Once I fixed the opening line, I set to figuring out where it led. I had no story, just a crazy concept. I pulled out all the stops, drew inspiration from a wide range of places, and started compiling a list of ideas. When I was done, I did a little research, crafted a few names (my wife admonished me to make sure they were easy to pronounce, since so many fantasy characters have tongue-twister monikers), whipped up an bare-bones outline and set to work. It was one of the easiest stories I have ever written. It just flowed, and it was fun! And when I was done . . . it was a little over 8100 words.

And then, just before NYCC, the guys at Wayward Raven announced a limit of 2,500 words for prose. I was just a smidge over that. Now I could have written a different story, but that did not happen for 2 reasons – I really loved what I wrote, and I am stubborn as hell sometimes. What’s a writer to do?

My story was 5,500 words too long but I refused to let go. There was no way to cut it down to the limit, and I was stuck for a shorter idea. How could I give my long story a shot at making the cut? Why, that’s easy – become an artist!

I figured that if I illustrated the story, it would make it more appealing to the publisher. And with the big characters and crazy story, I had plenty of ideas. Sounds great, right?

Maybe, but there was one problem: I am definitely not an artist. But I was determined. So I set out to try and illustrate the story myself. My wife was encouraging, bless her, and I did my best. My artistic “style” involves a lot of tracing, some stock images, and a lot of paper in the trash. Still, my first sketch came out fair.

And it only took me two weeks! With 10 more to do, I would be done in March, three months after the deadline. I needed a Plan B.

I tried to figure out a way to get the illustrations done myself. In the end, I knew what I had to do – find an artist, preferably one that would work for compliments and snacks. Guess what? I found one!

Amy Capobianco is an art teacher I have worked with for a couple of years in different schools. I had seen some of her drawings so I knew her style, and I also knew she was interested in being published and was working on an illustrated children’s book. I approached her with my idea and the tight timeline, gave her a copy of the story, and asked her to see what she thought.

A few days later, she said she liked the story and had a lot of ideas of what to do. My one instruction was to have fun. She did. The first two illustrations she send over were the Fairy’s wings and the crazy carload of characters in the opening sentence. My wife and I were floored! They were exactly what we envisioned and, equally as important, looked better than my meager efforts in much less time. We were off and running!

With Amy on board, I turned my attention to implementing what she was producing and transforming a prose piece more than three times the word limit into something that could be called sequential art. I already had the basic idea in my head, but it took a lot of experimentation to come up with the final look. I even purchased a font that is not a default for writing apps to give it a different style. All this time, Amy sent over images two at a time. I made some requests for changes, nothing big, and she made the adjustments fast. I pasted the final artwork in and made tweaks to the layout, watching as the clock ticked down towards the deadline. Until . . . the publisher put out a notice that they might close submissions early. Panicked, I threw together a very, very rough version – with sketches and a lot of blue “artwork pending” squares – and hastily submitted it with a note that the final version would be a major improvement. I filled in the “tell us a joke” section of the form (I think I wrote the same one I did for volume 2) to generate some extra good will. The full deadline came on a day my son had a jazz performance (he was awesome), my wife had a flat tire (nothing like a challenge) and I had an incomplete project. Still, I updated them with what I had done.

While I waited for word – confident it would not come until after the holidays and more likely in early 2026 – I kept tinkering with my layout, making the art as large as possible while confining the story to 10 pages, not including the title page. More artwork arrived and so did the holiday break. All I could do was keep working in the hopes that my contorting the rules to fit my needs paid off. And on the morning of December 24th, I saw the email pop up on my phone. I did not get any further than “Welcome to We Suck” before jubilation took hold. We had done it. Relief and gratitude joined the celebration, and so did my wife when she saw me raise two fists into the air and cheer. Of course, she told me (then, many times after), she had no doubt they would accept it. I fired off an email to Amy to congratulate and thank her for her contribution. And then I exhaled. There was still work to do, but the hard part was over.

The submitted version was finally done on January 4th, 2026. I tinkered like a madman, making tiny adjustments to placement and positioning, turning a small detail a fraction of an inch just because I wanted to. In the end, it was better to just get it out of my hands.

I turned my attention to the next piece of the project, something I had envisioned early on – this page. I thought it would be a fun way of getting people to interact with the story (and I could see if people were actually reading it), so I whipped up a temporary page and started what you are reading and looking at here. When you’re done, take a look around. I think the site is pretty cool.

And I also reached out to Amy for some of the rough sketches and concept ideas she had. You can see some of those here too!

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You have been warned! 

Since you’re still here, which means you actually scanned the QR code on page 3, I think I owe it to you to share some of the secrets of Just One More Thing.