert Ford who illustrated the Secret series is very talented and I ultimately became friendly with him. But the publishers really controlled that relationship and any notes I had on the art would always go through them. I wasn't really supposed to communicate with him directly about the work.
Sarah Enni: Publishers often silo authors and artists far, far from each other, which is so interesting. It's just kind of how it's done. So given that this is such an unusual arrangement, if you guys don't mind, I would love to talk about process. Like Rafi has the original idea, then how did you go about creating the story and integrating how the art was gonna feel along with the words?
Pseudonymous Bosch: Well, he was part of the outlining from the beginning and the story. I mean, the writing all gets done first. Although, certainly with the new book the Unbelievable Oliver and the Sawed in Half Dads, which we'll get to in a moment, the entire book was done first. With the first book, because we sold it with a sample, there was artwork from the beginning. We created a proposal that had character sketches and then we had sample chapters that also had artwork to kind of create a sense of what the whole would be like.
So there was much more art from the get go with the first. And then, and Shane can speak to this, but then when the publishers came on board, there was a whole process of nailing down what the characters would look like and what the style of the artwork was. And with the second book it's been a much more streamlined and step-by- step process where the entire manuscript is written. And then Shane got to work on the art.
Shane Pangburn: Yeah, some pages are illustrated in a traditional sense. There's something on the page and then the illustrator draws what is described on the page. Some pages are illustrated in a way that, without the illustration, there's no story there. So like, I think page two of the first book, a bunch of different cards are held up. And you absolutely need the art.
And so that would be something where we'd work together like, "What does this art say?" And you can see in early drafts, the art is described and written out. And that comes from, Rafi is getting the writing done and then I'm coming in and seeing where art can play a role in that, and writing some art.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Some parts get written, and then unwritten, as we realize that the art might better tell the story. Or the writing is gratuitous in some cases.
Shane Pangburn: Yeah. And there was ways that art could lend structure even. Like just creating a heading, or in the first book, these notebook pages took the role of the investigation. And so that became part of that. Still as I said earlier, and maybe not in this podcast, but I think of myself usually first as a writer storyteller. So the illustrations are all written. So they're actually scripted as if I'm writing for a comic.
Pseudonymous Bosch: And occasionally I'll come up with an idea for an illustration, but most of that is Shane.
Shane Pangburn: Most of that is me. But at the same time, because of that process, he can come in and write what an illustration will be. And we now know each other's work pattern enough, that he can develop an illustration on paper that can then become, well eventually on paper anyway, but in ink.
Sarah Enni: That's so cool. So if you don't mind me asking this nuts and bolts, but what are the tools that you use as an illustrator?
Shane Pangburn: So when we first pitched the book, it was pen and ink. And it had, sophisticated is not the right word, cause that's never a right description of my style. But it had an earthier quality. As we kept going, it became clear that for that age bracket and to hit that audience, and to give it a cuter look, it ended up getting cleaner and cleaner and now it's all done in a program called Adobe Illustrator.
There's a lot of hand drawing ahead of time. And in some cases the hand drawing does make it into the book. But a lot of times it's then translated through this program, which is something I've used since I was fifteen. I taught myself that program, at a really young age, when my school wanted to help kids not be artists, but to be draftsmen and other things.
And so to actually be an illustrator, I had to say I was a graphic designer. So I learned to use graphic design tools as illustration method, which then carries all the way into now where this graphic design tool that we used for textbooks actually makes really kind of poppy children's art.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Tell me if you think it's fair to say, I'm sure you do, that for the humor, the comic book aspects, the scene setting, all that came totally naturally to Shane. Or at least now it's second nature to him. But drawing characters that were that young, eight-years-old, and for that audience, did not come naturally to him. That's what, I think, was the hardest part and you really had to work on, was making the characters look and feel that age.
Shane Pangburn: And finally getting to that age actually changed the way the look of it was and kind of solidified that as well. But that was a process. And it was a process through the publisher, through Rafi, through Natalia and India who actually give incredible notes.
Pseudonymous Bosch: All those years reading graphic novels, they have a very sophisticated sense about illustration.
Shane Pangburn: So just like Rafi had to be an editor of novels at eight, his children now repeat that pattern.
Sarah Enni: I hadn't even thought about that. I mean, to me, drawing people sounds so difficult anyway. But then drawing specific age ranges.
Shane Pangburn: Yeah, cause also, you tend to like to draw kids, "Oh I'm gonna draw these kids as they are." And it doesn't necessarily work. There's rules about proportionality about how you draw kids that aren't really necessarily true to what kids are if you just drew them exactly. That I was thinking, maybe too literally or what have you, but getting those proportions right so they read on the page of, "This is an eight-year-old. This is a nine-year-old." Was a lesson. One I'm glad I learned, but one that was probably kind of hard to learn. I feel like much of this book came easily, and worked well easily together, quickly. That was a process.
Sarah Enni: Every book has a growing process, right? And now you know how to do it. What about incorporating magic? Magic is like, I feel that it's a very inherently visual medium, but not often in books. It's like visual in person.
Pseudonymous Bosch: That's interesting. Well the magic in these books is, of course, stage magic and theatrical in that sense. And I think that does lend itself to illustration, in particular. And also we have instructions at the back of it. And that was part of the series concept from the beginning. That each book in the series would be inspired by a certain magic trick. And that there would be the mystery, and the unfolding of the mystery would involve the magic trick in some way. And that that trick would be explained at the end of the book. And part of that is done through illustration.
Shane Pangburn: Yeah. Magic lends itself to a 'how to' process. And I'd already been head illustrator on a 'how to' guide series. And so whereas maybe not as much experience, but weirdly, that exact experience was something I had. Also, magic plays a role in the Secret series, both stage magic as well as 'real magic'.
These books, a talking rabbit must be magical on some level, but for the most part, real magic is left off the page here. But it is the illusion magic. And I think both of us had youthful obsessions with illusion magic. Cause it's a storytelling medium. It's its own thing. And you see a magician as a kid, and you're just like [gasps], "Oh my!"
Pseudonymous Bosch: And if you like magic tricks at all, or follow them at all, story and context is everything. And it's all about the way a trick is presented. Unless you're a real wizard, any magic you present is all about the context.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Let's talk about Unbelievable Oliver and the Sawed in Half Dads. So actually Shane I forgot, or I'm sure I knew this at some point, but I forgot that you are yourself a twin. And then of course Rafi has twin daughters. So I loved that there are two twin characters in the book and their dads are getting married. Is that right?
Pseudonymous Bosch: So a wedding was a thing that Philip and I put off for many years, for various reasons, legal and not legal. And at a certain point our girls started asking, "Why are you not married?" And getting sort of insistent about it. And we first thought, "Well, we'll do a little wedding in the courthouse." But they wanted a party. So then we were like, "Okay, we'll just really do this."
And then we started talking about it with them, and the more we talked about it, the more despondent they got because they realized it was gonna be all about us, and it was gona be our wedding and not theirs. And that seemed wrong to them. So eventually they proposed that we should do the wedding on their birthday. And of course we said, "No, that's absurd. It's our wedding. It's not yours."
And then we looked at each other and we thought, "You know what? What are we talking about? We're doing this for them. Why not do it on their birthday?" So we agreed and eventually had a joint seven-year-old birthday party slash dad's get married with all their friends from school and all of our friends. And it was insane and chaotic. And over the top.
Shane Pangburn: Three wedding cakes.
Pseudonymous Bosch: We had three wedding cakes.Two little mini wedding cake/birthday cakes for them, and a big wedding cake for us. Essentially it was a wedding themed birthday, every seven-year-old girls fantasy.
Sarah Enni: [Laughing] So adorable.
Pseudonymous Bosch: The kids afterwards, from their school, were all very angry at their parents that they had gotten married before they were born, as opposed to waiting.
Sarah Enni: And didn't think to wait until it could be properly enjoyed.
Shane Pangburn: They didn't do it the right way according to the children.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Completely backwards. And the funny thing was that Shane was my assistant at the time and just got rolled into the wedding planning, eventually taking over the role of wedding planner essentially. And Phillip was doing the flowers and Shane was hanging the lights. It was kinda like that.
Shane Pangburn: Yeah. Tori Hill and I had just come off the first YALLWEST actually, and it was like, "Well, if they can plan a book event, which still verdicts out, then they can plan a wedding."
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I was gonna say, there was so much... Oliver in the book has twin girls who are his friends.
Pseudonymous Bosch: They're kind of his managers basically. In the first book, they're the ones who kind of push him into becoming a professional magician.
Sarah Enni: And they get him his gig.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Yeah.
Sarah Enni: So once again, they come to the rescue and sign him up to perform at the...
Pseudonymous Bosch: Oh, at their dad's wedding. Exactly. I mean, in the book, it's not the twin's birthday, but they try to insert themselves by putting a magic show in the wedding. And the fathers, at first, are very resistant, but then they compromise and allow Oliver to do a show at the rehearsal brunch.
And then what happens is that they're gonna be sawed in half in the classic sawed in half trick. And it seems to go swimmingly well, big surprise. Oliver's thrilled. It's a big success. But then one of the fathers is missing. And so they have to find him before the wedding ceremony.
Sarah Enni: So how has writing this series been together? And it's a three book deal, but do you hope to continue?
Pseudonymous Bosch: I think we're gonna take our cues partly from how wide the readership becomes this year. We'd be delighted to do more. I think for sure we'd like to do more in the style of the book. I'm not gonna get into it, but I have an idea for a similar format book with a female protagonist. And I think people have really responded to the format of the book, or books rather. So, I think we'll continue one way or the other.
Shane Pangburn: Yeah, we're getting, I don't want to say great reviews cause that's not exactly the truth, but the fact is we're getting really good reviews on the way the books are set up and the product itself. And I hope we can carry on this story. This is book two coming out and book three will follow. And then we'll see. But I do think that us working together and the working in this style is something we want to continue.
Pseudonymous Bosch: And I think the book that Shane is working on individually, it's more of a classic middle-grade. A little longer, beefier book, but I think you're incorporating a little bit of the style that you developed.
Shane Pangburn: Yeah.
Sarah Enni: Oh, that's great! So you're writing prose and illustrating that whole thing?
Shane Pangburn: Yeah. So the other book we're so early in the process that even saying title et cetera.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Yeah, don't.
Shane Pangburn: But it is going to incorporate illustration with text in a similar way, this time kind of making it older so it's a little more video-based. But this book actually, the second book in Oliver, has a lot of video too.
Sarah Enni: What do you mean by that, video?
Pseudonymous Bosch: Illustrations of video.
Shane Pangburn: Illustrations of video.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Video frames, you know. Like in the first book, there were one or two stills of stones. In the second book there's more videos stills that are illustrated.
Sarah Enni: Okay. I think I know what you mean.
Pseudonymous Bosch: In other words, imagine a wedding video. But you're seeing frames of it on the page.
Shane Pangburn: Yeah, so there are elements of this style that'll be very, very important in the other book too. And that's something where Rafi is returning to his role as editor, his rightful place.
Pseudonymous Bosch: Editor slash boss.
Shane Pangburn: And I'll return to my role as employee.
Sarah Enni: So I'm gonna ask you guys for advice. Maybe advice about like writing comedically or writing for younger audiences?
Pseudonymous Bosch: You know, I think what I was talking about earlier, is one of my favorite pieces of advice, again. Which is simply to think about an audience to write for, or to someone. As opposed to spinning out and writing for yourself, trying to write for yourself, and going crazy, which is what I normally do myself.
But if you think about who you're writing for, like I said, it brings writing to life and it also can make it much easier and more fun to write as well.
Shane Pangburn: I think writing on deadlines, either self-imposed or through some structure. What created me as a writer was a daily comic. And having a pattern to your work to make you have to get the joke out. You have to get the idea out. And as far as comedy writing, I think writing temporally helps. So writing with frames of a comic actually help with pacing cause you can only say so much and you have to say it in a certain order.
That works with short videos. You can write a TikTok. You can write a quick response on Instagram. And you can find that these tools that we use every day, maybe this facility for communication can also help develop a pattern of speech. And I know your work speaks so well through your own work, social media wise.
Sarah Enni: Thanks!
Shane Pangburn: I know that helped make your first book a really funny treat.
Sarah Enni: Thanks. Yeah, that's so funny. That's the trick. I'm on Instagram all the time. Let's make a book about Instagram.
[All laugh]!
Sarah Enni: It really worked out for me!
Shane Pangburn: That's good advice!
Sarah Enni: Well thank you guys so much. I really appreciate that. And then this was so fun.
Shane Pangburn: Thanks Sarah.
Sarah Enni: Thank you so much to Rafi, aka Pseudonymous Bosch, and Shane. Follow Rafi on Twitter and Instagram @IsThisPBosch and Shane @ShanePang (Twitter and Instagram). Follow me on both @SarahEnni (Twitter and Instagram). And the show @firstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram).
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